BJP Pandora's Box: Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Ani June 30th, 2009
NEW DELHI - The Liberhan Commission, which is inquiring into the
destruction of the Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid structure at Ayodhya
on December 6, 1992, on Tuesday submitted its report to Prime Minister
Dr. Manmohan Singh.
Established on December 16, 1992, ten days after the demolition that
triggered widespread communal violence, the panel headed by retired
Justice M S Liberhan, had got 48 extensions.
The Commission submitted its report by retired Justice M S Liberhan
Liberhan in presence of Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
The contents of the report were not immediately known.
The probe panel has become one of the longest and costliest
commissions with over Rs.7.5 crore having been already spent during
this period.
The Commission, constituted by the Home Ministry, was mandated to
inquire into the circumstances leading to the demolition of the Babri
Mosque.
During the extended proceedings, the Commission recorded the
statements of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L K Advani,
Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalyan Singh. (ANI)
...and I am Sid Harth
Sid Harth
in the Babri mosque demolition fully cooperated with the Liberhan
Commission, party president Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said the report
has been submitted after a long delay.
“It would have been good if such a long time had not been taken. It
took 17 years for the commission to submit its report,” Singh told
reporters.
“There should not have been such a long delay in such a sensitive
matter. This (not delaying) is in the country’s interest,” he added.
The BJP president said that the leaders from his party who are accused
in the demolition of the disputed structure “cooperated fully” with
the commission.
Singh said he could comment on the issue only after seeing the report.
“I am aware that the report has been handed to the Prime Minister. I
have no information about the details of the report…. Once the details
come out, I will be in a position to say something,” he said.
Singh refused to comment on the timing of the report. “Seventeen years
is a long time. A lot of water has flown in the Ganga since then,” he
said.
BJP veterans L K Advani, M M Joshi and former party leader Uma Bharti
are accused in the Babri mosque demolition.
Sid Harth
the Liberhan Commission probing the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya on Tuesday submitted its report to Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh.
The Commission, which had got 48 extensions, submitted the report to
the Prime Minister by Retd Justice M S Liberhan in presence of Home
Minister P Chidambaram.
The contents of the report were not immediately known.
Set up within ten days of the demolition of the historic mosque on
December six, 1992, which triggered widespread communal violence
leading to heavy loss of lives, the panel has become the country’s
longest serving Commission of Enquiry.
The Commission, mandated to inquire into the circumstances leading to
the demolition of the Babri mosque was to submit its report by March
16, 1993 but sought repeated extensions to complete its probe.
The last three-month extension was given in March this year.
The probe panel was one of the costliest Commissions having spent
nearly Rs eight crore. The bulk of the amount was spent on the
salaries and perks of the supporting staff. During the extended
proceedings spread over 400 sittings, the Commission recorded the
statements of senior BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and
then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh.
The panel had completed hearing the last witness in 2005.
Sid Harth
30 Jun 2009, 1530 hrs IST
Liberhan Commission report could prove crucial for LK Advani and other
implicated top BJP leaders. Party officials says Advani is not to
blame. The BJP has reacted to the report defending its senior Party
leader LK Advani.
BJP President Rajnath Singh slammed the commission saying that though
he did not have the records of the report to comment on the findings17
years was far to long a period to prepare the report.
During the extended proceedings spread over 400 sittings, the
Commission recorded the statements of senior BJP leaders L K Advani,
Murli Manohar Joshi and the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh
Kalyan Singh.
Why is Liberhan commission report important?
Firstly the report could shed light on role of top BJP leaders in the
Babri demolition. It could also shed light on the fringe organisations
linked to BJP, RSS. It could also prove decisive in shaping BJP's
political landscape and it could also be used as a political tool
depending on the findings.
Sid Harth
Demonstrators tore the mosque down using hammers and their bare
hands
A report on the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque, which
sparked nationwide communal riots, has been submitted to the Indian
government.
The Liberhan commission was set up to investigate the events that led
to a Hindu mob tearing down the disputed mosque in the town of
Ayodhya.
The commission has taken 17 years to complete its investigation, which
cost more than 65m rupees ($1.3m).
The contents of the report have not yet been made public.
The site of the 16th Century Babri Masjid mosque in the northern
Indian town of Ayodhya had been a focus for Hindu-Muslim hostility for
decades.
On 6 December 1992 a mob of Hindu militants tore down the mosque,
sparking nationwide communal riots. The rioters claimed the site used
to be a temple marking the birthplace of a popular Hindu god.
The BBC's Rahul Tandon in Delhi says that the destruction of the
mosque was one of the most controversial moments in Indian history and
more than 2,000 people died in violence between Hindus and Muslims
following its demolition.
The Liberhan commission was set up within days of the incident. It has
held over 4,000 sittings and the last witness was interviewed in
2005.
With 48 extensions to its mandate, it has become India's longest-
serving inquiry.
Senior figures from the main Indian opposition party the BJP -
including the former deputy Prime Minister LK Advani appeared before
it.
Justice Liberhan has blamed "the uncooperative attitude of some
people" for the delay in the report.
Our correspondent says that the commission's findings will have
important political implications, particularly for the BJP who were in
Government in Uttar Pradesh when the mosque was demolished.
The report is likely to be presented to parliament at a later stage.
Sid Harth
To mark this, leading BBC correspondents look back on the major world
events they had covered in recent decades.
Mark Tully recalls the day Hindu fanatics pulled down a historic
mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya.
All of us journalists, if we are honest, have to admit that we get it
wrong sometimes. And I got it wrong that morning 10 years ago when
perhaps as many as 150,000 members of the RSS, an organisation
dedicated to the promotion of Hindu nationalism, had gathered in the
north Indian town of Ayodhya.
They intended to start the construction of a temple on the site they
believed was the birthplace of the God Rama.
The RSS had given a commitment not to touch the mosque and to restrict
construction to a religious ceremony symbolising the laying of the
first bricks.
Lal Krishan Advani, now the deputy prime minister, but then in the
opposition and the leader of the campaign to pull down the mosque and
build a temple had given a commitment to the prime minister that there
would be no disturbances.
An army of civilian and paramilitary police had been sent to Ayodhya
and the prime minister's security advisers had told him he could
assure the Supreme Court the mosque was safe.
Ceremony
The RSS prided itself on its reputation for discipline and that
reputation was on the line. So I was far from certain that discipline
would crack and said as much on the air.
All too soon it became clear that the ceremony would not be peaceful.
Before it started I took up a position on the roof of a building
overlooking the mosque, a building with a telephone so that I could
report back to London.
The police, who had strict instructions not to open fire, were
swamped by wave after wave of slogan-shouting Hindus
The satellite telephone was still a rarity. I was watching the
elaborate Hindu ceremonies wondering whether the word pictures I would
paint on radio would come anywhere near the graphic television
coverage, when I saw the barriers below collapse and young men wearing
yellow headbands charge into the space where the ceremony was to be
held.
Television crews were their target. They attacked them with staves,
knocked them down, and trampled on their equipment. This seemed to be
the signal for a mass assault on the mosque.
The police, who had strict instructions not to open fire, were swamped
by wave after wave of slogan-shouting Hindus surging towards the
mosque.
Locked up
In almost no time at all, I saw two young men scramble on top of a
dome and start to dismantle it.
That was the last I saw of the Ayodhya mosque. The crowds had torn
down the phone lines so I had to rush to the nearby town of Faizabad
to file my report.
by the time I was released, it was almost dark and the mosque had
been razed to the ground
When I returned to Ayodhya groups of jubilant RSS supporters chanting
obscene slogans against Muslims were parading through the narrow
lanes.
As I got out of the car, I was surrounded by an angry crowd who locked
me up in one of the many temples that already existed in Ayodhya.
And by the time I was released, it was almost dark and the mosque had
been razed to the ground.
During my years in India I have reported many stories that have
distressed me. I arrived in Bhopal before all the bodies of those
killed by the poison gas had been removed from their shacks in the
slums in front of the Union Carbide plant.
Harmony
This was a man-made disaster which need never have happened and, as
usual, the poorest of the poor were the victims.
I was in Pakistan during the trial and execution of the former Prime
Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and sources inside the jail had told me
about his courage throughout that ordeal.
It should be an outstanding example of religious pluralism I was in
close contact with one of the judges and so I knew that his execution
was a travesty of justice.
Rajiv Gandhi greeted me warmly when he cast his vote, hours before he
was assassinated.
Earlier in that election campaign he had spoken to me about the
mistakes he had made during his first term of office and asked me to
accept that he would be able to push through his plans for modernising
India if he won this time.
I witnessed those and many other tragedies often involving people
whose names will not be recorded in history, but, asked to recollect
one incident I reported for the BBC, I've chosen Ayodhya because it
was a denial of something which I regard as quintessentially Indian.
The culture of India is by its very nature accommodating, and for
centuries it has allowed all the great religions of the world to make
their homes here.
Hindus traditionally accept there are many ways to god and, as one
20th Century Western scholar has put it, "for the dogmatic certainty
that has racked the religions of semitic origin Hindus feel nothing
but shocked incomprehension."
So India with its Hindu majority should be the last place to find
religious fanaticism. It should be an outstanding example of religious
pluralism in a world where people of different faiths still so often
find it difficult to live with each other.
Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Sid Harth
The Congress on Tuesday thanked Justice (retd) MS Liberhan for his
probe report on the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition while the opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticised the commission for taking 17
years to submit the report.
The Liberhan Commission submitted its report to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh earlier in the day in the presence of Home Minister
P.Chidambaram. The contents of the report were not yet known.
"We must thank Justice Liberhan for the voluminous work that he has
done," said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.
BJP president Rajnath Singh refused to comment on the report but said:
"It would have been better if the commission would not have taken 17
years on such a sensitive issue".
"I don't know the contents of the report, so I cannot comment," Singh
said.
Senior BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi refused to comment.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) also reserved its
comment. "Without knowing the contents, I cannot say anything," CPI-M
central secretariat member Mohammad Salim told IANS.
The Liberhan Commission got 48 extensions after it was set up within
10 days of the demolition of the 16th century mosque in Ayodhya on Dec
6, 1992, by Hindu groups. The demolition triggered widespread communal
riots in the country and led to the loss of many lives.
The panel to investigate what led to the demolition of the Babri
mosque was to submit its report by March 16, 1993. But it sought
repeated extensions to complete its investigation. The last three-
month extension was given in March this year.
The commission has recorded the statements of senior Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leaders LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, then chief
minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh and now Bharati Jan Shakti
party chief Uma Bharati.
Sid Harth
Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, June 30: The Liberhan Commission on Tuesday submitted its
report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, bringing to an end 17 years
of investigation into the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Related Stories`Excessive protests` by BJP shows guilty mind: CongRetd
Justice M S Liberhan, who headed the Commission that got 48
extensions, submitted the report to the Prime Minister in the presence
of Home Minister P Chidambaram.
The contents of the report were not immediately known.
Justice Liberhan, while speaking to reporters, said he would comment
on the findings only after the report was tabled in the Parliament. He
added that the submission of the report took so many years because of
the delay caused in procuring witnesses.
Political reactions
Commenting on the development, BJP president Rajnath Singh said it
would have been good if the report was submitted earlier as the matter
was sensitive. He added that the BJP co-operated fully into the
probe.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari refused comment on the report,
saying its contents were yet to be made public.
Firebrand Hindutva leader Uma Bharti, who has parted ways with the
BJP, said that she has no apologies to offer for the events of
December 6, 1992.
Bharti, who is among the accused in the demolition of the 16th century
mosque, instead lashed out at the Congress-led UPA government for
playing politics and termed the move as an attempt to consolidate the
Muslim vote bank.
She further reaffirmed her support to the Ram Temple cause, saying she
was ready to be hanged for it.
Bharti also defended BJP leader LK Advani, another co-accused in the
case, saying that the former deputy PM was not happy over the
episode.
Senior BJP leader Vinay Katiyar meanwhile dismissed the report, saying
the report had no standing anymore as the panel took 17 years to
submit the findings against the stipulated time of four months.
RSS ideologue Govindacharya said that he was relaxed that the report
was finally out. He, however, refused to comment saying it was
premature to talk about the content of the report.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati said she would wait and watch
whether the Centre takes any action against those held responsible for
the demilition in the report.
"Hopefully, the Commission will also point out the culprits from not
only the BJP, but also the Congress party," she added.
Mayawati demanded that the report be made public and rued the fact
that it had taken so long for its submission.
Set up within 10 days of the demolition of the historic mosque on
December 6, 1992, which triggered widespread communal violence leading
to heavy loss of lives, the panel has become the country's longest
serving Commission of Enquiry.
The Commission, mandated to inquire into the circumstances leading to
the demolition of the Babri mosque, was to submit its report by March
16, 1993 but sought repeated extensions to complete its probe.
Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted: Tuesday , Jun 30, 2009 at 1752 hrs IST
Congress says govt will act on Liberhan report.Congress on Tuesday
said "excessive protests" by BJP even before contents of the Liberhan
Commission report are out show a "guilty mind". "Excessive protests by
the BJP in advance reflects a guilty mind," party spokesperson
Abhishek Singhvi said reacting to BJP's statements after the Liberhan
Commission probing the Babri mosque demolition in 1992 submitted its
report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
Senior party leader and AICC in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Digivjay
Singh said that there was a conspiracy to bring down the Babari mosque
and the entire world has seen who all were involved. "Government will
place the report before the people. A conspiracy was hatched... the
entire world has seen on television that BJP leaders were
involved...What is there to prove," Singh said and took names of BJP
leaders Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Murli Manohar Joshi and Lal Krishna
Advani and Kalyan Singh as those accused in the case. Singh alleged
that the entire emotion (leading to the demolition of the mosque) was
whipped up by Advani's Rathyatra. Singh said that the then UP Chief
Minister Kalyan Singh has already got punishment from the Supreme
Court and he had also apologised for it. "Advani ji claims that he was
shedding tears when the mosque was demolished but the BJP leaders say
that it is a matter of pride for them. This is double-faced character
of BJP," Singh added.
bademiyansubhanallah
bademiyansubhanallah
Advani, Uma, MM Joshi, Vinay Katiyar involved'
30 Jun 2009, 1312 hrs IST
Senior Congress Leader Digvijay Singh on Tuesday (June 30) hit out at
a host of senior BJP leaders like LK Advani and Uma Bharti accusing
them of being involved in the Babri Masjid demolition and rejoicing
there after. Singh also said that the BJP has been a champion of
double speak.
Speaking to reporters Digvijay Singh said, "Every one in the country
saw it during the Ram Rath yatra by Advani. Advani, MM Joshi, Uma,
Ashok Singhal, Vinay Katiyar were involved. BJP has been the champion
of double speak as Advani said that it is the saddest moment. They
were rejoicing when the Babri demolition took place. BJP has been the
champion of double speak as Advani said that it is the saddest
moment."
