LIBERHAN'S BLINKERS

One need not go through 1000-odd pages of Justice MS Liberhan Commission report to conclude that it was just a piece of paper written by someone as a command performance. Along with the “terms of reference” Liberhan was perhaps also given a pair of blinkers. More than what he said in the report, what he did not say profiles the author.

The very fact that the report, deliberately “leaked” to get certain political mileage, became a dead story within two days speaks volumes for the credibility of the report. The national television channels suffering from pathological hatred towards anything that is “right” exhausted themselves on the very second day after the usual BJP bashing and lectures on “secular fabric of the nation”.

For newspapers it was just one-day tamasha and on the second day Liberhan-related stories were pushed inside. Had there been “meat” in the report, the Chennai-based national daily, which is known to be a “daily for the record”, would have published the text of the report and thus served the interests of “secularism” in the country. There were not even excerpts.

Why then the report was leaked after allowing it to gather dust “in the safe custody” of the Home Minister for more than five months? And who leaked it? These questions are becoming irrelevant since the purpose for which it was leaked was not served. On the contrary, it misfired and only suited those who were “indicted” in the report.

When the report was leaked to Indian Express, the understanding could have been that the daily would share it with a television channel of its choice. Everyone knows the professional relationship between the Editor-in-chief of Indian Express and NDTV. So, NDTV must be right when it says that it did not obtain the report from Home Ministry sources. This is like the lie of Dharmaputra on Aswattama.

Coming to the “mouse” that was unearthed by Liberhan after 17 years of futile exercise, what was happening from 1986 to 1992 was not something that was planned and executed as a secret mission. Every step of the Ayodhya movement was in public domain, whether it is “shila pujan” at every village, “shila nyas” at the site, and the Rath Yatra of Advani. There was extensive coverage of the movement in the media for which Liberhan finds fault with the media and wants journalists to be licenced.

The only issue on which there was no clarity was whether the actual act of demolition was pre-meditated or spontaneous. Liberhan was supposed to unravel this mystery; but he not only failed, but chose to indulge in conjectures.
Conjectures, after all, are an anti-thesis of any credible evidence. Therefore, Liberhan, naturally, talks about the exhortations by the Sangh Parivar leaders on various occasions to support his conspiracy theory and not a shred of concrete evidence. For this revelation you don’t need a commission.

Was there a secret meeting to hatch a conspiracy and if so, when and where? Who were all the participants in such a meeting? What was the decision taken? How was it executed? The report is silent on these aspects.

If public speeches of the leaders of the Ayodhya movement can be construed as conspiracy, then Mahathma Gandhi must also be a conspirator for the violence that was witnessed during the independence movement and for post-partition violence unprecedented in the history of mankind. After all, he gave his nod for partition after maintaining a stand that the partition could only be on his dead body.
Liberhan Commission was a fact-finding commission. It was expected to take a holistic view of the issue and offer suggestions or recommendations. It never went into the historic battle for a temple in Ayodhya. Demand for a temple for Ram in Ayodhya is not the brain child of Sangh Parivar in the latter part of the 20th century.

The conflict began in 16th century after Mir Baqi, a General of Moghul Emperor Babur built a mosque after dismantling a 11th century temple. In 1855, there were conflicts between Sunni revivalists and Hindus which claimed nearly one hundred lives. There were frequent skirmishes subsequently and in 1934, there were country-wide Hindu-Muslim riots and Hindus broke parts of the Mosque wall and damaged the dome. Hundreds were killed during these riots. Sangh Parivar was nowhere in the picture.

During the thick of this controversy, Gandhiji wrote in his Navjivan (July 17, 1937) “Mosques built after destroying temples are the sign of slavery and Muslims should hand over the same to Hindu society”. Certainly, our ultra-seculars can’t blame Gandhiji for taking the side of “communalists”.

12 years later, i.e. in 1949, an idol of Ram was installed in the disputed structure when the great secularist Jawaharlal Nehru was at the helm. Following protests, he ensured that the structure was locked.

Who opened the locks? It was his grandson Rajiv Gandhi who opened the lock in 1986 for Shilanyas. Arun Nehru of the Nehru family also played a key role in unlocking the gates of the structure. Liberhan does not think it fit to recall these events nor the fact that this happened during the Congress regime in Uttar Pradesh when Bir Bahadur Singh was the chief minister and Buta Singh was the Union Home Minister. The Congress thought that this would take the wind out of the Sangh Parivar’s campaign for the temple, but everything backfired for the Congress.

Liberhan also talks about the destruction of “secular fabric of the nation” and puts the blame squarely on the saffron forces. Had he taken a peep into the history of Ayodhya movement from the 16th century, he would have noticed that the obduracy of the Muslims in not allowing a temple for Ram, worshipped by millions of people of this country, was also equally responsible for the continuing conflict and the frustration of the majority community. There was no worship at the mosque for decades and the site was not a most holy place like Mecca or Madina for Muslims to be so sentimental about the place. The offer of the Sangh Parivar to construct a mosque in any nearby place at their own cost was also spurned.

Syed Shahabudin , architect of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, promised to give up the demand for the site if it was proved that there was a temple beneath the disputed structure. But, when the Archeological Survey of India started the excavation in mid-nineties and artefacts resembling Hindu structure started surfacing, there was a feverish attempt to stop the excavation. Liberhan turned an ostrich when these facts stared at him.

What is appalling in the report is the clean chit given to PV Narasimha Rao. It was preposterous on his part to say that in the absence of President’s Rule, he could not have done much. Was there a governor in the country who refused to oblige the Centre? Liberhan was partly right when he says that PV trusted the Parivar. Why did he trust the Parivar? Because in the gatherings at Ayodhya prior to December 1992, there were no attempts to tamper with the structure. He must have thought, in the absence of intelligence report to the contrary, that Dec 6 gathering also would pass off without any major disturbance. But his hopes were belied as that of the top honchos of the Parivar. Only the imbeciles would believe that Advani and others, after planning the demolition, would come to Ayodhya and preside over the disaster.

As the renowned journalist, Mark Tully pointed out in one of the television shows, BJP leaders were politically shrewd enough to know that they could sustain the movement only when the disputed structure stood in tact. And he was right. With the demolition of the structure, the movement also lost its fizz and the political graph started declining for the BJP as well.

But how could Liberhan recognise these realities when he had his blinkers firmly placed?