...The VHP and its experts, especially S.P. Gupta, have been trying to prove the presence of their imagined Rama temple at Ayodhya.

...When these people were encountered with incontrovertible evidence of the non-existence of such a Rama temple, even the staunchest ideologies of the VHP shifted their stand. Now they argue for a comparably more general Vaishnav temple.

The VHP through manipulation of historical research, in pursuance of its claims, actually converts facts into propaganda.

When Prof. B.B. Lal conducted long and detailed excavations at Ayodhya, specifically to examine the Rama legend, his site notebooks failed to record the discovery (if any) of an 11th century temple.

No antiquities pointing to such a temple were listed with the register of antiquities which is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. This hypothetical temple was not mentioned in any published or unpublished archaeological report for the last decade and a half. What was the need for such a silence?

In any case... Buddhist monasteries far outnumbered the brahmanical structures in Ayodhya during the seventh century.

...The VHP has pointed to the 'vandalisation' of 125 images carved on the so-called Hindu pillars of the Babari Masjid.

The experts of the VHP have deliberately underplayed that none of these images are directly related to Rama or even Vishnu.

Sixty four of the images are yakshas and 48 are purnaghatas. The yakshas were attendants of Kubera who was attached to Mahadeva. Yaksha images are, therefore, associated with the Jains and Buddhists, not with the Vaishnava faith.

Purnaghatas (pitchers full of water) are a common motif found in the sculpture of the various brahmanical sects and eventually became a part of Indo-Islamic architecture. Thus, they appear in the Jama Masjid and Asafi Imambara pillars of Lucknow.

Again, the experts of the VHP fail to draw our attention to the absence of motifs which are always elementary to the image of Vishnu. Any good Vaishnavite, or even a knowledgeable historian will inform them about the importance of the shankha (conch-shell), the chakra (wheel), the gada (mace) and the padma (lotus).

These are the very emblems of Vishnu. The presence of a vanamala on one pillar does not help the VHP-case because this garland is also the characteristic of Durga.

Garuda, the well-known vahana of Vishnu, does not appear anywhere on the pillars of the Babari Masjid...

...Why do the experts of the VHP not talk of the fact that no idol of Vishnu or any other brahmanical deity has been found in the Ayodhya explorations and excavations? Such idols definitely existed elsewhere in early medieval times.

 ...What does strike any lay person is the presence inside the Babari mosque of pillars carrying non-Islamic motifs. But this is no reason to conclude that the pillars belonged to a structure which existed earlier on the same site.

...In all probability, most of these pillars belonged to some Jain or Shaivite temple and were brought from various places to decorate the Babari Masjid.

Jain historians have gone on record to state that the black pillars used in the Babari Masjid seem to have been taken from the ruins of Jain temples.

Indeed, there are many instances of transportation of building material from one place to another even in pre-industrial India...

...This longstanding Indian practice... and the complete absence of the evidence regarding the existence of any Rama temple at Ayodhya falsify the claim that the Babari Masjid replaced any pre-existing religious structure.