He added, "Liberhan should come out and say from where the pressures
came from."
bademiyansubhanallah
Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, June 30: Unruffled by the submission of Liberhan Commission
report on the Babri demolition, firebrand Hindutva leader Uma Bharti
on Monday said that she has no apologies for the events of December 6,
1992.
Bharti, who is among the accused in the demolition of the 16th
century mosque, lashed out at the Congress-led UPA government for
playing politics and termed the move as an attempt to consolidate the
Muslim vote bank.
Speaking to a private news channel, She reaffirmed her support for the
Ram Temple cause, Bharti said, "I wanted the old structure to be
destroyed but not in that way. But it’s okay,” and added that she is
ready to be hanged for the temple cause. She, however, clarified that
"none of us had planned to demolish the structure". She also defended
Advani, another co-accused, saying that the former deputy PM was not
happy over the episode.
On the present situation, Bharti said that the scenario has changed
and Kalyan Singh, who was the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister when the
incident happened, has apologised.
The probe panel was one of the costliest Commissions having spent
nearly Rs eight crore. The bulk of the amount was spent on the
salaries and perks of the supporting staff. During the extended
proceedings spread over 400 sittings, the Commission recorded the
statements of senior BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and
then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh.
Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Vinay Katiyar dismissed the report saying
that the report has no standing anymore as the panel took 17 years to
submit the report against the stipulated time of four months.
RSS ideologue Govindacharya said that he was relaxed that the report
is finally out . He, however, refused to comment saying that it is
premature to talk about the content of the report.
...and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Ayodhya report out, BJP faces moment of truth
CNN-IBN
Published on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 15:02, Updated on Tue, Jun 30, 2009
at 18:08 in Politics section
RETURN TO DECEMBER 16: BJP leader L K Advani has repeatedly called
mosque demolition saddest event of his life.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could be forced to again
debate Hindutva and the Ram Temple movement after the Liberhan
Commission probing the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid submitted
its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
“I definitely wanted the Ram temple to come up (in Ayodhya) and I
definitely wanted that building to come down but not in that manner.
But I am not apologetic and I am not going to apologise,” said
politician Uma Bharati, who was the BJP when the mosque was demolished
on December 6, 1992 by Hindu groups.
Bharati, who left the BJP to form the Bharati Jan Shakti, may not be
apologetic but for the BJP the report could be embarrassing. The
commission has examined the role of senior BJP leaders Murli Manohar
Joshi and L K Advani in the demolition of the mosque.
Advani was the architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement but was not
considered as a conspirator during the commission’s probe.
The commission has also probed Bharti, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader
(VHP) Ashok Singhal, who is accused of inciting people to demolish the
mosque, and Kalyan Singh, who was the BJP Chief Minister of UP in
1992.
The commission is also likely to comment on who incited kar sevaks on
December 6, whether Kalyan Singh fulfilled his duties as Chief
Minister and did the Central government fail to protect the mosque.
Officially, the BJP welcomed the report. Party leader Vinay Katiyar
said he suspected the Congress had influenced the report.
BJP president Rajnath Singh said his party leaders had cooperated with
the commission during its probe. I am aware that the report has been
handed to the Prime Minister. I have no information about the details
of the report. Once the details come out, I will be in a position to
say something," he said.
“Seventeen years is a long time. A lot of water has flown in the Ganga
since then," he said.
The demolition of the mosque triggered widespread communal riots in
the country and led to the loss of many lives.
The panel to investigate what led to the demolition of the Babri
mosque was to submit its report by March 16, 1993. But it sought
repeated extensions to complete its investigation. The last three-
month extension was given in March this year.
Justice (retd.) M S Liberhan on Tuesday refused to divulge the
contents of his report. “I cannot talk about the report at all. It is
for the media to judge objectively, collect their facts, draw
inferences and attribute,” Liberhan told CNN-IBN.
Communist Party of India leader D Raja also regretted the delay in the
report. "Its sad that the commission took so much time. The government
should now table the report in parliament as soon as possible and tell
the people of this country what actions they plan to initiate," he
said.
bademiyansubhanallah
(Source: IANS)
Published: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 at 22:34 IST
F Prev Next LChandigarh: The Liberhan Commission report on the Babri
Masjid demolition has voluminous and exhaustive testimonies of former
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh and senior Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, according to
a lawyer associated with the panel.
The testimony of Kalyan Singh runs into over 400 pages while those of
Advani and Joshi run into nearly 200 pages each, Anupam Gupta, a
senior lawyer who was associated with the commission as its counsel,
said here Tuesday.
The 16th century mosque was demolished Dec 6, 1992 by radical Hindu
groups that believed it was built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. At
the time, Kalyan Singh was heading a BJP government in Uttar Pradesh
and the Congress' P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister.
Kalyan Singh's testimony was recorded over seven months between
December 2003 and June 2004.
Gupta, who cross-examined top leaders of the BJP and other parties as
counsel of the commission between 1999 and 2005, later disassociated
himself from it owing to differences with Justice M.S. Liberhan, a
former chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh high court.
"I am not privy to the contents of the final report. I can only
comment after the report is made public. I may write a book on this
issue depending on what the findings are," Gupta told IANS.
The Liberhan commission, constituted just 10 days after the
demolition, took nearly 17 years to give its final report on the
controversy. It submitted its voluminous report to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh Tuesday.
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Kalyan Singh, Advani testimonies longest in Liberhan report: lawyer
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The Liberhan Commission report on the Babri Masjid demolition has
voluminous and exhaustive testimonies of former Uttar Pradesh chief
minister Kalyan Singh and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders
L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, according to a lawyer associated
with the panel.
The testimony of Kalyan Singh runs into over 400 pages while those of
Advani and Joshi run into nearly 200 pages each, Anupam Gupta, a
senior lawyer who was associated with the commission as its counsel,
said here Tuesday.
The 16th century mosque was demolished Dec 6, 1992 by radical Hindu
groups that believed it was built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. At
the time, Kalyan Singh was heading a BJP government in Uttar Pradesh
and the Congress’ P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister.
Kalyan Singh’s testimony was recorded over seven months between
December 2003 and June 2004.
Gupta, who cross-examined top leaders of the BJP and other parties as
counsel of the commission between 1999 and 2005, later disassociated
himself from it owing to differences with Justice M.S. Liberhan, a
former chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh high court.
“I am not privy to the contents of the final report. I can only
comment after the report is made public. I may write a book on this
issue depending on what the findings are,” Gupta told IANS.
The Liberhan commission, constituted just 10 days after the
demolition, took nearly 17 years to give its final report on the
controversy. It submitted its voluminous report to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh Tuesday.
...and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
New Delhi, July 1 (ANI): Senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi has
questioned the timing of the Liberhan Commission report on the Babri
Masjid demolition.
“I don”t want to comment as the contents of the report are not known
yet, but one thing is for certain the timing of placing the report is
intriguing,” Joshi said. The Commission recorded the statements of L K
Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalyan Singh during the extended
proceedings.
The one man Commission headed by Justice M S Liberhan Liberhan,
submitted its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the presence
of Home Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday.
Established on December 16, 1992, ten days after the demolition of
historical mosque, the panel headed by retired Justice M S Liberhan,
got 48 extensions.
The probe panel, which took almost 17 years, has become one of the
longest and costliest commissions with over Rs.7.5 crore having been
already spent during this period.
The Commission was constituted by the Home Ministry and was mandated
to inquire into the circumstances leading to the demolition of the
Babri Mosque. (ANI)
bademiyansubhanallah
mailPrintCommentFeedbackTextPublished on Tue 30th Jun 2009
11:25:12Updated On Tue 30th Jun 2009 23:41:41 New Delhi, June 30: The
Liberhan Commission that probed the demolition of Babri Masjid has
indicted senior BJP leaders including L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi
and Uma Bharti and also blamed former premier P V Narasimha Rao for
not doing enough to stop it, according to CNN-IBN TV channel tonight.
The Channel which claimed to have access to the contents of the report
submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier in the day said the
Commission also criticised the Rath Yatra and the VHP leadership.
The report, according to the Channel, held firebrand saffron leader
Uma Bharti guilty of encouraging demolition and Murli Manohar Joshi, a
former Union minister, of supporting Ram Janambhoomi.
The Commission blamed Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister at the
time of the demolition on December 6, 1991, for not doing enough to
stop the demolition, the Channel said.
Bajrang Dal leader Vinay Katiyar has also been blamed for the
demolition, it said.
bademiyansubhanallah
1 Jul 2009, 0322 hrs IST, TNN
NEW DELHI: The Liberhan report criticises L K Advani for his Rath
Yatra and not keeping the saffron combine in control. Faizabad
district officials
have also been severely indicted for their role during the
demolition.
Given the string of extensions to the commission, submission of the
report came as a surprise. Naturally so, considering that half of
India's T-20 squad was in primary school when Justice Liberhan was
tasked with the probe.
Then again, Justice Liberhan has been consistently maintaining that he
will take longer. Not surprisingly, Justice Liberhan had to handle a
barrage of questions on the delay. The retired chief justice of Madras
and Andhra high courts, however, defended himself, pointing to the
stalling and obstructionist manoeuvres used to derail the probe. "I
did not receive cooperation from few people," he said.
Though he did not name names, the finding in the report about the
delaying tactics of Kalyan and others can be taken to suggest that the
reference could be to leaders of BJP and Sangh Parivar.
Repeated efforts to draw him out on the issue did not succeed. "I do
not want to comment," he said, though he remarked that he was feeling
"relieved".
Under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, government has six months to
share the findings of Justice Liberhan along with the action taken
report (ATR) with Parliament. However, the tabling of the report in
the two Houses will depend on how swiftly the government wants to act
on the recommendations. In case conspiracy charge is to be probed
further, government can ask CBI, already seized with the criminal case
about demolition, to probe further.
With strong likelihood of Congress trying to derive mileage from the
report, chances of the voluminous document being tabled in the coming
session of Parliament are high. Elections in Maharashtra, due in
September-October, may serve as another incentive for early tabling.
bademiyansubhanallah
A decade and a half late, but the judicial commission inquiry into the
demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992 will still have political
consequences...
1 July 2009
The Hindu
Regardless of contents, Liberhan report is bad news for BJP news
analysis
But Congress may shrink from taking firm action
Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Sixteen years on from the Sangh parivar’s single biggest
act of infamy, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leaders are likely
to discover there is no political statute of limitations for the
crimes of conspiracy, incitement, rioting and vandalism that were
committed in the name of Hindutva when the Babri Masjid was demolished
on December 6, 1992.
Having prospered politically for more than a decade from the resulting
polarisation, the BJP’s ‘rath’ eventually ran out of steam in 2004.
The catalyst was perhaps the Gujarat killings of 2002 or the
neoliberal economic policies to which the illiberal politics of
Hindutva were wedded. But today, after its second consecutive defeat
in a general election, the BJP finds itself increasingly aware of the
liability that communalism has become.
Officially, the party claims the demolition was the result of
spontaneous action by the mob which it had mobilised in Ayodhya that
fateful day. BJP leader L.K. Advani, whose alleged role in the
conspiracy is the subject of a CBI prosecution, famously described the
event as the “saddest day” of his life. But the fact is that he and
his colleagues had hitched their political fortunes to the violence
and intolerance that was the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. And today, they
have to accept political responsibility for the consequences of that
movement, even if the Indian judicial system eventually proves
incapable of assigning criminal liability.
This is where the report of the Liberhan Commission delivers the
cruellest blow: at a time when the BJP is looking for ways to
repackage itself as an inclusive party, its role in the destruction of
the 16th century monument is a reminder of its intolerant agenda. “The
subject matter of the report is 90 per cent about BJP,” a senior
Congress leader told The Hindu. He acknowledged that the report might
also criticise the role of Narasimha Rao, who was Prime Minister at
the time, and his Congress-run Central government for its inaction.
“But the entire episode is one which is of, for and by the BJP.”
Second, the manner in which the report names and assigns guilt is
likely to accentuate the already acute internal fissures within the
party. Indeed, Liberhan may become an ‘internal brahmastra’ for Mr.
Advani regardless of the role the report says he played in the
demolition. Worse, by bringing Ayodhya back into the news, the report
will also encourage those within the Sangh parivar who feel the Ram
temple issue should remain at the core of their political agenda.
Instead of jettisoning the Hindutva agenda, a remedy that some inside
the party now say the 2009 election results indicate, the BJP might
then find itself thrust into an even tighter embrace with
sectarianism.
For the Congress, the party is likely to want to use the report’s
recommendations to weaken the BJP and its leadership politically
without allowing them to claim the mantle of martyrdom. But after 17
years, those citizens who still feel aggrieved at the criminal
destruction of the mosque are also entitled to expect that justice
will be done and that all politicians involved in the crime are
prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
However, the track record of the Congress does not encourage optimism.
Most of the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry
into the 1992-93 Bombay riots, for example, remain unimplemented a
decade after that report was submitted. And the more fundamental
reforms that are needed to protect the citizenry from official acts of
omission and commission during riots are not even on the Manmohan
Singh government’s radar screen.
bademiyansubhanallah
Neeraj Chauhan
New Delhi:
If investigations in the Babri Masjid demolition case took nearly 17
years to complete, the process of recording statements of the
witnesses isn’t fast either. One-and-half years since the first
witness, Hanuman Prasad, deposed before a Rae Bareli court on December
5, 2007, statements of only five others have been recorded.
CBI counsel say they have to call some 40 witnesses in the main case,
FIR number 198/92, registered at Ram Janmabhoomi police station
against eight persons including BJP leaders L K Advani and Murli
Manohar Joshi and Bharatiya Janshakti Party chief Uma Bharti, the then
BJP state chief Vinay Katiyar, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders Ashok
Singhal, V H Dalmia, Sadhvi Ritambara and Acharya Giriraj Kishore.
“The process is taking time because continuous hearings are not
happening,” said a CBI lawyer. “The case is at prosecution evidence
stage. The statements of five witnesses have been recorded in the
court while recording of sixth witness is in progress,” said a CBI
official.
bademiyansubhanallah
report
Submitted by mumtaz on 30 June 2009 - 11:07pm. India PoliticsIndian
Muslim
By TwoCircles.net Team
New Delhi: Muslims in India today (17 years after the demolition) are
not very candid regarding the Liberhan Commission report on Babri
Masjid demolition. The long time the commission took itself has
dampened their spirit and hope of justice. They are not hopeful of any
concrete government action on the report. “Though the report has
finally been submitted to the Prime Minister, it seems it would take
another 17 years to take any action against the culprits,” says a
journalist in Delhi.
Our reporters in Delhi, Mumbai and Kochi talked to Muslim leaders and
commoners to get their reaction on the Liberhan report.
Mumbai:
The Muslims of Mumbai, though angry at the 17-year delay in submitting
the Liberhan Commission report, have expectation that the report will
be providing them with justice.
