Early accounts of European travellers cited by the Supreme Court in its 2019 Ayodhya title suit judgment and a just-released book on Ayodhya by former Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Punj of the BJP record popular beliefs in the temple town that a castle or temple devoted to Hindu deity Ram once stood there.

Interestingly, at least two early travellers and evidence adduced by Punj from other books on the subject suggest that Aurangzeb, rather than Babur, was held responsible for the purported demolition by most of the folklore. Some, however, blamed it on Babur, say the accounts of travellers, largely because of an inscription there attributed to Mir Baqi.

While the first account of a European traveller, William Finch, who visited India during the reign of Jahangir, talks about “ruins of castles and temples”, another account penned decades after Aurangzeb’s death records most people accusing the sixth Mughal emperor of destroying remnants of the memory of Ram.

William Finch arrived in India in August 1608, landing in Surat, and wrote about his Ayodhya visit. The account has been taken from William Foster’s book Early Travels in India. Finch visited Ayodhya between 1608 and 1611, when Jahangir ruled the Mughal empire. Calling Ayodhya a “city of ancient note”, Finch says, “Here are also ruins of Ranichand’s castle and houses, which the Indians acknowledge for the great god, saying that he took flesh upon him to see the tamasha of the world. In these ruins remain certain Brahmins, who record the names of all such Indians as wash themselves in the river running thereby; which custom, they say, hath continued for four lakhs of years (which is three hundred ninety four thousand and five hundred years before the world’s creation). Some two miles on the further side of the river is a cave of his with a narrow entrance, but so spacious and with so many turnings within that a man may well lose himself there, if he (does) not take better heed; where it is thought his ashes were buried. Hither resort many from all parts of India, (who) carry from hence in remembrance certain grains of rice as black as gunpowder.”

The text of the Supreme Court judgment adds, “The expression ruins of Ranichand’s castle and houses has appended to it a footnote stating: Ramachandra, the hero of the Ramayana.”

Punj also cites the 1631 account of Joannes de Laet who became a director of the Dutch East India Company in the 1620s. The English translation of that account says, “Not far from this city (Ayodhya) may be seen the ruins of the fort and palace of Ramachand, whom the Indians regard as God most high; they say that he took human flesh so that he might see the great tamasha of the world.”

In 1740, during the reign of the later Mughals more than three decades after Aurangzeb’s death, Jesuit missionary Joseph Tieffenthaler visited India. He wrote an account of his travels, spanning four decades, in Latin. The English translation refers to his visit to Ayodhya. “Avad, called as Adjudea by educated Hindus, is a city of very olden times. Today this city is hardly populated, since the foundation of Fesabad (Faizabad) — a new city where the governor established his residence — and in which a great number (of the inhabitants) settled. On the south bank are found various buildings constructed by the nobles in the memory of Ram. The most remarkable is the one called Sorgadaori (Swarg Dwar), which means the celestial temple. Because they say Ram took away all the inhabitants of the city from there to heaven: this has some resemblance/similarity to the Ascent of the Lord.”

Tieffenthaler writes that the city was repopulated by “King Bikramadjit”, adding, “There was a temple in this place constructed on the elevated bank of the river. But Aurangzeb, always keen to propagate the creed of (Prophet) Mohammed and abhorring the noble people, got it demolished and replaced it with a mosque, with a view to obliterate even the very memory of the Hindu superstition. But a place especially famous is the one called Sita Rasoi, i.e., the table of Sita, the wife of Ram. Emperor Aurangzeb got the fortress of Ramcot demolished and got a Muslim temple, with triple domes, constructed at the same place. Others say that it was constructed by Babor (Babur).”

The Jesuit also refers to a widespread belief in the existence of a cradle in which Ram was born and adds that Aurangzeb or Babur razed it to the ground to deny people the right to follow their “superstitions”. He adds, “However, there still exists some superstitious cult in some place or other. For example, in the place where the native house of Ram existed, they go around three times and prostrate on the floor.”

Born in Dublin in 1801, Robert Montgomery Martin was a civil servant who wrote a three-volume book on eastern India in the 19th Century. He too describes Ayodhya and says the people of Ayodhya believed that once deserted, their city was repopulated by Vikramaditya. But Martin casts doubt on the historicity of the belief. He says he found no available trace of Hindu temples that were supposed to have once existed, adding, “The destruction is very generally attributed by the Hindus to the furious zeal of Aurangzeb, to whom is also imputed the overthrow of the temples in Benares and Mathura.”

Punj cites the work of retired IPS officer Kishore Kunal, who dismissed the belief that the Ram Temple in Ayodhya was demolished in 1528 by Babur’s general Mir Baqi and claims that it was demolished in 1660 by Aurangzeb’s foster brother Fedai Khan. Kunal’s book says that Mir Baqi was not a historical person at all. Apart from Aurangzeb’s “bigotry”, Kunal claims another reason for Aurangzeb deciding to get the temple demolished: “His bete noire Dara Shukoh had written in 1656 an interesting introduction to the Persian translation of the famous Sanskrit work Yoga-Vashishtha Ramayana under the title Tarjuma-Joga Vashishta.” Shukoh wrote that he saw Lord Ram in his dream and that gave him a deep desire to get the work translated.