Beneath The Disputed Walls Of Bhojshala, Science Found What History Always Said: A Saraswati Temple
The Madhya Pradesh High Court's verdict on Bhojshala rests on a 10-volume scientific survey by the Archaeological Survey of India involving Ground Penetrating Radar, stratigraphic excavation, epigraphic analysis, and 94 recovered sculptures which concluded that the present structure was built over a pre-existing Hindu temple, later forcibly modified into a mosque.
How Layer by Layer, the ASI Survey Confirmed Bhojshala Was Always a Hindu Temple
When the Madhya Pradesh High Court at Indore delivered its verdict on the Bhojshala dispute on May 15, 2026, it did not rely on faith, sentiment, or contested historical opinion.
The Division Bench of Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi rested its findings on something harder to dispute: science. At the centre of the judgment is a 10-volume archaeological survey report commissioned by the Court itself, a methodical, multi-disciplinary investigation that, layer by layer, confirmed what Hindu worshippers had always asserted about the site in Dhar.
The survey did not happen quickly or quietly. By its order dated March 11, 2024, the Court directed the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a scientific investigation of the Bhojshala complex at Land No. 604, Dhar.
The mandate was specific: determine whether the structure was originally a temple, a mosque, or a centre of learning; examine its architectural history through modern techniques; and report findings without prejudgment. To ensure credibility, a monitoring committee with representatives from both contesting parties: Hindus and Muslims, was constituted to observe the survey process. The Supreme Court, on appeal, affirmed the direction with minor modifications while maintaining the status quo of the monument.
What followed was not a cursory site visit. ASI deployed a core team of archaeologists, epigraphists, chemists, conservators, surveyors, and photographers. The entire site including a 50-metre peripheral area was systematically divided into 5x5 metre grids. Every structural component was numbered and documented. Excavation was conducted with care: minimally invasive, continuously recorded through video and photography, and followed by restoration of each trench to its original condition.
Modern instruments included Ground Penetrating Radar for sub-surface imaging, GPS mapping, X-Ray Fluorescence for elemental analysis, and total station survey for structural measurement. The resulting report ran to ten volumes covering introduction, structural description, inscriptions, scientific studies, artifact cataloguing, photography and videography.
The findings were unambiguous. The most significant discovery was stratigraphic: the site contained multiple structural layers, and the upper visible construction was demonstrably a later addition. Beneath it lay a far larger, earlier structure extending four to five metres below the present ground level.
This earlier structure built first with brick, then expanded using locally available basalt stone was dated by ASI to the Paramara period: the 10th to 11th century CE. King Bhoja of the Paramara dynasty ruled from approximately 1000 to 1055 CE. The dates aligned precisely with his known construction of Bhojshala in 1034 AD as a centre of Sanskrit learning and a temple of Goddess Vagdevi, Ma Saraswati.
The material recovered during excavation reinforced the conclusion. ASI catalogued a total of 94 sculptures and sculptural fragments from the site. The depictions included Ganesha, Brahma, Narasimha, Bhairava, and a range of animal and mythological figures, lions, elephants, horses, serpents, and tortoises. Kirtimukha motifs and divine imagery typical of Hindu temple architecture were documented across pillars and ceiling panels. ASI specifically noted that such human and animal figures are expressly impermissible in Islamic religious architecture, yet they were found embedded throughout the structure, many of them defaced. The defacement itself told a story.
The epigraphic findings were equally decisive. More than 150 Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions were recorded across the site. These included literary and religious texts connected to the Paramara rulers and, crucially, a 13th-century inscription referencing the first performance of the drama Parijatamanjari in a temple of Goddess Saraswati, identifying the location by its Sanskrit name, Sharada Sadan.
One inscription from the Khilji period, dated to 1455 CE was particularly revealing. Fixed on the gateway of the tomb of Abdullah Shah Changal at Dhar and recorded in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1909-10), it recorded in the conqueror's own words that the temple was destroyed and its idols defaced before conversion into a mosque. The ASI survey found and documented this inscription. The destruction was not inferred; it was inscribed by those who carried it out.
The structural analysis added a further layer of confirmation. The survey found that the complex contains 106 pillars and 82 pilasters, many of which are reused temple-style architectural members from the earlier structure, some composed by stacking multiple shafts, a characteristic feature of hasty reuse. The western wall had been cut and modified.
The Mihrab, the Islamic prayer niche in the western colonnade, was identified as a new construction in material different from the rest of the structure, added after the original building was repurposed. The dome ceiling, by contrast, retained its original carved Hindu decorative elements: concentric circles and lotus designs. The superstructure, ASI concluded, was built hurriedly and without attention to symmetry unlike the precisely proportioned platform beneath it, which bore the hallmarks of deliberate, skilled temple construction.
The Court accepted the ASI report as credible, fair, and scientifically rigorous. Objections raised by the Muslim side, including allegations of planted artifacts and inadequacy of carbon dating were considered and rejected. The Court noted that the monitoring committee had included representatives from all sides, that written objections had been received and considered during the survey process, and that the ASI's methodology was consistent with the evidentiary standards laid down by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgment.
On the carbon dating question specifically, the Court accepted ASI's position that carbon dating is useful where organic material is available for testing, and that the dating conclusions drawn from stratigraphic analysis and artifact typology were scientifically defensible.
The ASI's own core submission to the Court crystallised the evidentiary case in a single proposition: "The dispute must be resolved on scientific evidence. The ASI report establishes a pre-existing temple structure, whose remains form the base of the present monument." The Court agreed. In its final findings on the character of the site, it held that the Bhojshala complex was originally the Saraswati temple and centre of Sanskrit learning built by King Bhoja in 1034 AD, a character that no subsequent modification, forcible or otherwise, could extinguish in law.
For Hindu worshippers who had for decades been restricted to a single day's access on Vasant Panchami, the ASI survey was not merely evidence in litigation. It was the scientific affirmation of a continuity they had never doubted. The Court, in directing that Hindu worship rights be fully restored and that the 2003 ASI order be quashed, was following where the science had already led.
Case Title: Hindu Front for Justice (Regd. Trust No. 976) Through its President Ms. Ranjana Agnihotri v. Union of India Ministry of Culture and other connected matters
Date of Judgment: May 15, 2026
Bench: Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla and Justice Alok Awasthi