‘The report will be a book of justice because what happened at the
time of demolition of Babri Masjid, lakhs of people were witness to
that,’ said Sayyid Athar Ali, the president of All India Ulama
Association adding that ‘We support the demand of Zafaryab Jilani that
the report be tabled in the parliament.’
There are some names including L K Advani, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti
about which the media reports have started indicating might be in the
list of the culprits.
‘Though there has been long delay, we welcome the report. We are yet
to get justice and (if got) then it is also a reality that justice
delayed is justice denied. However, the justice demands that all the
culprits should be arrested and tough punishment should be meted out
on them,’ said Aslam Ghazi, secretary of public relations of Jamaat-e-
Islami Maharashtra adding that no justice will be done until the Babri
Masjid is built again in Ayodhya.
The unexpected and tremendous victory of UPA in the recently concluded
Lok Sabha elections has created a favorable atmosphere for Congress.
The president of Mumbai Aman Committee Farid Shaikh opined that due to
the pressure from the Hindu culprits the report was delayed. ‘Now,
when even some secular Hindus have been in the favor of Congress, the
report has been presented.’
Maulana Mustaqeem Ahsan Azmi, the president of Jamiat-e-Ulama
Maharashtra calling the delay a ‘politics’ said that the report is
only a lollypop to reduce the concerns of Muslims. He added that
seeing the attitude of the government in other Muslim related issues
‘we do not hope anything good for the community.’
Delhi:
Dr Malik Rashid Faisal, Senior Editor, The Sunday Indian, News Weekly
(Urdu):
“The dilly dallying of liberahan Commission report till 17 long years
clearly indicates the apathy of the concerned authorities towards a
serious issue of Indian secularism because the demolition of Babri
mosque has put a big question mark on religious tolerance in the
country. Of course, as long as the names of big fishes are involved in
any case, it remains the same attitude of any government. About 8
crores have been spent on this commission report and that is totally
unjustified. Though the report has finally been submitted to the Prime
Minister, it seems it would take another 17 years to take any action
against the culprits. The witnesses to the case were not cooperative
to the commission as according to Justice Liberahan, so it appears
that the report is not going to do justice. The whole world is witness
to the incident of the demolition and everyone knows that Leaders like
L.K.Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, and Sadhvi Rithambara
have played with the communal sentiments of Hindus.”
Kerala:
Kerala Muslims don’t have a lot of expectations in the Liberhan
Commission Report which they think will add to the existing list of
commission reports gone futile. The delay of 17 valuable years since
the setting up of this commission is not something to be forgiven.
“Many enquiry commissions have come and gone without any measures
taken as per the findings. The Liberhan Commission report has come 17
years late. We have lost faith in these commissions. If we have to
think otherwise, we should get at least one example which has a good
result,” said Adv. KM Ashraf.
Several commissions and committees have brought out their reports,
majority of which, now rest in waste baskets. This has formed up the
opinion of the people that such enquiry commissions are a mere eye-
wash.
According to Mr. Abdul Ali, retired engineer, the report won’t point
out any hard facts and convict any noted leader. “Whatever be the
case, it will surely be a headache for the government,” he said.
Whether the Commission points towards the guilty or tries to save the
big names, the UPA Government will have to act its part very clearly.
Mr. Aboobaker, retired teacher hopes that the government will do the
necessary to punish the guilty.
Ms. Beefathima, teacher, feels that such a long delay, in a matter
that deeply wounded Muslims, is unforgivable in a secular country like
India.
The general feeling is that this report too will be like the other
reports, finding its place in debates and discussions, while never
being implemented.
Lucknow:
Omar Peerzada, Jt. Secretary, AMUOBA Lucknow:
It is voluminous so there is likelyhood of government taking time to
get into public domain. It is mandatory that report should be put in
this session of Parliament. Where the report will go from here it's
BIG Question. I think it is litmus test for the ruling party and can
be used as a political tool depending upon the finding.
Though it too late but we should collectively thank Justice Liberhan
for this probe and submission of Report. We have faith in this
Government that it will make the best of the effort to punish the
culprits who have mass raped the Indian Constitution on 6th
december'92.
I request all like minded people of India should start a campaign like
e-mails, letters, sms , articles to impress upon the government so
that this commission report should not be thrown in the
dustbin....like it has been with past reports. its our Collective Duty
to come forward and join hands to make Government accountable to take
action on its finding , and book the culprits. I am sure rule of law
will prevail.
(Inputs from Abdul Hameed in Mumbai and Najiya O. in Kochi)
bademiyansubhanallah
Govt increases petrol prices by Rs 4 per litre and diesel by Rs 2 per
litre. The increased prices will come into effect from midnight
tonight| No hike in kerosene and LPG prices
Were netas deposing or grandstanding?
1 Jul 2009, 0246 hrs IST, Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN
Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text:
NEW DELHI: Justice M S Liberhan's statement on Tuesday that his
voluminous report to the government on circumstances leading to the
demolition of
Babri Masjid in 1992 details the deposition of all important political
leaders may not augur well for many leaders still in the limelight.
For, star politicians like former prime ministers V P Singh and P V
Narasimha Rao and L K Advani had not only used the commission as a
platform to advance their political belief but also placed liability
on other political leaders while deposing on the failure of state
machinery to prevent the incident.
It was in February 2002, when the BJP-led NDA was in power and Rao had
just fallen out of favour within the Congress that the former PM
deposed in a scholarly way expected of a person fluent in many
languages and fond of literature.
Cornered by commission's counsel Anupam Gupta about the then popular
perception that his inaction in taking effective measures to douse the
simmering situation led to the incident, Rao said that in November
1992, when he had gone abroad, he had fully authorised his senior
Cabinet colleagues -- home minister S B Chavan, HRD minister Arjun
Singh and defence minister Sharad Pawar -- "to fashion an appropriate
resolution of the problem".
On why his government dithered in dismissing Kalyan Singh government,
which was done immediately after the demolition of the mosque on
December 6, 1992, Rao had stated that invocation of Article 356 was
contingent to the satisfaction of the President and then President
Shankar Dayal Sharma, himself a constitutional expert, would not have
agreed to it prior to the demolition.
V P Singh, who had pulled out the Mandal Commission report to give
quota to OBCs in government jobs, had said that Advani's rath yatra
from Somnath to Ayodhya could have been a political counter-move by
BJP to consolidate Hindu votes immediately after reservation to other
backward classes had its effect on society.
"To my mind, it was the implementation of Mandal report that led to
the rath yatra. It was at that point the BJP abandoned its stand that
the Ayodhya issue was not on their agenda and it was to counter Mandal
that they took Ayodhya on their agenda," Singh deposed before the
commission.
As for Advani, he started his deposition by saying that the day the
demolition happened was "one of the saddest days" in his life.
However, he followed it up by declaring his staunch support to what he
called "Ram movement". He said, "We have been unfair to ourselves by
terming the mosque as the structure where Lord Rama's idols were being
worshipped under a court's direction. By doing so, we have earned a
bad name for the country."
BJP leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and Vinay Katiyar supported Advani and
said that what existed in Ayodhya was a temple. Katiyar said, "Just
because some people say that Jammu and Kashmir is disputed territory,
does it become disputed?"
Former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh was the last to depose before
the commission in 2005 after evading its summons for a long time.
Apart from Uma Bharti, top bureaucrats and police officials posted in
UP in 1992 were also summoned by the commission, which recorded their
statements.
bademiyansubhanallah
BJP leaders displeased with Liberahan in their own ways
The Liberhan Report
Retired Justice Liberhan submitted a four- volume report to the Prime
Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh based on the 17 years of investigation
which encompasses 48 extensions, 399 hearings inclusive of 100
witnesses on June 30, 2009,
Uma Bharti is proud to own the responsibility for the destruction
According to Uma Bharti the Liberahan report could have been submitted
anywhere during the rule of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as all it required
was a finishing touch, perhaps it was intentionally released now to
grab the opportunity to gain Muslim vote, defame BJP and hurt their
sentiments. She also added that it was a play with the hidden agenda
of shifting the Muslim votes from Mayavathi, Mulayam Singh Yadav and
people like Lalu. She explained that the situation was out of control
and despite their efforts to stop them through repeated orders through
mike they became dubious of the situation. Followed by the
explanation, Uma Bharti who was generous enough to destroy Babri
Masjid was also generous to apologise and own the responsibility for
her followers who perpetrated the destruction.
To know more, watch this.
The lose lose theory where Murli Manohar Joshi is attempting Advani to
get caught
BJP veterans, LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Kalyan
Singh have been chargesheeted with criminal records. The senior
leaders of BJP, LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi are in cold
shoulders with each other since the report was submitted as Joshi
feels he is cornered while Advani is let off according to the report.
To know more, watch this.
Rajnath Singh displayed displeasure
Rajnath Singh expressed displeasure on the delay of submission of
report despite the full co-operation rendered by the BJP leaders
whoever were alleged. In spite of the fact that the pressing issue was
considered a sensitive matter and had country's interest the report
was delayed.
A documentary on the "demolition of Babri Masjib"
Posted by ramyasadasivam at 1:49 AM |
bademiyansubhanallah
Own up responsibility, Uma Bharti tells BJP
2 Jul 2009, 0438 hrs IST, Ramu Bhagwat, TNN
Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text:
NAGPUR: Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party leader Uma Bharti on Wednesday said
the Bharatiya Janata Party should not shy away from legal action that
United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) government might take against them in the
wake of M S Liberhan Commission report. The commission, in its report
submitted Tuesday, has reportedly blamed Sangh Parivar leaders
including Uma Bharti, L K Advani, M M Joshi and then UP chief minister
Kalyan Singh for the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power twice at the Centre
riding on the Ram Mandir movement wave. So it should not disown the
movement and wriggle out of its responsibility for the Babri mosque
demolition. I was in the BJP then and was present at the site on the
fateful day. I am ready to face any consequence, even to go to jail,"
said Bharti. She was in the city to meet Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to discuss various current issues with him.
"My three-year-old party follows the RSS ideology. I came to meet
Sarsanghachalak Mohan Bhagwat to give a progress report," said
Bharti.
Significantly, she claimed she was addressing the media with due
approval of the RSS chief. Bharti announced that on Thursday, the
opening day of Parliament's budget session, she would be leading a
protest march to the Parliament over the women's reservation bill.
Elaborating her stance on Liberhan report, Bharti, however, dismissed
the conspiracy theory and said the RSS, BJP leaders present there had
no inkling of the sudden and unexpected' turn of events that led to
the Babri demolition.
"There was no conspiracy. Some 2.5 lakh people gathered there went out
of control when the P V Narasimha Rao government stopped them for
undertaking kar seva even at the shilanyas' site, some distance away
from the mosque. When army and paramilitary forces stationed just 6 km
away at Faizabad could not act, how could you expect a few BJP leaders
to do it? The Rao government was equally responsible. But since the
crowd was mobilised by the BJP, the party cannot escape the rap,"
Bharti remarked.
Bharti said women's quota in Parliament should be raised to 50%. Half
of that should be reserved for Dalits and other backward class women.
She also supported L K Advani's suggestion that 50% reservation for
women should be made compulsory for every political party.
The BJP came to power twice at the Centre riding on the Ram Mandir
movement wave. So it should not disown the movement and wriggle out of
its responsibility for the Babri mosque demolition. I was in the BJP
then and was present at the site on the fateful day. I am ready to
face any consequence, even to go to jail.
bademiyansubhanallah
Anand Soondas Wednesday July 01, 2009
To be brutally honest, it is a sheer and blatant travesty of
"investigation" to take almost two decades to close what was little
more than an open and shut case. Leaders were seen inciting mobs to
tear down the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on a day that may have
permanently changed for the worse the psyche of large sections of
people in India - both in the minority and majority communities.
Come to think of it, BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders were caught on
tape, caught on camera and caught in the eyes of thousands of people
exhorting frenzied crowds to bludgeon and batter the masjid. Ek dhakka
aur do - give one push more - had been the battle cry for many in the
Parivar, each as obsessed as the foot soldiers they were leading not
just to destroy a place of worship but the very fabric of communal
harmony that clothed India.
This case did not need investigative prowess and intelligence
gathering acumen as much as it needed the courage of conviction, grand
principles of justice, an acute sense of what's wrong and right - on
the part of the governments, then and those that followed, and on the
part of those handed the enormous responsibility of pinning blame on
the clutch of people responsible for what must surely rank as one of
India's biggest blotches - along with the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and
the Godhra violence.
It's also startling and reeks of great indifference on the part of
respective governments that the Liberhan Commission wasn't given a
strict deadline to finish off a probe that always tottered and never
walked straight with the determination of direction. Or that MS
Liberhan, the former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, himself
wasn't changed when there was little to show for things even after a
decade. That the end has come after a staggering 17 years, 48
extensions, 400 sittings and Rs 9 crore of public money is a marvel on
its own. This can perhaps be tolerated only in India.
In his defence, Liberhan has said he got little cooperation from
people who mattered. Though he added he will not name them right away.
We may or never know who these people were, but don't bet on it. Under
the Commissions of Inquiry Act, the UPA government has six months to
share in Parliament Liberhan's findings and the action taken report.
But, as TOI reported today, "tabling of the report in the two Houses
will depend on how swiftly the government wants to act on the
recommendations".
If you ask me, the government will be in no hurry. Some players in the
sordid saga are already dead, others too infirm, yet others have been
completely marginalized during the time this report has seen the light
of day. Taking action, even if this government gathers the guts to do
it, will not mean the same anymore. Justice, like all things else, is
only relevant when the injured party is agonizing about it. I get the
feeling that the modern Muslim and the modern Hindu just wants to wash
his hands of the blot, use a sanitizer to let go of the stench and
move on. Good for the country. So, here's hoping a place of worship is
never attacked in India again, but in case there is such a tragedy,
let's hope the government works on a time frame to deliver its verdict
on the sully, if not justice.
bademiyansubhanallah
1 Jul 2009, 1604 hrs IST
The Liberhan Commission has split the BJP right in the middle with
major differences resurfacing between its senior leaders LK Advani and
Murli Manohar Joshi at loggerheads over the commission's findings.
Sources within the BJP have told TIMES NOW that Murli Manohar Joshi is
unhappy with the commision's findings and with the fact that LK Advani
has been let off lightly.
Sources have confirmed that Joshi has conveyed his unhappiness to the
senior leadership and is feeling vitimised by the findings of the
Liberhan Commission.
BJP veterans L K Advani and M M Joshi, along with former party leaders
Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh, are accused in the Babri mosque
demolition case. Some leaders in the party feel the government may try
to pin down BJP during the discussion in Parliament on the report.
"Congress may decide to go after us with a vengeance," said a senior
MP.
After 48 extensions and 399 hearings involving over 100 witnesses
spread in nearly 17
years, Justice M S Liberhan on June 30 submitted his report on the
demolition of Babri Masjid, an event for which saffron leaders
including L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti
have been chargesheeted in criminal cases.
