The legal battle over the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute got a new twist on July 23, with a Buddhist petitioner joining the fray. A writ petition filed by Vineet Kumar Maurya, an Ayodhya resident, was admitted and tagged along with the 13 other appeals pending against a 2010 verdict of the Allahabad High Court.A three-judge bench of the court had divided the 2.7-acre disputed site between the three main parties — the Nirmohi Akhara the Sunni Waqf Board , and the deity, Shri Ram Lalla Virajmaan. A slew of appeals against this verdict, from both Hindu and Muslim parties, followed in the Supreme Court Seven years later, in December 2017, the Supreme Court began its final hearing on the dispute. In March, it dismissed all other intervention applications. “I was very sure that our petition will be admitted because we have not asked for anything for ourselves,” says KKL Gautam, Maurya’s lawyer.Maurya’s petition, the first Buddhist one to be admitted, appeals the apex court to direct the government “to declare disputed land in question as Ayodhya Buddha Vihar” under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.Buddhist presence in Ayodhya has been noted since the very first Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report in 1862-63. In fact, Ayodhya is also known as Saket, which itself is considered to be a great centre of Buddhism. According to historians and scholars, Buddha resided in Saket/Ayodhya for a number of years.However, while the ASI reports confirm the Buddhist link to Ayodhya, whether or not Ayodhya is the same Buddhist Saket remains to be proven conclusively.Maurya, a postgraduate in ancient Indian history, says earlier, too, other Buddhist petitioners tried to intervene in the matter. “Before the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, two other Buddhist applications had been filed but both were dismissed on the grounds that there was no merit in their contention that the Babri Masjid was raised either by force or demolition on any Buddhist religious structure, which belongs to any Buddhist Society.”It was the 2010 verdict of the Allahabad HC that has now become the basis of Maurya’s writ petition. “In the final judgment, the high court itself has found that Buddhist ruins existed at the disputed land, such as stupas, and pillars of the Buddhist era were used while constructing the mosque on the disputed land,” says Gautam.Five archaeological surveys have been carried out in present-day Ayodhya. Alexander Cunningham, founder of the ASI, conducted the first one in 1862–63. He failed to find any evidence of Hindu temples, but did find remnants of Buddhist structures. Alois Anton Fuhrer surveyed the area in 1889–91 and essentially reiterated the discoveries made by Cunningham.The first excavation after Independence took place in 1969–70 when AK Narayan of Banaras Hindu University dug at three places not in the immediate vicinity of the Babri Masjid. Narayan’s excavations convinced him of a “strong Buddhist presence in the area under study.” This also estimated habitation in Ayodhya in 5th century BC.The next excavation concluded that the earliest known settlement at Ayodhya was in 7th century BC. The last and final ASI excavation was conducted in 2002-03 on the order of the Allahabad High Court. This ASI report concluded that a massive structure existed at the disputed site before the construction of the Babri Masjid.This report was hotly contested and was attacked for being biased towards establishing the Hindu antecedents of the disputed site. In 2010, the HC verdict extensively cited the report’s findings while dividing the disputed site in three equal parts.Maurya relies on the same verdict to argue that the massive structure beneath the Babri Masjid was in fact of Buddhist origin. Much like everything related to the Ayodhya dispute , politics has begun over Maurya’s petition, too. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad was quick to cast aspersions on the petition. Sharad Sharma, its spokesperson in Ayodhya, thinks Maurya’s petition is motivated and should not have been admitted by the Supreme Court. “This is a very serious matter. Already more than six decades have passed, and the admission of this petition will only cause further delay. Even if Buddha lived here, Ayodhya remains Ram’s town, it is only His birthplace,” says Sharma.Mahant Ram Das of Nirmohi Akhara, the oldest Hindu litigant in the case, questioned the timing of Buddhist petition. “Where were they all these years? Moreover, it is a property dispute, they should have filed their plea in the Faizabad Civil Court, this seems to be another effort to scuttle resolution of the dispute and garner cheap publicity.”Maurya dismisses these criticisms. “Buddhist representatives tried to intervene in the matter before but could not. Since the matter is sub-judice in the Supreme Court, there was no point in petitioning lower courts. Articles 25, 26, and 29, read with Article 32 give me the right to demand that Buddhist cultural sites be preserved and conserved. The VHP and Sunni Waqf Board don’t want the dispute resolved,” says Maurya.Besides Maurya, certain Muslim parties in the case are relieved that the Supreme Court has admitted his plea. Khalik Khan, a nominee of Maulana Mehfooz-ur-Rahman, a party in the title suit, says the Bharatiya Janata Party and the VHP have been attacking Muslims without any proof that a Hindu temple was destroyed for the construction of Babri Masjid. “Now, that debate stands widened as Maurya’s plea argues that the mosque came up on a Buddhist site, and used artefacts like pillars that could be of Buddhist origin.”(The author is Delhi-based writer and photographer)