Truth and Reconciliation

Sazzad Hussain

The inquiry commission led by Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan was set up by the Union governmentled by PV Narashimha Rao following the destruction of the contested and controversial Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid structure at Ayodhya in the Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh on December 6, 1992. After a long period of 17 years, the commission submitted its report to the government early this year and was scheduled to be tabled in Parliament during the current winter session.

But its tabulation in Parliament was preceded by the report’s leak in the media where all the bigwigs of the BJP-Sangh Parivar were heavily indicted by the commission for bringing down the structure. This proved to be jolt to the opposition BJP already hit by internal feud and succession dilemma. So it hit back only at the leak and nothing about its reports.

Taking advantage, the government tabled the report the very next day in which the furore over the indictment of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and clean chit given to Narasimha Rao diverted the attention of the public from Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington and his signing of agreements with the US. The tabulation was immediately followed by the first anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror strike where the entire media was obsessed. This deprived the BJP of gains from the ghost of Ayodhya released by the report of the Liberhan Commission after almost two decades.

The report of the commission does not ask for any punitive action against the indicted people. But the Liberhan Commission still has some relevance since it tries to focus on the truth concerning the black day of post-Independent India — truth that is necessary for reconciliation.

There is nothing new concerning the leaders of the BJP-Sangh Parivar who are named by the Liberhan Commission for the demolition of the structure at Ayodhya. A look at the regional and national print media and video footage of that turbulent period would reveal how the leaders of the BJP-Sangh Parivar had spread communal passion and hatred concerning the Ayodhya conflict. Particularly, the inflammatory speeches of leaders like Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharati, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Acharya Giriraj Kishore and Vishnu Hari Dalamia were available among all forms of media of that time.

Likewise, there were reports of use of explosives to bring down the domed structure in which ex-servicemen affiliated to the Sangh ideology and students of IIT-Mumbai participated. The former RSS chief, KS Sudarshan, has also recently acknowledged the use of explosives in Ayodhya.

The then BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh, also contributed to the demolition by either engaging his police forces and the administration in a manner as to help bring down the mosque or by neutralizing them. The Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray also publicly boasted of hammering the first shot at the dome of the structure on that fateful day.

Veteran leaders like LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi (both of them experienced the horror of Partition) had the capability and wisdom to foresee the aftermath of the Ayodhya incident resulting in communal frenzy and bloodbath. However, they did not apply their stature to stop the demolition of the structure.

Following the incident, thousands of people lost their lives in communal violence in Mumbai, Surat and across the country. The March 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai were carried out by the ISI of Pakistan with the help of local underworld operatives and riot victims as a retaliatory action to avenge the demolition of the Babri structure. Noted terror expert Praveen Swami has shown in his numerous writings how jihadis emerged from the Muslim victims of the post-Ayodhya riots across the country in the later days.

From the perspective of far-reaching consequences of the Ayodhya incident, the indictment of Advani and Joshi by the Liberhan Commission appears to be obvious. However, it is unfortunate that the commission has termed Atal Bihari Vajpayee a pseudo-moderate and blamed him too for the demolition. The nation still remembers Vajpayee’s regret for the demolition on December 7, 1992 accusing the kar sevaks of destroying a mandir along with the Babri mosque. It was he who initiated a peaceful dialogue between the two contesting parties of the Ayodhya dispute by engaging the Sankaracharya of Kanchipuram during his tenure as Prime Minister in 2003.

Though Vajpayee was accused of remaining mum over sensitive issues because of the pressure applied by the Sangh Parivar and party hawks, he has never been considered a communal person even by his worst enemies. By naming Vajpayee and holding him culpable for the Ayodhya demolition, the Liberhan Commission has belittled the momentum of criminal activities associated with the demolition.

It is also perplexing that the Liberhan Commission has given a clean chit to Narashimha Rao over the Ayodhya incident. The Rao government could have imposed President’s Rule in Uttar Pradesh to pre-empt the Ayodhya demolition. His cabinet colleague Makhanlal Fotedar resigned after the December 6, 1992 incident and exposed the complicity showed by the government. But the Liberhan Commission, strangely enough, never summoned Fotedar.

The Rao government also did not remove the Sudhakar Rao Naik government in Maharashtra for the post-Ayodhya riots which had swept Mumbai till January 2003. The then Defence Minister Sharad Pawar also sent troops almost a week after the riot had ravaged the city.

We should also remember that the Ram Janambhoomi movement, from 1986 to its culmination in 1992, was started with tacit support from the Congress-led government at the Centre. Its journey commenced from the Ekatma Yatra taken out by the Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in 1980 with participation by the then Prime Minister India Gandhi. Her successor, Rajiv Gandhi, amended the Constitution only to appease the clergy of the Muslim Personal Law Board in the famous Shah Bano succession case. This was duly used by the BJP to start an aggressive movement for a Ram temple in Ayodhya. The Rajiv Gandhi government also allowed the unlocking of the gates of the disputed structure by violating the stay order of the Allahabad High Court in 1988 to allow shilanyas. The Liberhan Commission does not have the records of these developments in its report on the Babri Masjid demolition.

However, the indictment of the Babri Masjid Action Committee and several so-called leaders of the Muslim community like Javed Habib by the Liberhan Commission is one bright spot as these fronts and leaders also had failed to build up a consensus among the Muslim community concerning the Ayodhya conflict.

Significantly, the Liberhan Commission has indicted ex-Gujarat Chief Minister Shankar Singh Waghela for the Ayodhya demolition. The former BJP leader and now a Congress minister, Waghela was one of the leaders who prepared a fertile soil of communal polarization in Gujarat much before Narendra Modi arrived in the scene. It will be worth noticing how the Congress treats Waghela after his indictment by the Liberhan Commission.

The Liberhan Commission has not recommended any punitive action against those indicted by it for the Ayodhya incident. It only speaks about the need of some tougher laws to prevent communal flare-up and use of religion in politics to divide the country. Nevertheless, the commission has a significance of its own — towards knowing the truth behind the demolition of the Babri structure that shook the pluralist ethos of India. Revelation of truth is necessary to start reconciliation. And that reconciliation should be based on the lessons learnt from the December 6, 1992 incident.

(The writer teaches English at Lakhimpur Commerce College, Lakhimpur)