Retired Justice Liberhan, who moved from Punjab and Haryana High Court
to Madras and Andhra Pradesh later, submitted his four-volume report
to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this morning which could be tabled in
Parliament that begins its budget session from Thursday.
bademiyansubhanallah
Babri demolition report sends RSS, BJP squirming
But is the saffron parivar ready to learn any lessons? Nope, if latest
response are any clue
Sach Kanwal Singh
NEW DELHI: After 17 long years, 48 shameless extensions and 399
hearings, and significantly after many a regime and many a turns in
the body polity of India, a Commission tasked with probing who and how
demolished the much revered Babri Moque in UP's heartland Ayodhya
hurting sentiments of the Muslim community and all sane people across
the world, has finally submitted its so called confidential report to
the Prime Minister.
In keeping with the way Indian politics and law machinery works, the
report leaked out in torrents, but one thing became clear. Justice
(retired) M S Liberhan, though blaming several senior leaders of the
BJP for the demolition of the Masjid on December 6, 1992, has not
really been able to pin down L K Advani as Guilty Number One and the
RSS as the organization that deserves immediate ban for its hate
agenda.
The four-volume report did hold then Congress prime minister P V
Narasimha Rao responsible for not doing enough to stop the demolition.
Rao is no more. Incidentally, Rao was the home minister when murderous
mobs led by Congress leaders like Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar
killed and burnt alive hundreds of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.
Shame Writ Large
Who can forget Advani's words? "Kar Sewaks are not going to Ayodhya to
sing bhajan kirtan." Clearly, Advani knew and guided them about what
they were to do. And who can turn his face away from what Kalyan Singh
asserted before the Liberhan Commission. He said the demolition of the
mosque was an act of God and he had no regrets, no repentance, no
sorrow and no grief. Uma Bharti, the quintessential child of the RSS,
was her candid ssself even on Tuesday: “Like a good commander, I am
ready to own responsibility for the demolition and I have no problem
even if I’m hanged on the issue.”
India is yet to even mull about probing the Indian Army attack on
Goden Temple of Sikhs, Sri Akal Takht and many other gurdwaras that
left thousands of innocents dead, the Akal Takht in rubble and the
Sikh psyche hurt beyond repair.
The Sikh community stood in solidarity with the Muslim minority on the
question of Babri Mosque demolition and has been demanding justice.
The Liberhan report blamed L K Advani for creating an environment that
led to the demolition of the mosque through his rath yatra in 1990 but
he was not held directly responsible.
The others reportedly named in the report were the BJP’s Murli Manohar
Joshi, Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar; VHP’s Ashok Singhal and former
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh. Hindu activists demolished
the 16th century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 as Advani and senior
BJP leaders looked on from a distance. Many of these leaders are being
tried in UP courts for alleged complicity.
Over 2,000 people died in the communal riots that followed. The 16th
century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed by a 150,000-strong mob
belonging allegedly to the right-wing Hindu revivalist organisation
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates in the presence of top
BJP leaders.
Even though the saffron parivar is being largely blamed in this case,
the Congress itslef has for long led a policy of alternating soft and
hard varieties of Hindutva. Even now, it may choose not to table the
report immediately in Parliament, but if accepted, the report will
lead to fresh cases against those indicted.
Advani’s discharge has been challenged in the Supreme Court. The case
against Kar sewaks (religious volunteers) who demolished the mosque is
pending in the special CBI court, Lucknow. The Liberhan commission was
appointed within 10 days with a brief to go into the sequence of
events leading up to the demolition. It was given six months to give a
report, but took 17 years.
1 July 2009
bademiyansubhanallah
Who can forget Advani's words? "Kar Sewaks are not going to Ayodhya to
sing bhajan kirtan." Clearly, Advani knew and guided them about what
they were to do. And who can turn his face away from what Kalyan Singh
asserted before the Liberhan Commission. He said the demolition of the
mosque was an act of God and he had no regrets, no repentance, no
sorrow and no grief. Uma Bharti, the quintessential child of the RSS,
was her candid ssself even on Tuesday: “Like a good commander, I am
ready to own responsibility for the demolition and I have no problem
even if I’m hanged on the issue.”
...and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Parties seize the opportunity
Javed M Ansari & Rajesh Sinha / DNAWednesday, July 1, 2009 1:04 IST
New Delhi: Like a bad coin, the politics over the demolition of the
Babri Masjid refuses to go away. Seventeen years after it was set up,
the Liberhan Commission report threatens to reinvent the wheel once
again. The BJP, which believes that the commission's report has
brought the templeissue back to centre stage, reiterated its
commitment to build the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, while the
Congressviewed it as an opportunity topin the BJP down, and also
consolidate its hold over the minorities.
Babri MasjidBoth parties also lost little time in scoring brownie
points. "The demolition was an assault on the unity and integrity of
India.All those responsible for it should be held accountable. There
should be no politics over such a grave matter," said AICC general
secretary Digvijay Singh.
BJP president Rajnath Singh slammed the commission saying that
although he did not have the records of the report to comment on the
findings, 17 years was too long a period to prepare a report. His
spokespersonRavi Shankar Prasad accused the Congressof conspiring
against the BJP.
Significantly, leader of the opposition, LK Advani was not available
for his comments, though he is learnt to have discussed the likely
fallout but of the report with Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj who
called on him. Former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh, one of the main
accused in the case, was also conspicuous by his silence.Though he was
present at his Copernicus Marg residence, Singh refused to interact or
answer calls from the media. His allies from the Samajwadi party,
followed suit. None ofits prominent leaders were availablefor comment
and its office wore a deserted look. Kalyan Singh was the CM of the
BJP government in Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was demolished
on 6th December,1992.
However, some of the other accused, such as firebrand hindutva leaders
Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar debunked the report outright.Uma Bharati,
who was with BJP and present in Ayodhya at the time of masjid
demolition, said, "I definitely wanted the Ram temple to come up (in
Ayodhya) and I definitely wanted that building to come down but not in
that manner. But I am not apologetic and I am not going to apologise.
I am ready to be hanged for it." She accused the Congress-led UPA of
trying to appease its "Muslim votebank".
Bharti also defended LK Advani, another co-accused in the case, saying
that the former deputy PM was not happy over the episode.Co-accused
Vinay Katiyar, meanwhile, dismissed the report, saying it had no
standing as the panel had taken 17 years to submit the findings.
The BJPalso refuted the chargethat the delay in the completion of the
commission's findings was on account of the attitude of its leaders.
Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "All prominent BJP
leaders summoned by the commission deposed before it. LK Advani who
was the deputy prime minister, appeared before the commission and was
examined and cross-examined for more than a week."
bademiyansubhanallah
bademiyansubhanallah
1992 was submitted on Tuesday, the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
unit is on a 'maun' wait and watch mode, even refusing utter a word on
the whole matter. Wide spread riots had erupted in Gujarat following
the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
Babri MasjidThe Liberhan Commission, which is inquiring into the
destruction of the Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid structure at Ayodhya on
December 6, 1992, submitted its report to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh, on Tuesday. Established on December 16, 1992, 10 days after the
demolition that triggered widespread communal violence, the panel
headed by retired Justice MS Liberhan was formed to look into its
causes. However, the contents of the report, which was submitted 17
years after its formation, were not immediately known.
As verbal duel rages in the national political arena over the issue,
the state BJP leaders have, however, sealed their lips. "We are not
going to comment over the issue as the only report has been given and
its content not known," was what IK Jadeja, spokerperson of state BJP
said, adding, "The issue will be decided from Delhi."
While Yamal Vyas, head of the BJP media wing also refused to comment
on it, Vijay Rupani, BJP Rajyasabha MP said, "He is in Junagadh and is
yet to know about the issue."
Political pundits opine it will be interesting to see whether BJP
leaders are named in the report or not. The BJP along with hardline
saffron brigade spread waves of Hindutva across the country by raising
the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmbhoomi episode. Large scale verbal warfare
and politicking is expected once the contents of the reports are
spilled.
Top BJP leaders including LK Advani and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were
severely targeted by their opponents on the issue. Advani along with
his other senior aides Murli Manohar Joshi and Kalyan Singh had
recorded their statements before the commission.
bademiyansubhanallah
Ram was born.
Babri Masjid1853: Hindu-Muslim clashes recorded near the disputed
site.
1859: The British administration marks out the inner court for Muslims
and the outer court for Hindus, who begin offering prayers there.
1949: Idols of Rama Lalla (baby Ram) appear inside the mosque. The
central government locks up the gates, terming the site a disputed
area.
1984: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) forms a panel to 'liberate' the
disputed site and build a Ram temple there.
1985: The Rajiv Gandhi government gives in to Muslim radicals' demands
and overturns the Supreme Court ruling in the Shah Bano case.
1986: The district judge at Ayodhya opens the locks of the gates,
allowing Hindus to worship there. Upset Muslims form the Babri Mosque
Action Committee in protest.
1989: The VHP steps up its campaign, laying the foundation of a Ram
temple on land adjacent to the disputed mosque.
1990: LK Advani takes out a rathyatra to build the temple. He is
stopped in Bihar.
1991: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes to power in Uttar
Pradesh.
December 6, 1992: The mosque is demolished by radical Hindu groups.
Riots break out between Hindus and Muslims across India.
December 16, 1992: The PV Narasimha Rao government at the Centre
announces the setting up of the justice MS Liberhan commission to
inquire into the conspiracy to demolish the Babri mosque.
March 1993: The Liberhan Commission begins investigations.
1998: The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance forms the government at
the Centre; wins again in 1999.
January 2002: The NDA government seeks talks to resolve the dispute.
February 2002: The BJP does not commit itself to a Ram temple in its
manifesto for the Uttar Pradesh elections.
February and March 2002: Riots in Gujarat claim over 1,000 lives.
Clashes break out after a train coach carrying devotees returning from
Ayodhya is burnt at Godhra station, killing 58 people. Some Hindu
groups blame Muslims for the fire.
2003: Archaeologists deputed to find out if a temple existed at the
site say there is evidence of a temple beneath the mosque. Muslims
dispute the findings.
2004: NDA loses power; Congress-led National Democratic Allaince (NDA)
forms the government.
2005: Militants attack the disputed site, using a jeep with explosives
to blow a hole in the wall of the complex. Security forces kill six
people. Ayodhya remains peaceful.
2007: The Supreme Court refuses to review a petition on the Ayodhya
case being heard by courts in Lucknow and Rae Bareli. Upholds same
view in February 2009, saying any matter regarding the Ayodhya dispute
can be heard by the courts concerned, or by the Allahabad High Court.
June 30, 2009: Liberhan Commission submits its report after more than
16 years and a record 48 extensions.
bademiyansubhanallah
New Delhi, DH News Service:
Seventeen years after it was set up, the Liberhan Commission of
Enquiry, probing into the circumstances leading to the demolition of
the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, submitted its final report to Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
The report is believed to have indicted some of the key BJP, VHP and
Bajrang Dal functionaries for their roles on December 6, 1992, the day
the masjid was razed to the ground by a frenzied mob of kar sevaks,
sources said.
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, who was present when Justice
(retired)M S Liberhan submitted the report, said the findings would be
tabled in Parliament. The Centre was expected to also place an Action
Taken Report (ATR) after studying the report and identifying the
“actionable parts”.
Sources told Deccan Herald “legal action may be taken in due course of
time”. The report is learnt to have identified top BJP, VHP and
Bajrang Dal, for being present when the kar sevaks brought the masjid
down as also for the statements they made during the ‘the day’. BJP
leaders L K Advani, M M Joshi, and Uma Bharti and then Bajrang Dal
chief Vinay Katiyar and several VHP leaders were present near the
masjid on December 6 and witnessed the demolition by “an
uncontrollable” crowd running into several thousands.
Advani later sought to describe the destruction of the masjid as ‘the
saddest day’ of his
life. The Liberhan Commission is believed to have extensively
described ‘the build up’ that culminated in the events of December 6,
1992.
Cross-examination
The Commission had cross-examined former BJP chief minister of UP
Kalyan Singh and another key BJP leader when the demolition took
place. Singh’s submission was the longest by any witness before the
commission.
Subsequently, the BJP came to power in the Centre, Singh had rebelled
against the party, re-joined it and then finally quit this year. The
Commission is understood to have taken note of the public comments
which quoted some BJP leaders having played indirect role in the
events that led to the masjid’s demolition. Singh had changed his
stand on the issue according to his “hot and cold ties” with the
BJP.
“It was a conspiracy against me by the BJP leaders. It was a
conspiracy to oust me. I was kept in the dark (about the demolition),”
Singh said while campaigning as an Independent candidate from Etah Lok
Sabha seat in UP recently. Soon after the demolition in Ayodhya, he
had blamed the Congress government for the destruction.
The Commission, constituted within the ten days of the demolition, was
initially expected to submit its report in one year’s time. As the
proceedings under Justice (retd)Liberhan began and witnesses called,
the commission was given 48 extensions.
The unusually long tenure of the commission, constituted by then
primeminister PV Narasimha Rao, makes it the longest Commission of
Enquiry in the country. Asked why it took so long to submit his
report, Jusitce Liberhan blamed ''non-cooperation and repeat court
stays'' taken by the witnesses.
He said it was upto the government to place the report before
Parliament along with the ATR.
In all the commission held 399 hearings since 1992 The commission
recorded the statements of several politicians, bureaucrats and police
officials.Among the high profile leaders who deposed before the
commission were Narasimha Rao, Advani, Kalyan Singh, Murli Manohar
Joshi,Uma Bharati and former UP chiefminister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The CBI is conducting a parallel investigation into the case with the
Allahabad High Court having already framed charges against Advani,
Joshi, Bharati,Katiyar,VHP's
Ashok Singhal and other leaders from "the saffron Parivar".
bademiyansubhanallah
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN
New Delhi, June 30: The Centre is likely to keep the Liberhan report
on the Babri Masjid demolition ticking away like a time bomb in its
vaults for at least a while.
The report was submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by a
namesake and former judge, Manmohan Singh Liberhan, this morning.
With Parliament scheduled to open on July 2, the government sought to
keep the sensitive report’s contents under wraps. But political
quarters were immediately abuzz over possible implications.
The Congress remained broadly circumspect, not wanting to hand the
demoralised BJP an opportunity to exploit temple-related sentiments
and acquire a fresh lease of life. The BJP savoured prospects of a
debatable revival of “Hindu nationalism” with a barely concealed sense
of expectation.
Muslim organisations, meanwhile, called upon the government “not to
play politics” with the report and reveal findings at the earliest.
But highly placed sources indicated that the government would take its
time over Justice Liberhan’s findings while it mulled over political
and social pros and cons. The sources said the Prime Minister handed
over the work to his principal secretary, T.K.A. Nair, who placed it
in a sealed bag.
