[1] He was part of a panel of academics which contested the Vishva Hindu Parishad's claim that the Babri Masjid was built on top of a Râm temple.

In 1975, Bhan published his major report, Excavations at Mitathal and Other Explorations in the Sutlej-Yamuna Divide, which became a fundamental reference for the study of Indus and post-Indus cultures.

[3][8][7] In 1987, Bhan was invited to give the presidential address to the Archaeology section of the Indian History Congress, where he came out strongly against the tendency among some archaeologists to identify the Indus Valley Civilisation with the Vedic cultures.

He along with historians, Ram Sharan Sharma, Dwijendra Narayan Jha and M. Athar Ali, were a group of four academics who submitted a document titled Babari Mosque or Rama's Birth Place?

The authors claimed to have scrutinised the evidence provided by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) and rejected outright the idea of the mosque being the site of Rama's birth or of the possibility of it having been built atop a pre-existing temple.

[12] In October 1992, the four historians wrote in the CPI(M)'s weekly newspaper, People's Democracy, reacting to the booklet Ram Janmabhumi Ayodhya: New Archaeological Discoveries[13][14] stating that the VHP protagonists had indulged in "indiscriminate PWD-like excavation.

Questioning the methodologies employed to date the underground structure, he accused the ASI report of being an attempt to push back the antiquity of Ayodhya and thereby the Ramayana to c. 1000 BCE.

[25][26][23][27] Bhan appeared in the Allahabad High Court to state his professional opinion that the conclusion of the ASI report regarding the existence of any temple beneath the Babri mosque was baseless.

[30][31] In its 2010 verdict on the Ayodhya dispute, the Allahabad High Court criticised the professionalism of the expert witnesses who had appeared on behalf of the pro-mosque parties.

On Suraj Bhan, the court felt that he had made vague statements and had failed to provide a proper reason to challenge the conclusions of the ASI.