Is TNIE Committed to Publishing the Truth?

To,
Mr. Aditya Sinha
Editor-in-Chief
The New Indian Express
Chennai

08 DEC 2009

Dear Mr. Aditya Sinha,

I feel constrained to bring the following to your notice.

In the TNIE (Chennai) of 02 Dec 2009, there was a letter penned by Mr.S.M.Sheik Mohamed of Tirunelveli, and published under the caption ” Rao remained a spectator “. I would not have bothered much about the letter, but for the fact of the writer stating: “  Even level headed and noble Hindus admit – -, made worse by the knowledge and scientific proof that there never was a temple on the spot at any time in
history “.

There are enough open source literature available to refute Mr. Sheik Mohamed’s contention. I had therefore sent a rebuttal to the above to the Letters section of your paper. The same is enclosed below at Appendix-A, for your information please.

One such recent reference is the book- ” RAMA: HIS HISTORICITY, MANDIR AND SETU : EVIDENCE OF LITERATURE, ARCHAEOLOGY AND OTHER SCIENCES ” – written by the former Director General of the ASI, Dr. B.B. Lal. Excerpts from the book, written in first person, and of relevance to the issue at hand is also enclosed below at Appendix-B, for your information please. My response was based on the contents of this book.

Regrettably, my rebuttal was not published by TNIE. Therefore, the ‘No Temple’ postulation of Mr. Sheik Mohamed holds. May I add, in the process, misleading countless readers of your paper. This raises a substantive point in my mind. Is the Editorial policy of the TNIE at present committed to publication of the Truth, or on account of the pressures of ‘secularism’, it becomes the first casualty? May I also add that the TNIE has published my rebuttals earlier, prior to your joining TNIE. In the present instance, it could have been edited, and the fact of a ‘temple pre-dating the Babri Masjid’ could have been brought to the notice of your readers.

I have been a ‘loyalist’ of the Express Group for over four decades, mainly on account of its fearlessness and honesty of purpose – especially during the Emergency and the ‘blank editorial spaces’ those days. The Editorials in the 70s/80s were a treat. It will be a sad day for the paper if those much admired human traits are sacrificed at the altar of ‘expediency of the moment’.

Best Wishes for the New Year,

Warm Regards

H.Balakrishnan
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APPENDIX – A

02 Dec 2009

Dear Sir,

Apropos the letter captioned ” Rao remained a spectator ” (TNIE-02 Dec) has the writer stating: ” Even level headed and noble Hindus admit – -, made worse by the knowledge and scientific proof that there never was a temple on the spot at any time in history “. This warrants a rebuttal.

Open source literature indicates that from 1975 through 1980, the Archaeological Survey of India under the Directorship of Professor B.B. Lal, a former Director General of the Survey, undertook an extensive programme of excavation at Ayodhya, including the very mound of the Ramajanmabhumi on which the so-called “Janmasthan Masjid” or Babri Mosque once stood and was later demolished on 6th December 1992. He discovered a Hindu temple built on archaeological levels formed prior to 13th century AD. Supporting Prof. Lal’s discovery was Shri K.K. Muhammad , Deputy SuperintendentArcha eologist ( Madras Circle ), who was a trainee at that juncture. He had written : ” I can reiterate this (ie. The existence of the Hindu Temple before it was displaced by the Babri Masjid) with greater authority – for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavations in 1976-’77 under Prof. Lal as a trainee. I have visited the excavation near the Babri site and seen the excavated pillar bases. The JNU historians have highlighted ONLY ONE PART OF OUR FINDINGS WHILE SUPPRESSING THE OTHER.”

Then came the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court mandated ASI excavations at the site in the summer of 2001, using ‘ground penetrating radar’. Here again the ASI team discovered the ruins of a demolished 16th Century A.D. Hindu Temple.

The fact of the matter is that the archaeological evidence is irrefutable and has already shown the existence of two Hindu Temples at the site – one belonging to the Delhi Sultanate Period and the second during Babur’s reign. That these  never appeared in the media is an altogether different story.

Warm Regards

H.Balakrishnan

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