Even if the report, which took 17 years and 48 extensions before being
presented, implicates or nails key protagonists of the event like L.K.
Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Ashok Singhal, nothing
“drastic or precipitate” would immediately be done. Not until the
general budget is passed during the forthcoming session at any rate.
“The timing is bad. The BJP has got an issue but we will not like the
shadow of Ayodhya to mar the budget session, especially when the BJP
has assured us of co-operation,” a cabinet minister said.
Parliament apart, the Congress has already begun weighing the long-
term implications of reviving the “Ayodhya card” with history as its
philosopher and guide. Sources recalled how Rajiv Gandhi’s “ill-
advised” forays to do a BJP on the BJP in Ayodhya ruined the
Congress’s supremacy in the heartland and took away its Hindu and
Muslim votes even in its western strongholds like Maharashtra where
the Shiv Sena became a force to reckon with.
“On matters fraught with communal ramifications, we should be
extremely circumspect,” a source said.
The Congress also had to contend with the fact that it was in power at
the Centre when the mosque was breached. The then Prime Minister, P.V.
Narasimha Rao was lambasted for doing nothing for the eight hours or
so that RSS, VHP and BJP “kar sevaks” ran amok and brought the mosque
down.
Members of the Babri Masjid Action Committee went on record to tell
journalists then that while Rao’s minister of state of home, the late
P.R. Kumaramangalam, answered their initial calls, neither he nor Rao
was available thereafter.
With a BJP government in Lucknow, Muslim leaders saw Delhi as their
only lifeline. Kumaramangalam later joined the BJP and became a
cabinet minister when it was in power. “There was transgression on the
Centre’s part,” a Congress functionary admitted.
Congress sources were not even sure if the government would place the
report — reportedly running into over 1,000 pages — on the table of
the House in the impending session.
“The processing of such a voluminous work will take time. It will be
scrutinised. Inconsistencies, if any, will have to be identified. A
summary will have to be written. Most important, an action taken
report (ATR) will have to be readied simultaneously,” a source said.
Parliamentary rules require a report and an ATR to be placed
together.
Although a Congress minister who counts himself as a “die-hard
secularist” quipped that “at last Liberhan has liberated our party”,
the considered view in the party was that the “politics” intertwined
in the Ayodhya chapter will have to be “read, re-read and carefully
perused” before a “plan of action” was drawn.
P. Chidambaram, the home minister who accompanied Justice Liberhan
when he went to present the report to the Prime Minister, confirmed
the Centre was in no rush with the report.
He told some journalists that the law required the report and the ATR
to be tabled within six months, which effectively gives the government
time until the winter session. “So there is plenty of time. I have not
even read the report,” he said.
bademiyansubhanallah
July 4th, 2009 - 9:48 am ICT by IANS -
By Amulya Ganguli
The M.S. Liberhan report on the Babri Masjid demolition could not have
come at a worse time for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
First, the party is still reeling from the shock of two successive
defeats in general elections because they have set off an internal
debate on the correctness of its political line. The report will make
the discussions all the more bitter.
Secondly, its indecisiveness about the line will be compounded even
further by the latest development because of the behind-the-scene role
of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which does
not want the BJP to deviate from its hardline Hindutva policies.
Since the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 was intrinsically related to
such anti-Muslim combativeness, the report will yet again compel the
party to clarify its position on the issue. The person who will be
affected the most by an exercise of this nature is L.K. Advani, who
was the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in the just-concluded
elections.
Advani was the central figure in the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, which
led to the destruction of the mosque. He was known as a hawk at the
time. However, the party’s six years in power between 1998 and 2004
made it appreciate the values of moderation in multicultural, multi-
religious, multilingual India, especially if the BJP wanted its
“secular” allies to remain in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
constituted by it.
What is more, as the prime ministerial candidate, Advani made a much
greater show of his putative moderation than before and, after the
party’s defeat, he declared that Hindutva would have to be a tolerant
philosophy, free of an anti-minority bias.
But now the report will turn the spotlight yet again on the anti-
Muslim thrust of the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, which targeted not only
the Babri Masjid for destruction but also two other mosques in
Varanasi and Mathura.
The two factors which are likely to prove embarrassing for Advani and
the BJP are, first, the charge in the report that Advani created the
atmosphere which led to the sacrilege in 1992. And, second, that the
outrage was the result of a well-planned conspiracy and not of a
spontaneous expression of anger by the Hindu activists, known as kar
sevaks.
Few will deny the veracity of the first charge. After the then prime
minister V.P. Singh threatened to run away with the backward caste
votes by adopting the Mandal report promising job reservations for
them, Advani embarked on his now infamous rath yatra in 1990 to
mobilise the voters by stoking their Hindu sentiments. And what better
way to do so than by recalling the acts of desecration by Muslim
invaders in the medieval ages?
The BJP also gave a fresh lease of life to the myth that the Hindu god
Ram was born at the exact place in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid was
built by Mughal Emperor Babar in 1528 after pulling down an ancient
temple. To reclaim the site, Advani set off on a Toyota
‘rath’ (recreation of an ancient chariot useed by Hindu warriors) from
Somnath, where a temple was destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1024. His
mission helped to create the “atmosphere”, as the Liberhan commission
has said, for destroying the mosque.
When the BJP and the RSS-led Sangh Parivar gave the call to their
followers to assemble at the site on Dec 6, 1992, there were fears of
widespread disturbances, especially since an attempt was made earlier
to destroy the structure. The apprehensions were enhanced by Advani’s
observation that the kar sevaks were gathering at the site not merely
to sing bhajan-kirtan or Hindu devotional songs.
The report may be able to clarify whether this loaded observation
hinted at a conspiracy, something which Kalyan Singh, who was Uttar
Pradesh Chief Minister at the time, has also alleged. Singh, after
leaving the party, further said that the BJP leaders kept him in the
dark about their intentions.
Although Advani later described Dec 6 as the “saddest day” of his
life, it was never clear whether his distress stemmed from the
destruction or from the breakdown of the Parivar’s vaunted discipline.
In any event, his complicity in the entire episode starting from the
1990 rath yatra to the mosque’s demolition two years later is evident.
It was also the first time in modern Indian history that a place of
worship was directly targeted as part of a political agitation in the
garb of a religious movement. Since then, it has almost become a part
of the Parivar’s politics to attack such shrines belonging to the
minorities, as the burning of churches in Orissa not long ago showed.
Advani has the dubious distinction, therefore, of setting off this
deplorable trend. Not surprisingly, Manmohan Singh described the Babri
demolition as the most significant achievement of Advani’s life.
The Liberhan report’s regurgitation of all these unwholesome facts
will compel the BJP, and especially Advani, to live through those
fateful days again. The only way they can defend themselves is by
reiterating the hard line they took in those years, thereby confirming
that the party remains as anti-minority in its outlook as before,
notwithstanding all its recent protestations to the contrary.
In the wake of the unsavoury revelations that are bound to be made
during the discussions on the report, the hawk-versus-moderate debate
in the BJP cannot but become more intense, especially with the RSS
chipping in for the hardliners.
The report has set the seal, therefore, on the Congress’s electoral
victory by plunging the BJP into a deeper crisis.
(04.07.2009-Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached
at agan...@mail.com)
Sid Harth
Now that the M.S. Liberhan commission has submitted its report on the
Ayodhya issue, the Bharatiya Janata Party has developed cold feet. The
party has gone on the defensive. The manner in which the BJP
spokespersons appear to be expressing regret over what happened on
December 6,1992 clearly indicates that the party’s leaders are very
worried about the findings of the four-volume report submitted nearly
17 years after the incident took place. Though, former BJP leaders
like Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh appear to be in a combative mood, the
party’s line has been extremely docile. Several top leaders have
expressed the view that the country has moved on. One only wonders why
every June 26, BJP leaders make it a point to recall the Emergency.
Attempts are also being made to rubbish the commission’s report.
Questions are being raised on the concept of appointing commissions of
inquiry. But those who are raising these questions found the Shah
Commission fully justified and also demanded action against the
Congress following the release of the controversial Nanawati
commission’s report on the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi.
The central government has so far not indicated when it plans to table
the Liberhan report. But delay has virtually killed the actionable
part to a large degree except that the findings will become the
subject of a new slanging match between the BJP and the secular
parties.
Knowledgeable sources say that the Commission may be soft on both the
then leader of the opposition, L.K.Advani and the then BJP president
Murali Manohar Joshi. The two also apparently received a virtual clean
chit from Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande who was in Ayodhya that day.
But speculation continues over whether the report also captures the
response of the then Congress government headed by P.V.Narasimha Rao
and whether it failed to take adequate measures to protect the
disputed structure despite several warnings. After Rao had completed
one year in office, Advani as the leader of opposition in June, 1992
described him as the ``best Prime Minister India has had’’. The
certificate was aimed at depriving the Nehru-Gandhi family’s role in
the country’s development and at the same time provided an indication
that there could be some kind of complicity between the Prime Minister
and the leader of Opposition. Rao was running a minority government.
He was trying to consolidate his position both within the party and in
Parliament. He had emerged stronger from the Tirupati session of the
AICC and in the BJP he found ``foolish and abiding allies’’. His
friend Atal Behari Vajpayee had been marginalised but through him he
obviously had been assured support of some kind.
In June, M.L.Fotedar, a senior member of the Cabinet had warned Rao
that the BJP may try to create some kind of mischief in Ayodhya and he
should engage its leaders in a dialogue. A dialogue took place
subsequently and the issue was put on the backburner for 100 days.
But the build-up to the agitation resumed in November and Fotedar
again cautioned Rao who asked paramilitary forces to be deployed. On
the basis of information obtained from N.D. Tewari that the then UP
Chief Minister was getting his personal house in Lucknow renovated,
Fotedar once again told Rao that Kalyan Singh was preparing for life
without power and that something was brewing. His warning was again
ignored.
On December 6, a journalist informed Fotedar that the disputed
structure had been demolished. He called up Rao who did not react. The
Prime Minister was told that this could lead to widespread riots and
he should order the arrests of all the top BJP leaders. But he failed
to act. On the same evening, Fotedar met the then President Shankar
Dayal Sharma and apprised him of the developments. Meanwhile Rao had
convened a Cabinet meeting where ministers were sought to be kept in
dark over the resignation of Kalyan Singh (at 11 a.m.) but were to
take a decision on imposition of President’s Rule. Barring Fotedar who
asked Rao to accept moral responsibility, no other minister spoke.
Subsequently, riots broke out and the country was on the brink of a
civil war. Rao who was shaky initially got support from a number of
Muslim leaders within the Congress and consolidated his position.
Fotedar who differed with the Prime Minister thus became the only
front-ranking minister to submit his resignation.
The Liberhan report may help throw some light on many developments.
But whether it will lead to any action being taken is doubtful.
Between us.
Sid Harth
Posted: July 6, 2009 02:04 PM
Catharsis in Waiting
lifetime of a nation is often punctuated with trials by fire. India's
one such test was on 6 December, 1992. It had seemed that fateful day
that India's whole social fabric was being torn asunder by a group of
marauding religious Hindu radicals.
Heeding a call given by the Viswa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council)
and Bajrang Dal (group in the name of Hindu mythological figure,
Hanuman), two affiliates of the Hindu radicalist organization,
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Force) and its
political wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party), this
violent group of religious thugs attacked a 14th century mosque in
Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh to destroy it thoroughly in a classic show of
philistinic rage reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
A dark cloud of a deeply uncertain future descended over India that
day. The central government of the day, led by the Congress Party, put
up a show of helpless hand wringing, while the state government of
Uttar Pradesh, led by the BJP maintained a defiant silence. The
religious riots that commenced the utter destruction are now part of
India's history.
But some of the memories are now being revived after 17 years because
a judicial commission set up to examine the evidence of the mosque
destruction and fix responsibilities has finally presented its report
to the government -- another led by the Congress Party. The commission
was set up with an original mandate to come up with its findings in
span of three months. They have finally delivered after close to two
decades.
The chairman of the commission, retired Justice MS Liberhan has not
explained the reasons, which delayed for so long his presentation of
the report. Indian media is currently in the mode of questioning the
efficacy of such commissions that produce their findings long after
the wounds have festered.
But this line of inquiry actually obfuscates the motive forces that
have guided such a decision to present the report now in all its four
volume, thousand page glory. The report of the commission has come at
a time when the key participants who could have been indicted for the
mayhem of 6 December, 1992 have either died or on the verge of
retirement. PV Narasimha Rao, then prime minister and a man deeply
culpable for gross inaction, is dead. KS Sudershan, then RSS chief who
was one of the primary instigators is dead too. LK Advani, the BJP
leader who mobilized thousands of people, blinded by religious fury,
is on the verge of passing on from public sphere at the age of 82,
especially after losing this general election to the Congress Party.
Those who remain are either not guilty or at best minor co-
conspirators that have witnessed their political fortunes dipping with
each passing day since their dastardly act. But when acted upon by the
Congress Party-led government, the report's recommendations would help
to build bridges with the Muslim community. That would in turn bring
electoral dividends for the former.
On the other hand, the yet-to-be-made-public report could be a ticking
bomb. If it has failed in its task to point out wanton failure of the
system at the level of the society, governance, and the polity, it
could open the old fissures once again.
It needed to be utterly dispassionate in its examination of the
contemporary Indian society that could still be roused to a communal
frenzy by skillful practitioners of vicious politics. It needed to
mark out the faultlines of governance that allowed such heinous acts
to occur. And it needed to throw harsh light on the role of the
political parties that abetted such hate to surface.
The government in turn would do well to kick off a debate within the
country on the basis of the report about what modern India should
subscribe. Not many expect a status quoist party like the Congress to
trigger a dialectical examination of the relation between the Hindus
and Muslims in the production processes of contemporary India. For,
that would mean examining the root causes of bigotry at the social
level, robbing most of the political parties in the country their
easiest tool for public mobilization.
In other words, the Liberhan Commission report or rather what it is
meant to be, contain the potential to bring seminal change in the
political firmament of the country, provided the actors at hand decide
to go beyond the conventional.
The country's home (interior) minister, the Harvard University
educated P Chidambaram was asked what the government was planning to
do with the report. He was of course reported as saying, "In the life
of a nation, there are moments (of consensus)... Let's wait for it."
That meant the government is seeking for a consensus to act on the
recommendations of the report. In other words, it could also mean that
Commission's report would languish in some dark recesses of a
government vault as the nations seeks to make up its mind about
healing its own wounds.
