What can one say about the wisdom of a judge who
damages his own case before his verdict concerning others! After 17 long
years and eight crore rupees of public money Justice Manmohan Singh
Liberhan has delivered to the country an over 1,000 page report on
the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition that is full of howlers. According to the
Liberhan Commission report, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 31,
1948. Names of the same persons are spelt differently in different places;
designations too are mixed up on occasions. Looks like the learned
judge could not be bothered with reading his own report before placing it
before the nation.
Not surprisingly, those indicted, and rightly so, have
latched on to the howlers to dismiss the entire report as lacking
credibility. But though Justice Liberhan’s callousness is indefensible,
his report remains an evidence-backed damnation of those who took the
Indian Republic to the brink in December 1992. Not only was the Babri
Mosque demolished in full public view on December 6, it also created the
communal climate that made possible the pogrom against Mumbai’s Muslims in
December 1992-January 1993 and the Muslims of Gujarat 10 years later.
Reading the report is like watching a horror film with
an unfolding evil plot, step-by-step. Until 1983 when the VHP decided to
jump on to the bandwagon, the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi dispute remained
a local issue that agitated some residents of Ayodhya… and Faizabad
district at most. By 1989, however, a multitude of ordinary Hindus from
across the country had been transformed into a frenzied mob that converged
on Ayodhya again and again with a single object: construction of a Ram
Mandir on the very spot where the Babri Masjid had stood for a few hundred
years. Mission demolition on December 6, 1992 was the logical culmination
and climax of a hate-driven agenda.
If the criminal intent of the various constituents of
the sangh parivar and its ally the Shiv Sena was public knowledge
the contribution of the report lies in establishing in great detail how a
malevolent intent was translated into malicious action in such a short
period as the institutions of State sworn to protect constitutional values
and provisions – Union government, Parliament, the Supreme Court of India,
the governor of Uttar Pradesh – stood as "helpless" spectators while
corresponding institutions and individuals with similar obligations at the
state level – chief minister Kalyan Singh, his cabinet, senior to top
level civil servants and police officers – acted instead as the private
army of a campaign brimming with contempt for the rule of law. If the
Liberhan report provides us overwhelming evidence of the acts of
commission of those guilty of the criminal act, far more damning is
the evidence it marshals against those whose acts of omission made
it possible.
It has been the plea of the BJP and the RSS ever since
December 1992 that mosque demolition was never on their agenda. To
puncture this claim, Justice Liberhan asks a simple question: why then
were tens of thousands of kar sevaks mobilised to descend in
Ayodhya repeatedly, indoctrinated with incendiary slogans till a very
large number of individuals had turned into a hate-filled frenzied mob,
straining at the leash? Justice Liberhan does not buy the innocence plea.
From the evidence gathered before the commission it was
more than apparent well before December 6 that the plan for that day was
anything but a "symbolic kar seva". What’s more, the report points
out that much of this information was already in the public domain. By
December 2, if not earlier, it was so easy to anticipate the climax of
this dance of the macabre on December 6. Why then did the Union
government, the Allahabad High Court, the Congress-appointed governor of
UP, the Supreme Court of India not intervene?
Justice Liberhan seems over-eager to give the then
Prime Minister Narasimha Rao (and the Congress party?) a clean cheat. "In
1992, the central government had been blinded and handicapped by the
inaction of its own agent (governor) in the state and by the unfathomable
trust the Supreme Court placed in the paper declarations of the sangh
parivar". But he is not so sparing with other agents of State. Here
are his parting words: "the intransigent stance of the High Court of Uttar
Pradesh, the obdurate attitude of the governor (of UP), the inexplicable
irresponsibility of the Supreme Court’s observer (sent to Ayodhya) and the
short-sightedness of the Supreme Court itself are fascinating and complex
stories, the depths of which I must not plumb... (But) historians,
journalists and jurists may – and should – explore these dimensions and
tell these untold stories for the benefit of the current and unborn
generations".
In short, the Liberhan Commission tells us that our
constitutional edifice today stands on shaky pillars – legislature,
executive, judiciary – of State. Unless the System addresses the rot
within and secures its porous borders from pretentious infiltrators,
there’s little hope of meeting the challenge from without.
We reproduce in this issue excerpts from the Liberhan
Commission’s Report with a few obvious corrections and clarifications.
– EDITORS