There was uproar yesterday in the Indian Parliament over the apparent leaking of the Liberhan Commission report into the events leading up to the 1992 destruction by Hindu fanatics of the 16th century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. Opposition BJP legislators twice brought parliament to a halt as they protested a newspaper story that the commission has cited former and current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Atal Behari Vajpaye and L.K. Advani, as being responsible for the crime.
The Congress party-led government insists that only one copy exists of the Liberhan report — (delivered in June and due to be presented to Parliament on Dec. 22) — and that there has been no leak. The truth of these assertions is however irrelevant. What happened at Ayodhya 17 years ago was an outrage that was witnessed around the world. From the start there was little doubt that BJP politicians had played some sort of role in the crime. The main question was the extent of their involvement.
Justice M.S. Liberhan’s 900-page report has taken almost 17 years to research and compile. It embraced 400 different sittings, took evidence from all senior politicians and required 48 time extensions. By any standards it has been a mammoth undertaking.
What is important is the detail it is expected to provide on the Ayodhya tragedy, which sparked off riots in which more than 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, were slain. The BJP, an avowedly Hindu party founded in 1980 was then a rising political force. The party early took up the claim that the Babri Mosque stood on the site of the historic birthplace of one of the most revered Hindu deities, Lord Rama.
Only a year before the mosque’s destruction, the BJP had taken power in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is located. Three years before that a BJP campaign had seen the laying of foundations for a temple to Rama adjacent to the Babri building but work had been stopped by the authorities. The final attack on the mosque was widely expected, yet the BJP state administration took no action to protect the Muslim shrine. Nor when the orgy of destruction began did the BJP state administration seriously seek to impede it. The few unsupported policemen who sought initially to hold back the crowds were immediately overwhelmed.
Alongside the Liberhan findings, the government is also planning to table before Parliament in December a so-called “action taken report,” which may outline further legal proceedings against BJP leaders — in 2003 proposed charges against Advani and others were not pursued. While prosecutions may well be right, there is a far bigger issue which it must be hoped the Liberhan Commission will have highlighted. That is that in a country as rich in diversity as India, politicians must never again be allowed to exploit religious or cultural differences for their own cynical ends. What was made or allowed to happen at Ayodhya was not just a terrible crime, but it was political madness, which cost hundreds of innocent lives and appalled and disgusted the outside world.