Follow Pinaki Bhattacharya on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Pinaki
...and I am Sid harth
Sid Harth
The report of the Liberhan Commission has been submitted but its
contents are yet to be known. In December 2005, Hardnews published a
write-up that gives a sense of the behind-the-scenes machinations that
could have been the real trigger for the Babri Masjid demolition. It's
not known if the Commission's report has taken these into
considerations. For our readers, we republish the article
Sanjay Kapoor Delhi Hardnews
There are serious doubts as to how the Babri Masjid came down, but the
truth may never be known
Eversince the Babri Masjid was demolished 13 years ago, I have found
it difficult to believe such a solid structure could be demolished by
trishul- and pick- axe-wielding VHP stormtroopers. Can a few hundred
men climb the formidable dome of the Taj Mahal and pull it down in a
few hours with crude hand-held pickaxes? Further, the manner in which
the edifice collapsed - it fell in a heap, dome, pillars, and all -
clearly indicates that there was more to the demolition of Babri
Masjid than what CBI investigation or media reports are making it out
to be.
The answers to my questions have proved elusive for many years for as
many reasons as the CBI investigations have proved to be inadequate.
If we believe, for instance, that there indeed was a grand conspiracy
to demolish the old building and the incident was not an outcome of
spontaneous expression of collective outrage, then there was obviously
a mastermind who was controlling the operation. A conspiracy of this
dimension involves creating a sufficient number of red herrings to
derail any investigation.
Recently, I met a non-resident Indian who provided interesting leads
pointing to a conspiracy that goes beyond the BJP and its zealous
cousins. The mosque, according to him, was blown up with the help of
explosives. Foreign demolition experts - people who can bring down
tall buildings in a heap - planted explosives at strategic points in
the mosque and triggered them off by a remote. This corroborates the
testimony of many who claimed that they heard a muffled blast when the
building collapsed. Also, just before the building fell, Ashok Singhal
of the VHP was heard asking kar sevaks to get off the dome, leading to
an impression that he could have been aware of what was likely to
happen. Going by the relatively few people who died after the dome
collapsed, it is clear that some may have been aware of how the
building was to be demolished.
My NRI deep-throat went on to say that these foreign experts made two
trips to India, one in August 1992 and the other on December 1, 1991
The first time, he claimed, they stayed in Delhi's Le Meridien hotel.
On the second occasion, they came as part of a government delegation.
These demolition men managed to sneak out of the capital and visit
Ayodhya to take a final look at the explosives planted in different
parts of the disputed structure. A few days later the mosque was
rubble.
In itself, this information was not enough. It needed substantiation
that came later in different ways. A few months later, I met a retired
Indian government official who had an access to intelligence reports
during those turbulent days and who believed that the mosque might not
survive His fears were leavened by the ambivalence that he experienced
whenever he broached the issue of safety of Babri Masjid with the then
prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao. He furnished a riveting account of
how different levels in the government and the judiciary did not do
enough to save the mosque. This official then met Rao and beseeched
him to do something, but Rao seemed lost and indifferent.
A day before the mosque was demolished; there was a move to regulate
the kar seva and the number of people who perform it. The thinking was
that if a few hundred enter the disputed structure then it would be
easier to save the building, but with a few thousand anything could
happen. A public interest litigation was moved to the Supreme Court,
but it was not entertained. This official confirmed that a foreign
delegation from the same country that my NRI contact had told me about
had visited India in the first week of December and according to him
it was always possible for visiting delegates to go anywhere.
What does this really mean? Is the BJP not involved in the demolition?
Are Ashok Singhal, L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi innocent? As the
matter is subjudice, it is difficult to comment on the culpability of
these individuals, but a person who probably had a better sense of
this conspiracy was the then prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, who
chose to sleep while the structure was coming down. The big question
is: did he know that the structure would be done in? If my NRI contact
and the retired official are anything to go by, the truth may have
been consigned to ashes with the late Narasimha Rao.
Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Aijaz Zaka Syed
9 July 2009
One is not sure what had been the context of William Gladstone’s
prophetic warning that justice delayed is justice denied. But it’s as
though the British politician had India’s Liberhan Commission in his
mind and the charade it has unleashed on an unsuspecting country when
he proffered that much worn-out advice.
Justice MS Liberhan has delivered a historic verdict on one of the
most defining tragedies of our time; a tragedy that shook India to its
core, forcing it to pause and ponder the road ahead and the direction
in which the country was headed. Only he has delivered it a tad
late. Seventeen years too late!
The commission was formed after the demolition of Babri Masjid on
December 6, 1992 in Ayodhya. The commission, appointed by Prime
Minister Narasimha Rao who himself was sound asleep at the wheel
throughout that fateful day, was to look into the ‘events and
circumstances’ that led to the demolition of the mosque and present
its findings within three months.
However, Justice Liberhan kept the Ayodhya saga alive by getting the
term of his commission extended month after month, year after year,
for seventeen long years. Prime ministers came and prime ministers
went. Strange bedfellows formed most absurd coalition governments,
only to be brought down with equally improbable allies. Justice
Liberhan stayed on though and has survived to chronicle and recount
that epic tragedy.
Prime Minister Rao, who fiddled while Ayodhya burnt with the rest of
India and nearly four thousand people were killed in the post
demolition religious riots, eventually retired to die a rather quiet
and far from dignified death in Hyderabad, the all-embracing city from
where I am filing this piece.
Rao was succeeded by an erudite, poetry-loving, scholar politician
Inder Kumar Gujral and ‘humble farmer’ from the south Deve Gowda.
Both, like Rao, had been accidental prime ministers, who happened to
be at the right place at the right time.
Then it was the turn of eloquent and affable A B Vajpayee, whose
Bharatiya Janata Party is now in the dock for the assault on the 16th
century mosque built on the orders of first Mughal emperor Babur. A
seasoned and smart politician that he is, Vajpayee managed to stay
home that day in December of 1992, far from the action and maddening
crowds at Ayodhya.
However, his comrade of many decades L K Advani and other stalwarts of
BJP and Hindutva brigade were right there, leading from the front. In
fact, Advani launched his famous chariot march from Somnath in
Gujarat, home to an ancient temple tragically plundered by Mahmoud of
Ghazni, spending days and weeks on the road and addressing rallies
along the way to Ayodhya. How Advani’s fiery rhetoric and yatra set
the country ablaze and eventually culminated in the destruction of the
mosque is part of India’s
recent history.
But the high point of this history is Advani’s loud protestations of
innocence and even remorse following the mosque’s destruction. “It
was the saddest day of my life,” he insisted later and continues to do
so. He has repeatedly emphasised that the Hindutva alliance never
wanted to bring down
the mosque.
Then, pray, what precisely was it that they wanted? What did the BJP
leader had in mind when he commandeered that chariot across India,
leaving a bloody trail behind? What was the fuss all about then? What
were the Hindutva stalwarts doing in Ayodhya while a frenzied mob
dismantled the mosque, brick by brick? Praying for world peace and
religious harmony?
In a monumental tragedy for this great country and its celebrated
traditions of tolerance and pluralism, not only did the architects of
the Babri outrage get away with it but they successfully used and
exploited it to multiply their ranks in parliament and eventually went
to rule from Delhi for
nearly a decade.
Ironically, the man who captained the Ayodhya agitation and trampled
the country’s laws and traditions with the whole world watching became
Interior Minister under Vajpayee. Nobody can accuse the poet prime
minister, known for his ready wit, of not having a sense of
humour!
The question is what was Hon’ble Justice Liberhan doing all these
years? Why did it take him 17 long years: 204 months, 952 weeks, 48
extensions, thousands of testimonies and Rs 80 million to come to the
earth-shattering conclusions that he seems to have arrived on now?
Was it because he found it rather difficult to handle the inconvenient
truth and confront those in power with it? Or was it too much to let
go of the perks and amenities that came with the responsibility of
heading such a high profile commission?
And why now, my lord? What’s the big hurry? You are hardly getting any
older. You could have easily stretched it to another 17 years.
Especially when no one is losing sleep over what you have to hold
forth on the events of that chilly day in December, 1992. Not even
Advani and company appear too worried.
If anything, they hope, this could give the politically-spent forces
and characters a new lease of life. Besides, not just the Indians but
the whole world watched what happened in Ayodhya on that dark day.
Even though back then we didn’t have the ubiquitous, 24/7 satellite
television, hundreds of members of world media reported and offered
minute by minute and blow by blow account of the unprecedented
spectacle. We never needed a judge, however eminent, to tell us what
happened that day and who orchestrated it.
In fact, by submitting these ‘findings’ so late in the day, the
commission has actually and unintentionally succeeded in raking up
some very old and
musty wounds.
I have no idea when the Indian government will present the commission
findings before the parliament, if ever at all it does so. However,
if the government wants to bring those responsible for the 1992
outrage to justice, it doesn’t need the findings of a toothless
commission to do so. There’s enough evidence out there and you don’t
need a Sherlock Holmes to unearth it.
The governing Congress, which got tremendous support from the Muslims
and other religious minorities in the recent elections, has a rare
opportunity to undo and repent for its sins. After all, it’s a
different and much healthier party under Sonia Gandhi’s leadership.
Most well-meaning Indians today believe in letting the sleeping dogs
lie. Many feel that the new, forward-looking India of the 21st
century has
moved on from the divisive, temple-mosque politics of the
last century. I totally agree.
Over the past 17 years while Justice Liberhan and his mammoth team of
aides were sitting on the truth, lost somewhere out there in the
thousands of pages and hundreds of hearings and testimonies, a new
generation of Indians has grown up blissfully ignorant of the bitter
harvest of hatred the last generation sowed and reaped.
The Muslims, majority of them, have moved on too. They have suffered
enough and grown weary of the divisive politics and religious strife.
They have bigger things to worry about today. Even in Gujarat,
Muslims are trying to move on and start afresh. However, the deep
and festering wounds left behind by the Babri tragedy can only be
healed with the balm of justice. Only justice can put the ghosts of
Ayodhya to rest.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is Opinion Editor of Khaleej Times and can be reached
at ai...@khaleejtimes.com. Views expressed here are his own
Sid Harth
Ram Puniyani
Liberhan commission submitted its four volume report to the Government
on 30 of June 2009. It might have been one of the longest times taken
by any commission. Liberhan’s claim that the report got delayed due to
non cooperation of leaders involved may have some truth as one knows
Kalyan Singh avoided appearing before the commission for long time,
and so was the attitude of many of those alleged for demolition. Still
all the hearings were complete by 2004. Did it take 5 long years to
write the report? Such a long delay in the report coming out, defeats
half the purpose of the same. One of the minor reasons of delay has
also been the differences in the approach of Justice Liberhan and its
chief counsel Anupam Gupta. Gupta after he interrogated Advani,
Justice Liberhan allrently told him to apologize to Advani for being
harsh. While Gupta maintains that Justice Liberhan had been soft on
Advani, despite his role of the chief mobilizer for demolition.
One awaits the report to be tabled and see what the commission has to
say about things which have been reported in the media and seen on the
TV by most. One also await to see the attitude of this Government
towards this commission, is it going to be forthright objectivity or
dictated by political exigencies. That apart, since the report was
submitted some of the accused have been hiding for cover, and some
others are saying that since already 17 years have lapsed how the
report can be meaningful, if at all? Some of them have questioned the
timing of the report.
To expect that those involved in demolition will own up the crime and
honestly confess to that is something not to be expected. Still Uma
Bharati was honest enough to say that “I definitely wanted Ram temple
to come up (in Ayodhya) and I definitely wanted that building (Babri
Mosque) to come down but not in that manner. But I am not going to
apologize. I am ready to be hanged for it.” It was the same Uma
Bharti, who along with Sadhvi Ritambhra was exhorting the Kar Sevaks
by saying, Ek Dhakka Aur Do: Babri Masjid Tod do”. (Give one more
push, break the Babri mosque) She also expressed her joy after the
demolition by hugging another accused, Murli Manohar Joshi who was
sharing dais with her. Amongst others who shared the dais, when the
demolition work was in progress, were Lal Krishna Advani, Ashok
Singhal and ex- RSS chief K. Sudarshan himself.
How do people respond to the crime after executing it, is a matter of
great variance. Same Murli Manohar Joshi, who before the demolition
had said told his followers "…demolish the masjid, nature of Kar Seva
will be determined by Sants and not by courts/demolition is
prerequisite for temple building", in the hearing of the commission he
said that “With all humility, I say that the incident was never
remotely conceived by us”. This despite the fact that Vinay Katiyar,
the then Bajrang Dal chief had asserted that "Masjid will be
demolished and debris will be thrown in river Sarayu". During the
deposition he distracted form the main issue and doubted the need of
commission and said that Ram Lalla is the owner of the place. While
Lal Krishna Advani had stated the Kar Seva will done with Bricks and
shovels, kar sevaks are not going to Ayodhya to sing Bhajan and
Kirtans, later he declared that the day of demolition was the saddest
day of his life. Which is the real Advani is difficult to say.
K.Sudarshan, who later became RSS Sarsnghchalak, stated that he heard
Nirmala Deshpande saying that Mosque fell due to the explosion inside.
Nirmala Deshpande disowned the statement. Kalyan Singh takes the cake
as for as turn arounds are concerned. Before the demolition he
committed to National Integration Council and through a sworn
affidavit to Supreme Court, that he will protect the mosque. When
demolition began he did not deploy 20000 central forces stationed
barely 10 minutes from the place. Later he was imprisoned for a day
and he proudly justified his inaction in the path of Ram Temple. He
filed a 300 page affidavit, taking a line, which was in accordance
with his the then Party’s line, stating that it was a spontaneous act
by uncontrollable Kar Sevaks. With his problems beginning with BJP, he
hit out at A.B.Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi saying Babri was destroyed
on the instructions of senior BJP leaders.
The then Prime Minister P.V. Narsimha Rao was famously having the
afternoon siesta when the Babri was being demolished and he covered
his inaction by putting the blame on Kalyan Singh. Immediately he
promised that Babri will be restored at the same spot.
It all raises the question of political morality. How the actors in
the tragic act have been taking stances according the political
necessities. How they regard that public memory is short and they can
wriggle out of their crimes by mere play of words.
And now with report on the table of the Congress Government can one
expect justice? The experience so far is far from optimistic. Congress
weighs the issues on the scale of political advantages or otherwise.
On one hand it tries to put a show that it will do justice and when
the crunch time comes one finds it wanting in resolve to stand firmly
for secularism and justice. Political calculations have been its
guiding load stones. So even now one is not sure about the real
justice coming through after 17 long years of wait.
BJP on its part is a divided house. It has used the Ram Temple
agitation and the consequent demolition and the violence for
politically strengthening itself. It is around this agitation,
demolition and violence that it came to occupy the major position on
the political scene in India. Now having been in power and having seen
that Lord Ram cannot eternally help it to keep coming to power, some
of its major leaders have been rethinking the political line to be
adopted. What one sees around is the total opportunism for the sake of
power. They realize the necessities of such issues to be in power,
they also see that beyond a point it can be counter productive. Now
it’s up to them to keep adopting double standards or to come to adopt
democratic issues as their political base. Can BJP shift away from
such issues and take up the issues of the poor and downtrodden? This
is a million-vote question. This is also a question related to the
goals of its political father, the RSS. How does RSS evaluate its
future role in Indian political chessboard? Indications are RSS will
stick to Hindutva and Ram temple type of issues, come what may. One
only hopes in despair that people concerned have honesty to own up
their acts and face the legal consequences for their commitments!
