Babri Mosque Revisited


Written by S.G. Jilanee • Region • January 2010

That long before Babri Masjid was demolished, Yusuf Afghan, editor of The Illustrated Weekly of Pakistan, had remarked "India is Hindu; calls itself secular."First it was the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Barely five months after India's independence and Jawaharlal Nehru's famous "tryst with destiny," Nathu Ram Godse, a fanatic foot soldier of the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), gunned him down. That was a slap on the face of Nehru's vow of a secular India.

He tried his best to stem the tide, yet, the drift continued. RSS spawned offshoots: Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shiv Sena and so forth. They named the conglomerate, "Sangh parivar," (sangh family). As they rose higher in strength, India sank deeper into the stygian abyss of Hindu extremism. On December 6, 1992 it reached its high point. On that day, frenzied zealots of the parivar descended like swarms of locusts upon the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and razed it to rubble.

Babri Masjid was a historical relic, built under orders of Emperor Babur in 1527. Hindus claim that it was built after demolishing a Hindu temple that had been erected at the exact place where King Dasrath's first wife, Kaushilya had delivered his first born son, Rama, the Hindu god.

The incident ignited communal riots all over India, particularly in Mumbai and Delhi, in which more than 2000 people were killed. Instead of handing the case over to the police to apprehend the culprits, the Congress government of Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao instituted a one-man commission of inquiry, headed by Supreme Court Judge, Manmohan Singh Liberhan, on 16 December, 1992. The Commission was expected to submit its report within three months. However, it submitted the report, after forty eight extensions, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009.

The Commission took, precisely, 16 years and six months to compile the meticulously assembled report - comprising 16 chapters including conclusions and recommendations, besides maps, an afterword and a list of witnesses. Also accompanying the main report is an Action Taken Report (ATR), which contains mostly recommendations. But, curiously, while it recorded the statements of senior BJP leaders Advani, Joshi and Kalyan Singh, it did not examine Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Justice Liberhan has held a total of 68 people individually "culpable for pushing India to communal discord." He has accused virtually every group of Hindu extremists; -RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and so forth, for the crime.

The BJP group includes not just Hindutva ideologues Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, but, surprisingly, also the party's celebrated moderate face, Vajpayee. He has called them pseudo-moderates, "pretending to keep a distance from the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign when they were actually aware of the whole conspiracy."

"Having analyzed many hours of audio and video recordings and having observed the witnesses, [the commission] is unable to hold even these pseudo-moderates innocent of any wrongdoings," Liberhan observes.

Going further he says, "They have violated the trust of the people...There can be no greater betrayal or crime in a democracy and this Commission has no hesitation in condemning these pseudo-moderates for their sins of omission."

The immediate joke in India's political circles therefore is that "Justice Liberhan took a very long time to discover about Vajpayee, what RSS/BJP ideologue K.N. Govindacharya apparently said years ago-that he was a "mukhauta (a mask)" of the RSS.

The Commission has identified the Kalyan Singh-led BJP Government in Uttar Pradesh as the key player in the execution of the conspiracy to demolish Babri Masjid. It goes on to say that "the demolition of the mosque was planned, systematic," and it was the intended outcome of a climate of communal intolerance deliberately created by the RSS and its sister affiliates, including the BJP.

The amazing part of this story, however, is that the commission took all these years only to confirm what was common knowledge all along, - that it was the work of Hindu fanatics, encouraged by their leaders.

The report had been gathering dust with the PM since June 30. It was after the Indian Express and NDTV 24x7 presented some of its juiciest portions to the public, that the government woke up to table it in the Lok Sabha on 23 November 2009. Stung by the indictments, the opposition was furious. It blamed the home ministry for the leak. But home minister Chidambaram denied his ministry's role in the leak. NDTV 24x7 group chairperson Barkha Dutt also supported his statement, but refused to disclose her source. The report and its accompanying Action Taken Report (ATR) will now be debated on December 22, 2009.

The publication of the leak was, however, largely welcomed by the intelligentsia, because it sought to pressure the government to present it before the parliament instead of shoving it to the back burner as usual. Its aftermath, though, remains a matter of conjecture.

One analyst says that "The Liberhan report will almost certainly shore up the BJP as a major player at a time when it was getting politically marginalized." Babri Masjid demolition catapulted the BJP into power once. Now the publication of its report may lead throw it up again. By a strange coincidence, the Mosque was vandalized during the Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. He was succeeded by BJP's Vajpayee. Now the report has come before another Congress government. Will Manmohan Singh give place to BJP's L.K. Advani, this time?

The seeds of the Babri Masjid demolition were sown with the rath yatra. The plan for the BJP to come to power was through igniting fanatical religious zeal among the Hindu masses. The journey began on September 25, 1990. The RSS had originally planned for four people to undertake it, each from a separate starting point, to converge at Ayodhya on October 30, 1990.

Vijayaraje Scindia was selected to lead the wrath from the Kamakhya temple in Assam, but she declined on account of her health. Sikander Bakht was asked to proceed from Mumbai, but he pointed out that no one would come to hear him. And when RSS leader Govindacharya asked Vajpayee if he would travel from Jammu to Ayodhya, the latter snapped: "What nautanki (drama) is this? Main aisi nautanki mein nahin jaata (I do not take part in such a low drama)." Yet, there is no question that he lent it his moral support. That left L.K. Advani. Originally it was proposed that he travel from Kanyakumari. But he selected Somnath for its political appeal. And it really worked.

Now, once again, the Liberhan report places the BJP at the centre stage. It may once more start a mass campaign, protest its innocence and appeal for public support against victimization. Saffron will again be on display. And the people, with largely religious leanings would sway, as they did before.

The only way out for Manmohan Singh is to act differently from Narasimha Rao, who dithered while India was swathed in blood. Singh must act. He must make sure the recommendations in the ATR are scrupulously implemented. At risk is India's image. Therefore, this report should not meet the same fate as the Justice Shrikrishna report on the 1993 anti-Muslim riots in Mumbai. No action was taken on it, which further emboldened the rightwing militants.