ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how pasts are being created in one particular situation in India, in which the rival groups involved have both appealed to ‘historical/archaeological facts’ and tradition to legitimize their claim to the monument under dispute. A mosque in the city of Ayodhya in northern India, in which Muslims offered prayers from the mid-1500s to 1949, and which was erected during the reign of the first Mughal Emperor, Babar, is claimed by the Hindus to be the site of an ancient temple to the god/king Rama. In Maharashtra, a Hindu fundamentalist group bought a chariot used by the television network during the serialization of the Ramayana to use in a subsequent election campaign. In the case of Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid, it is abundantly clear that the symbolic equation once made has been negated and/or forgotten. Hindus insist that the Ramayana is ‘fact’ and that Rama ruled Ayodhya/Saketa.