Posted on July 10, 2009
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted: Saturday , Jul 11, 2009 at 0448 hrs
BJP and HindutvaDo we follow the law ?Give this a thoughtRailway
budget
The Uttar Pradesh government on Friday recommended a CBI investigation
into the case of 23 missing files pertaining to the Ram Janmabhoomi-
Babri Masjid dispute. Chief Minister Mayawati, who made the
announcement, said, “This is a serious issue. Hence, my government has
decided to hand over the investigation to the CBI.” Earlier in the
day, the Home Department lodged an FIR with the Hazratganj Police
Station regarding the missing files under Section 409 of the IPC,
which deals with criminal breach of trust by a public servant. No one
was named in the FIR.
The government action comes seven years after the Lucknow Bench of the
Allahabad High Court, which is hearing a case arising out of
conflicting claims over the disputed shrine, had first asked the
government to submit seven documents. It was only last Tuesday that
the government for the first time admitted before the court that not
only those seven documents but also as many as 23 files were missing.
During these seven years, the state has seen BJP-BSP, SP and BSP
governments.
bademiyansubhanallah
;Nirendra Dev
NEW DELHI, 10 JULY: The Liberhan Commission was set up as part of a
“hidden agenda” between Congress and BJP as an “eyewash” to cover
lapses at a high level and the panel report is now hanging fire as it
is a “Pandora’s box” which could nail many top leaders including those
in government, a senior Samajwadi Party leader has said.
“The moment its contents are out there will be political turmoil in
many parties, including the Congress and BJP, and also involving
leaders like Mr Kalyan Singh,” former SP MP, Mr Mohan Singh, told The
Statesman. However, he sought to give the benefit of doubt to Mr
Kalyan Singh saying the then UP chief minister had resigned
immediately “after one pillar (of the mosque) was brought down”.
“I see a clear motive in the Centre delaying the tabling of the
Liberhan report in Parliament. If Congress had political honesty, they
should have tabled it. But I understand their political compulsions,”
he said. Mr Mohan Singh said it is not without good reason that Mr
Kalyan Singh has demanded early tabling of the report more than once.
“I am not saying I know for sure, but who knows if the report
singularly blames Kalyan Singh for the Babri demolition, he can again
emerge as a saffron hero…”. The SP leader said certain portions of the
report could go against the Congress more than the BJP and the former
UP CM. “I see the Congress point of view clearly. They perhaps think
that it can harm them most, especially as several leaders like
Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee were in the Narasimha Rao Cabinet
when the Babri Masjid was brought down,” he said. Mr Mohan Singh said
Mr Salman Khursheed, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mr P Chidambaram and even
NCP chief Mr Sharad Pawar were in the Union government then. “Only
Narasimha Rao and S B Chavan are no longer alive… and even Rao’s
political adviser Jitendra Prasad’s son Jatin Prasad is now a
minister. S B Chavan’s son Ashok Chavan is Maharashtra CM. Congress
stalwarts including the Prime Minister cannot wash their hands off,”
he said. Asked if SP would snap ties with Kalyan Singh, Mr Mohan Singh
said, “technically, he is not in my party and by associating with him
we have not suffered any loss”.
Sid Harth
Published by admin on July 11, 2009
INDIA has lived with the Babri Masjid topic for more than 50 years,
first as an issue in the shape of controversy whether the Ram temple
stood there once and then in the aftermath of the Masjid’s demolition
by some Hindu extremists. It was a dastardly blow to secularism which
the country has claimed as its ethos even before independence. There
were widespread riots in December 1992 and January 1993, fanatic
Hindus leading mobs. The 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts were the Muslims’
vengeance against the pulling down of the Masjid on December 6, 1992.
The Justice Liberhan Commission which has taken 17 years to submit the
report has at least put a judicial seal on what was known through
mouth, print or electronic media. The report, rather late in the day,
has tried to reconstruct the sequence of events. It has brought to the
fore the lesser known facts that it was the RSS which had planned the
destruction at Faizabad, some 10 kilometers from Ayodhya, the site of
dispute. It was not an outpouring of frenzy at the spur of the moment.
Once the RSS gave the roadmap, the BJP provided the necessary help to
the Bajrang Dal, a militant wing of the RSS, to execute the demolition
plan to the shame of the Indian nation.
L.K.Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and the then UP Chief Minister Kalyan
Singh were some of the witnesses. One picture which appeared in most
newspapers was that of the gleeful Uma Bharti, then a BJP light,
riding the shoulders of Joshi. Some BJP leaders shed crocodile tears
when they found that the common people throughout the country had
reacted with anger and disapproval.
Understandably, New Delhi dismissed the BJP government in UP. But it
is still unexplainable why the Congress government at the Centre did
not act when it was for all to see that a determined group of kar
sevaks was armed with ladders, ropes, axes and rods, ready to destroy
the mosque. P.V.Narasimha Rao, then the Prime Minister, did nothing to
prevent the demolition as though he was conniving at the unholy
tragedy. The Liberhan Commission refers to the lapse but it does not
hold Narasimha Rao guilty. This may give an excuse to the ruling
Congress to escape responsibility which lies squarely on the shoulders
of the party to a large extent. True, the extremists struck the first
blow, but the centre could have acted long before to ensure that the
disputed Masjid would stay intact, particularly when the Supreme Court
had ordered to maintain the status quo.
Yet the most reprehensible aspect of the episode is that a small
temple came up on the demolished site overnight. I recall asking
Narasimha Rao certain questions about it. He had invited a few senior
journalists to his residence to seek help to quell the riots. I asked
him how the Centre had allowed a small temple to be built after the UP
government had been dismissed and the central rule imposed.
Narasimha Rao explained that the central forces were flown from Delhi
but could not land at Lucknow because the airport was engulfed with
fog. I told him that he did not have to fly in troops from Delhi
because there was already a surfeit of them at Ayodhya and around it.
Narasimha Rao had no answer but told me emphatically that the temple
would not be there “for long.”
That was in December 1992. The temple is still there. Hundreds of
pilgrims visit the place daily. The government has vast security
arrangements to protect the small temple. No political party has ever
raised the question of removing it from there. It can be said without
contradiction that if the BJP government in UP was responsible for the
demolition of the Masjid, the Congress was responsible for the small
temple to come up.
The Muslim psyche is hurt. The Liberhan Commission findings put a balm
on the wounds in the sense that he has recommended certain steps which
the community expects to be implemented. This does not look like
happening. After all, the government has not taken any action against
leaders like Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackrey, although the Justice
Srikrishna Commission named him responsible for the Mumbai riots in
December 1992-January 1993. Some BJP leaders mentioned by the Liberhan
Commission for riots in the wake of the demolition are still in the
forefront of the party.
The Congress initiated no action against those who took the law in
their hands during the emergency (1975-77) and committed the worst
type of excesses. In fact, the party punished those who brought the
perpetrators to justice. No doubt, people were not killed. But there
was a murder of values and institutions. Even the fundamental rights
were suspended and the press gagged. The then Attorney General proudly
told the judges that if some policemen were to shoot any one of them
dead, they would not be able to haul them up.
My worry is that without the awareness of what is right and a desire
to act according to what is right, there may be no realisation of what
is wrong. Over the years, the dividing line between right and wrong,
moral and immoral, has ceased to exist. The tug of conscience, which
was once there, has evaporated.
The Liberhan Commission has provided an opportunity to set things
right. The guilty, however high in office or politics, must be
punished. Democracy is nothing but the independence of institutions.
They must be restored to the position that the constitution has spelt
out for them. The demolition of the Babri Masjid was a consequence of
bigotry that took over most people in the north at that time and still
lingers at some places and in some organizations. The idea of India
cannot exist for long without pluralism. The institutions have to rise
to the occasion.
Before the demolition when there were efforts to settle the Ram
Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute peacefully, many proposals were
mooted. One of them was that the Babri Masjid and Ram temple should
stay side by side. If the two communities could agree upon such an
arrangement, then it would be in the spirit of accommodation. In that
case, the Hindus could build the mosque and Muslim the temple.
My preference is that the site should be left as a vacant plot,
without any remnants of the mandir or mosque. Just as people go to
Hiroshima and weep over the destruction that the atom bomb had caused,
we should also convert the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid site into a
place of pilgrimage with the words boldly inscribed: Here is the place
where our pluralism was murdered on December 6, 1992. EOM
bademiyansubhanallah
Tuesday, 14th July 2009. 11:53am
By: Vishal Arora.
New Delhi: Two weeks after an inquiry commission came out with its
overdue report on the December 6, 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid
(mosque) in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and indicted top Hindu
nationalist political leaders, Rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
has said it is not apologetic about the incident.
“The party is not at all apologetic about the incident of demolition
of a disputed structure as it had not committed any mistake,” BJP
national president Rajnath Singh has been quoted as saying in the
current issue of the weekly publication of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS or the ideological mentor of the BJP), Organiser.
“Whatever happened in Ayodhya was the outburst of sentiments of the
masses. It is not apt to hurt the sentiments of the masses,” added
Singh in an interview.
On June 30, the Justice MS Liberhan Commission of Inquiry submitted
its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly holding BJP
leaders LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi responsible for the razing
of the Babri mosque in 1992. Advani, presently the Leader of
Opposition in parliament, was the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in
the general election in April-May 2009.
The inquiry commission also indicted former BJP leaders Uma Bharati
and Vinay Katiyar, besides blaming the then prime minister, Narasimha
Rao, of the Left-of-Centre Congress party for giving permission to
Hindu nationalists gather at the mosque compound in Ayodhya, a
disputed structure. Katiyar was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh
when the Babri mosque was vandalised.
Hindu nationalists claim that Ayodhya is the birthplace of Hindu God,
Rama, and that the mosque was built after a Mughal emperor, Babur,
demolished a temple of Rama in the 16th century.
The demolition of the mosque resulted in numerous communal riots
across the country in which around 2,000 people were killed. The
emotive incident in the Hindu-majority country also divided voters
along religious lines, benefiting the BJP, which gradually came to
power at the Centre in 1998 and ruled till 2004.
The Liberhan Commission, formed on December 16, 1992, was mandated to
probe culpability in the demolition incident “as soon as possible” but
“not later than three months”.
Now it is up to the ruling Congress party-led United Progressive
Alliance government to initiate action on those held responsible for
the 1992 incident in the report. But analysts believe nothing much
will come out of it given that India’s premier investigating agency,
the Central Bureau of Investigation, which reports to the incumbent
government, has been sitting on the case for around 17 years.
Sid Harth
14 Jul 2009, 0223 hrs IST, ET Bureau
Liberhan tension
Ever since the Liberhan Commission submitted its report to the Centre,
predictions are rife the report will die a silent death. This nervous
hurry in burying the report even before the people who matter in the
government completed the process of examining it, has amused the
Congress camp.
The Congress lot now say these 'premature no-action predictions' only
reflect the deepening worry of a section of BJP leaders on what the
government might do on the report. They also point out how similar
‘there-will-be-no-action declarations’ were made when the Sachar
Committee submitted its report amidst BJP worries about the Congress
using it to woo minority votes. It is now history how UPA-1 creatively
used the Sachar report and reaped a rich electoral harvest. So watch
out.
Outing Nafisa
The socialite-turned-poll-eve 'socialist', Nafisa Ali is set to get
enough free time to pursue her latest interest in Samajwadi Party
politics in UP. Realising that she is in no mood to voluntarily give
up the post of the chairman of the Children's Film Society of India
even after she left the Congress on the eve of elections to
unsuccessfully contest the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat on an SP ticket, the
I&B ministry has decided to show her the door.
Ms Ali will be replaced by someone with a much bigger profile and
credibility. Prominent theatre and TV personality Ratna Pathak Shah,
veteran actresses Asha Parekh and Waheeda Rehman are among those being
considered. Ms Ali was appointed to the post as a Congress nominee in
2005 when her predecessor Raveena Tandon quit the post after the NDA
regime was voted out.
Saffron comedy
Amusing things are happening in 'the party with a difference'. The L K
Advani and Arun Jaitley camps, under fire from within for the poll
rout, are out to take revenge on leaders like Jaswant Singh, Yashwant
Sinha and Arun Shourie for questioning the entire campaign strategy
and also the manner in which those 'responsible' for the defeat were
rewarded after the polls. Adding to their anger is the lingering fear
that the 'rebels' enjoy the backing of a rival faction headed by
Rajnath Singh.
But the problem is that very little could be done to punish these
rebels since there are no high career stakes for anybody in a party
that is clearly on a downhill journey. So we have comical scenes like
leadership "removing" Yashwant Sinha from BJP’s parliamentary core
panel even though it is public knowledge that the former FM himself
had resigned from all party posts when he turned hostile. We also hear
the same quarters who used to lionise Sinhas and Shouries now making
them out to be mere inflated balloons.
Judging it wrong
It's murkiness as usual in J&K. And this time, it's a commission that
debunks its own report! The Justice (retired) Muzaffar Jan-led probe
into the rape and murder of two young women in Shopian has submitted
its report to the J&K government, but also created a unique
precedence.
When his observations about the victims and the bereaved family were
published, the judge accused the police, that was part of his team as
subordinates, for messing up things. It simply hit his own credibility
and vindicated some of the naysayers in Srinagar High Court who
believed the report would further the 'cover-up'.
Now it is the police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) — constituted
under the high court orders — that would look into the case. But given
the dent that the commission has suffered, the reputation of IGP
Farooq Ahmad, believed to be an upright officer, is at stake.
Sid Harth
Submitted by admin4 on 17 July 2009 - 6:28pm.
The Aftermath of the Demolition
By Syed Shahabuddin,
Nearly 16 years and a half after its appointment, after holding 399
sittings, and examining nearly 100 witnesses over 48 extensions,
Justice, M.S. Liberhan, head of the one main Commission of Inquiry in
the Demolition on 6 December 1992, finally submitted its Report to the
Prime Minister on 30 June 2009. The Commission worked through 2 years
of P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Government, 5 years of Vajpayee’s and 5 years
of Manmohan Singh’s. Neither the NDA nor the UPA ever questioned the
long delay by asking the Commission to submit its Report.
Why 48 Extensions?
The question is why the Commission has been given extension after
extension, both by the NDA and the UPA Governments. In the last 4
years after hearings & arguments had been concluded, and after the
absconding prime witness Kalyan Singh had appeared, defiant at ever
and without any sign of remorse or shame, there was no justification
or rationale for any further extension. One can only surmise that the
UPA Government willingly submitted to what may be called in the
circumstances ‘silent blackmail’ by the Commission, because it
apprehended that if the Report held the late Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao, largely responsible for the Demolition, the BJP may use it
against the INC. Since, it had already come out in public that the
draft Report was ‘soft’ on Advani. So the term was extended right up
to 30 June, 2009, well after the General Election and the installation
of the new Government.
