Marxist Historians’ Narrative on Ram Mandir Distorted Global Understanding of the History of the Hindu Holy Site

In the critical theory framework of oppressed and oppressor, Hindus, as the majority population in India, are oppressors in perpetuity. This simplistic framing obscures the history of the Indian subcontinent where the majority Hindu population was actually ruled by two minority communities — first Muslim and then Christian — for centuries. What’s more, the oppressor versus oppressed framing erases many of the atrocities committed in the name of religion by these rulers, including desecration, destruction and occupation of holy sites.

So when a temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Ram was built in the Indian city of Ayodhya, on a site considered to be his birthplace and thus sacred, the activist tendencies in both media and academia went into overdrive. 

The opening of the Ram Mandir was largely covered in line with a narrative that India is a Hindu country and they are anti-Muslim, and the temple opening furthered the destruction of secularism in India. 

For a moment, let’s consider an alternative and, I’d contend, more representative narrative. 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, Mecca for Muslims and Lumbini for Buddhists:  in the same way, there are seven major holy places for Hindus. Normal Hindus from all walks of life, joined by Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, at places with shared sacred histories, travel from near and far to fulfill their yearning to visit at least one of these seven precious pilgrimage centers in their lifetime. 

Ayodhya is one of these seven, home to adherents of India’s four indigenous religions for centuries before the arrival of Islam or Western civilizations. The destination of Ayodhya-bound visitors was primarily the Janmasthan: the traditional birthplace of Ram. 

However, starting from the 8th century CE onwards, several waves of Muslim invasions followed and three of those most-holy sites were razed, including Ayodhya, replaced by monuments of domination. The mosque built in Ayodhya was even referred to as the “Mosque of the Birthplace” for centuries.

Even after what is known today as the Babri Masjid was built in the 16th century, it never held any special importance for Muslims. It was not linked to any prophet, caliph, khwaja, or anything remotely significant to the different schools of Islam. It was simply a sign of dominion over the majority Hindu population.

The first court cases about the site arose after Sikh devotees entered the Masjid in 1858 and recommenced the daily worship of Ram. Decades of localized wrangling followed at the Faizabad District High Court under the British. 

Starting from the 8th century CE onwards, several waves of Muslim invasions followed and three of those most-holy sites were razed, including Ayodhya, replaced by monuments of domination.

Independence could have been a bright light. Indians could theoretically decide for themselves. And in fact, Muslim groups were going to hand over the site to Hindus, before India’s Marxist historians intervened, ultimately succeeding in diminishing and then converting the sincerely held Hindu beliefs into a trope of Hindus seeking revenge against Muslims in both academia and media.

At the same time, from independence until the last decade of the 20th century, few politicians recognized the simmering frustration that, even in independent India, the people in charge were out of touch with the desires of its people. Groups that would later become the BJP channeled the pent-up this frustration to start campaigns to reclaim the birthplace site and rebuild a temple. This frustration boiled over in 1992, when a rally turned violent, overcame police resistance, demolished the Babri Masjid, and ended in deadly riots across the country.

The courts could no longer delay and ordered the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct an excavation of the site directly under the Masjid, which was not feasible in previous surveys and digs. 

The archeological evidence presented to the High and Supreme Courts of India confirmed the site’s Dharmic prehistory, showing continuous non-residential or commercial occupation since the 2nd millennium BCE, a 50-pillar religious structure in the early layers of the site, with epigraphic evidence showing Hindu and Jain themes, and a confirmed temple on the site in the 10th century CE. All of this was in consonance with literature recording numerous figures that visited the birthplace in their lifetimes, including Guru Nanak, the founding Guru of Sikhism, as well as broadly supporting the traditional Dharmic history of the site.  

This should have laid to rest objections that the mosque was not built over an earlier Dharmic sacred site. But it didn’t. The stronghold Marxist historians have had in India on narrative shaping continues to frame the global understanding of the history of the site — something that archaeologist K. K. Muhammed, the Muslim archaeologist that excavated at the site with the team from the Archaeological Survey of India, has decried time and again. 

Western reporting also ignores a similarly important fact: the Supreme Court judgement gave five acres of land to the U.P. Sunni Central Waqf Board to construct India’s biggest Masjid, whereas the 2.77 acre site of the birthplace was allotted to the two Hindu suits that were filed in the courts. 

Suggesting that this solution was forced upon Muslims denies their agency. It also only tells one version of Indian Muslim views on it, itself problematized by the fact that the Chief Imam of the All India Imam Organization, Dr. Imam Umer Ilyasi, was an honored guest and one of the first people to enter the Ram Mandir after its consecration.

Despite the media and too much of academia continuing to ignore countless Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain and other voices that don’t neatly fit into their bipolar view of Ayodhya, Hindus can only hope that the peaceful, jubilant festivities establishing the sacred icon of Ram in the historic temple will become a pivotal point in both re-establishing worship at one of the most sacred sites for the Dharmic traditions of India, and critically probing the Indian Marxist presumptions of the past and their legacies, regardless of religion or politics.

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Dr. Vijay Satnarine is the Director of Education at the Hindu American Foundation. His research focuses on comparative religious studies, global history, and South Asian traditions using decolonizing methodologies.