The Report has not been made public and it is doubtful whether the
Government shall table it in the Parliament during the current Budget
Session, because it may like to consider it in depth and submit it
with an Action Taken Report.
Main Conclusions as Reported
The term of reference of the Commission was to probe the sequence of
events leading to and all facts and circumstances relating to the
Demolition, the role played by the Chief Minister and other Ministers
and Officials of the State Government, and of individuals &
organizations as well as to go into the deficiencies in security
measures.
Considering the time he has taken, Justice Liberhan’s claim that he
has fully answered the terms of reference may be accepted. He has not
revealed his conclusions or recommendations, but according to leaks in
the press, the Commission has held the then Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao, responsible for ‘not doing enough to stop the Demolition’. It has
also blamed the BJP leader, Advani, for ‘creating an environment that
led to the Demolition through his Rath Yatra’ but despite his presence
on the site & his speeches to the Kar Sevaks on 6 December 1992, the
Commission has not held him responsible for inciting them. On the
other hand, other top leaders of the BJP & VHP who were present and
also spoke, including Murli Manohar Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharati
and Ashok Singhal have been indicted by the Commission for the
Demolition, apart from the then UP Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh for
failure to control the Kar Sevaks & maintain law and order.
Scores of Reports of Commission Not Implemented
In any case, the Commission’s findings, conclusions and
recommendations are all recommendatory and we know the fate of the
reports of such Commissions. There have been more than 40 Commissions
of Inquiry after Independence to look into major events like communal
riots, assassinations, civil disturbances etc and the Report of
Justice Srikrishna Commission on Post-Demolition Riots in Mumbai in
1992–93. They have not been implemented. The problem lies in that
governments and political parties are not interested in finding the
truth or securing justice but in making political capital.
Origin of Babri Masjid Dispute
We are aware that the Babri Masjid dispute began, according to an
official affidavit when idols were ‘surreptitiously and unlawfully’
placed in the Masjid on the night of 22 – 23 December, 1949. They
could have been immediately removed. But the combined efforts of the
then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the then Home Minister,
Vallabh Bhai Patel, failed to persuade the then Chief Minister of
Uttar Pradesh, Govind Vallabh Pant, to have the idols removed by the
District Magistrate who defied his orders. Even the historic fasts
undertaken by Akshay Brahmachari with the support of eminent Gandhians
for the restoration of the Masjid failed. All that the State
Government did was to lock up the Masjid & declare it out of bounds
for the Muslims, authorized private worship of the idols & thus
converted it into a Hindu shrine, while criminal and civil litigation
raged outside.
But after the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement began, the then Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi was advised to have the doors of the Masjid unlocked on 1
February, 1986. This converted the Masjid into a de facto Mandir. The
Muslims then launched a movement for the restoration of the Masjid but
they never took the law in their hands. Subsequently, in 1989 the VHP
which had prepared an architectural plan for the Mandir, was permitted
to perform the Shila Nyas i.e. to lay its foundation in violation of
court order.
In 1987, the Government consolidated the various civil suits and
placed them before the Allahabad High Court for adjudication. By fits
and starts, the title suit has been going on since then. After the
Masjid was demolished in 1992, the Central Government acquired 70
acres of land around the disputed site. The Supreme Court considered
the Reference on acquisition & okayed its legality in October 1994,
revived the hearing of the title suit by the Allahabad High Court and
also laid down a road map for the utilization of the acquired area in
the light of the judicial verdict on title. The title suit has nearly
come to an end & the verdict is awaited.
What is important is to note that the Muslim side has committed itself
to accept the final verdict, whatever it be, but all Hindu
organizations have taken the stand that they shall accept ‘it only if
it is in their favour’! The Government has maintained total silence on
its Constitutional duty & commitment to execute the judicial verdict,
without fear or favour, nor has it prepared the required alternative
plans for the utilization of the Acquired Area as it should have done.
So much more important and relevant, than the Liberhan Report will be
the final judicial verdict. If the Sangh Parivar refuses to accept it,
the settlement will be further delayed & open another chapter of the
conflict.
Political Possibilities
The Muslim community should, therefore, take the Liberhan Report in
its stride and watch the political wrangling on its presentation to
the Parliament along with the ATR by the Government. It is perfectly
possible that increasingly conscious of the alienation & frustration
in the Muslim Community and anxious, as always, to exploit Muslim
votes in all elections, the Cental Government may not only accept the
Report in toto but express its intention to implement its findings and
recommendations. The Government may even initiate the prosecution of
the indicted leaders. But that will be no more than another political
gesture, another milestone on the long road to justice. We are all
aware of the sluggish pace at which the criminal cases under FIR
198/92 arising out of the Demolition have moved, making little
progress in 17 years! No purpose will be served by further
prosecutions, if they move at the same pace and are undertaken as
halfheartedly. After all the ruling party and the Government have to
keep an eye on the mood of the people and they would not like to make
martyrs or heroes of Advani and others in the eyes of the Hindu
voters.
It goes without question that when the Report is placed in the public
domain, it will become the subject of a slanging match between the
Government and the Opposition i.e. the INC & the BJP. However, if the
UPA does take effective action on the Report, it will consolidate the
support it has received from the Muslims in General Election 2009.
They have all but forgotten the role by the Congress played in 1949,
1986, 1989, 1992 & even immediately after the Demolition under the
President’s Rule, to construct a make- shift Mandir on the debris of
the Masjid. On the other hand, if the UPA fails to act, Muslims may
turn away towards other secular parties & even take up seriously the
project of forming one or more Muslim-core parties in the country.
Since, it is in their long term interest to build understanding and
cooperation among all secular forces, the danger is that in the
process they may divide the secular forces as well as the Community to
the benefit of the BJP and its allies. On the other hand, tt is also
possible that the post-election cleavages within the BJP may be
further accentuated between those committed to the ideology of
Hindutva and those who wish to reinvent the BJP as a liberal Hindu
party.
While the Muslims should not display any emotions on the Liberhan
Report before they actually see its findings & recommendations, they
should also wait for the final judicial verdict on title. In the
meantime, they should reserve their energy to the task of formulating
the Muslim political strategy for the next General Election.
If the Report indeed holds Narasimha Rao responsible, Muslims should
ask the INC to stop his glorification and seek its apologies. They may
also ask the Manmohan Singh government to pursue diligently the
criminal cases under FIR 198/92, as well as any additional charge-
sheets based on the Liberhan Report,
Democracy is the Rule of Law and Social Justice. In their response to
the Liberhan Report or the final judicial verdict on title, the Muslim
should only press the Government to act in accordance with law, and
they should assert their identity which is constantly under attack
from all quarters, their recognition as a well- defined social group
and as a well-attested Backward Class. They should keep their energies
in reserve for really important battles which lie ahead over the
execution of the final judicial verdict by the Government in
accordance with the road map drawn by the Supreme Court, if it is in
their favour, as well as over the publication and implementation of
Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission’s recommendation for at least 10%
reservation for their government job and higher education.
Ideas on the Utilisation of Babri Masjid Site
Some friends have suggested that neither a Masjid nor a Mandir should
be built on the disputed site. This suggestion is not old. Kanshi Ram
had once suggested the construction of public toilets over the site.
Others had spoken of building a multi-faith shrine or a Museum. All
these constitute subversion of the judicial system. Will they give up
their title to their own houses in similar circumstances? The Supreme
Court has already drawn up a road map for the utilization of the
Acquired Area. If the Masjid was wrongfully demolished in 1992, it
must be rebuilt under the law. On the other hand, no civilized state
has a law for rewriting history and reconstructing ancient sites,
which have been over-built. Even if a claim by the Sangh Parivar that
a Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir stood on the disputed site and was demolished
to make place for Babri Masjid is proved, the process cannot be
reversed after 400 years. Indeed, we have adopted a law in 1991 which
prohibits any damage to or ‘reconversion’ of any place of worship,
which stood on 15 August, 1947.
Possible Holes in the Report
The Liberhan Report is not likely to answer all our questions about
the sequence of events. The role of Narasimha Rao who no doubt had
advance knowledge of the impending tragedy and of the real intention
of the Sangh Parivar, the attitude of the state government of which he
complained, he did not dismiss it & impose the President Rule, before
the D-Day, though the papers were ready by 15 November..
Secondly, we may not know where the Kar Sevaks came from as Shiva Sena
leader Thackeray claims credit for the Demolition. We may not know the
reasons why Vajpayee was not summoned and examined by the Commission
when it was known that he came to Lucknow to attend a public meeting
on 5 December 1992. There are many such questions and we hope that the
Liberhan Report will throw light on them so that we can see the
political game going on. One wishes that the Commission had summoned
the then Home Secretary and other Union Ministers particularly the
junior Ministers who were close to Narasimha Rao. A great mystery lies
in why not a finger was raised for 6 hours when the Babri Masjid was
under demolition in broad day-light and not a shot was fired by the
State Police and the Central Paramilitary Forces and why even after
the real intent had become crystal clear by noon the centre did not
take over the state or make any attempt to disperse the mob, even by a
show-of force from the air through aircrafts and helicopters flying
low over it. Why did the Supreme Court fail to see the dark clouds
gathered on the horizon? Why did it remain a silent spectator on 6
December? One doubts whether all these dark corners have been looked
into by Justice Liberhan. All we can say now that he has been unduly
soft towards Advani, who had told the Commission and repeated it on
many occasion that 6 December was ‘the saddest day of his life’.
Surely he did not lack experience or intelligence to foresee the
consequences of his nationwide mobilization through innovative means.
On way to Ayodhya, he had clearly indicated that the Kar Sevaks were
not going to Ayodhaya for Kirtan & Bhajan & that Kar Seva can be
performed with shovels & spades.
My conclusion is that the main players, Narasimha Rao, Advani & Kalyan
Singh had a common purpose and they achieved it. How can they absolve
themselves before the bar of History and before the Nation?
It is felt that both the ‘protectors’ and the ‘demolishers’ had a
common interest to demolish the Babari Masjid and wipe the slate clean
for the Sangh Parivar to write on.
Change in the Role of Muslim After Demolition
For the Muslims, the Demolition, in retrospect, appears to be a
turning point. Since 1992 they have been paying attention to their
economic and educational development, with or without government
support. The Demolition has liberated them from dependence on &
support to one or two political parties. It has inspired them, both in
the national interest and their own long-term interest to wage a
battle against Hindu Nationalism and Hindu Terrorism, of which the
Demolition and the Gujarat Genocide 2002 stand out as prime examples.
Therefore, the Muslims will not accept the advice of some pseudo-
friends who urge that the Demolition be forgotten. The memory of this
tragic event may one day lead the country towards achieving a truly
secular order, to build up effective law and institutions to struggle
against violence as well as create an environment for inter-religious
harmony and tolerance. Communalism has deeply infected the political
system & penetrated the administrative and even judicial apparatus. So
the secular forces have to wage a relentless struggle for their
detoxification and thus ensure that the Rule of Law protects security,
dignity and equality of all citizens, irrespective of religion, caste
or class. This will signify the ultimate victory of the Indian
Nationalism over narrow concepts of Hindu Nationalism.
Some friends argue that the nation should close this ugly chapter
after the submission of the Liberhan Report. Their argument is that
the Demolition was a political act and the right to punish the elected
representatives lies with the people. The problem is that the people
do not always punish the wrongdoers; they sometimes reward them,
depending on the political climate at the time of voting. But
essentially this is a false argument which strikes at the root of the
Rule of Law. All are equal before the Law and the criminal law makes
no exception for political leaders or elected representatives, as Law
ranks above the ‘Kings of the Republic’. So law must take its due
course, and the political class should not interfere with it or
obstruct it or divert it or delay its process.
In social conflicts, particularly in a multi – facetted & multi -
segmented society like ours there can never be Peace without Justice.
If justice is blocked or denied, the wounds continue to bleed and in
desperation, the vacuum is filled with the spirit of revenge and
retaliation. All citizens must guard against this.
Sid Harth
by Amir Mir
Journalist
Pakistan: The Forgotten Hindus
Of the 300 Hindu temples that Pakistan inherited in 1947 at the time
of partition, hardly three dozen have managed to survive, many of
which are in ruins and set to disappear with the passage of time if
attention is not paid to their maintenance.
Since the demolition of the historic Babri Mosque in India in 1992 by
Hindu extremists, over 200 Hindu temples have been destroyed across
Pakistan by angry Muslims. Many of the Hindus living in Sindh and
North West Frontier Province have lost their homes as the largest
outward migration of the Hindu community since Partition took place
during these years. But despite all that, Hindus still exist in
Pakistan, numbering more than 2 million. The Hindu population is
largest in the Sindh province followed by the North West Frontier
Province, but there are Hindu communities dotted all over Pakistan
which continue to suffer constant threats against their security,
property and lives from extremist Muslims.
Together with the apathy of the general public, the Hindus of Pakistan
remain a forgotten and voiceless people who have to live a low-profile
existence and put up with many insults to their honor and dignity,
without any safeguards. The Pakistani authorities rarely intervene to
help their Hindu nationals, despite the fact that there are frequent
reports of the kidnapping of Hindu women and children, and the looting
of Hindu property, in addition to other forms of persecution and
discrimination.
Most Hindu temples in Pakistan are non-existent; while idols in many
ancient temples of historical importance are missing. The famous
Temples at Katas, near Kalar Kahar, are in a dilapidated condition and
require renovation - this despite the fact that Pakistan signed an
agreement with India to restore the Katas temples. The temples had
been falling into disrepair, and parts of them had been cemented
before Indian leader L K Advani’s 2005 tour to Pakistan. One of the
Katas temples in Pakistan had even been converted into a library,
although Katas is sacred to Hindus.
Katas is mentioned in the Mahabharata, one of the three major ancient
Sanskrit epics of India. According to Hindu religious belief, both
Katas and Paskar (Ajmer) are the eyes of Shiva, one of their gods.
Paras Nath Jogi drew his last breath on Katas, which also holds great
historical significance, as the place where the renowned Muslim
scientist Alberuni attempted to measure the circumference of the
Earth, studied Sanskrit and wrote his “Kitab-ul Hind”.
Similarly, the Doodhwali Mata Mandir and the Sheetla Mandir in Lahore,
the Capital of the Pakistani Punjab province, built before the
invasion of Alexander, are in dilapidated condition.
The famous Parahlad Mandir and Jain Mandir near Anarkali in
Lahore,which were largely damaged by fanatic Muslims after the
demolition of the Babri Mosque in India in 1992, have been locked, and
an Islamic school is being run in its compound. However, the Pakistan
government is not allowing local Hindus to look after their desolate
temples for unknown reasons.