reaction to the Second Part of the Liberhan Commission Report

It seems already stale-yes I am referring to the Liberhan Commission Report.It is almost a slap on the face of the nation for Justice Liberhan to have taken 17 years-the Commission appointed on 1992 Dec 16th started its probe in March the same year and after 16 years hands over a 1000 page report which cost the taxpayer 8 crores.To Justice Liberhan goes the credit of having headed the longest and the costliest probe in the history of Independent India .And to tell us at the end of it what we already know!What do we have in the report-that Atal Bihari Vajpayee,Advani, Joshi et al led the country to the brink of communal discord.
Does it mean that a new divisive seed of communal discord they sowed. Then what happened right after attaining Independence-why was the Partition of our motherland affected-because there was harmony? It was more than communal discord-the Muslims refused to integrate with the majority community and wanted to set their separate home
Next the Liberhan Report reels out from the Hindu organizations registers-68 names and charges them ‘culpable for pushing India to communal discord’-Of these blame worthies16 have died and the remaining 52 are held guilty of pushing India to communal discord. Justice Liberhan presumes that there was complete harmony prior to 1992.Yet this wide spread inclusions of all the Hindu organizations don’t make a Movement for Justice Liberhan. He asserts that it is the pre-planned conspiracy of a few. There has been harmony throughout India and that’s exactly why a minority community numbering 3000 was butchered in 1984 right within Delhi. According to the rationale of the Congress every Congress leader can be indict for ‘guilt of association’-Sonia Gandhi also because at that time she was part of the Gandhi household.
Justice Liberhan starts already on a wrong assumption that the aspirations of the Hindu community to built a temple is wrong. This is because secularism in India means anti-Hinduism. This is the thread that runs through the report.
I would think that the Report should unite all the Hindu organizations and right thinking citizens of this country to affirm that it is their right to build a temple to Sri Ram. Can they go to Mecca and built a temple-can they built a temple in the Holy Land? So that’s the provocation for chipping at the domes of the Babri Masjid.. A right denied.-the inability of the courts to amicable settle the issue, the aspirations of the majority Hindus suppressed. This is violence without bloodshed. An oppression which seethes and simmers within has the potential to burst forth-that’s the Babri Masjid demolition finale.
The communal riots already witnessed in India prior to the Babri-Masjid episode are history so there is no new communal discord the Hindu leaders are guilty of when they placed their rightful claim for building a temple.
Every Hindu leader worth mentioning has been named by Justice Liberhan.It reads like a muster roll! To gather the names from the existing Hindu organizations I wonder how many years it took the Commission. So what is the recommendation made by such a delayed stale hibernated Commission report -to initiate action to contain communal discord? This even without the Commission’s recommendation should not any sensible government undertake? Strangely this task is entrusted to the most communal government India ever had .A government which abets communalism in all its policies and strategies cannot be asked to initiate action to contain communalism. The Congress has based its self on appeasement, on adopting a soft policy towards terrorism on a callous indifference to the plight of the Kashmiri pandits-its appeals for votes, its budgeting, its programs are also anchored on communalism. Every single leader of the Congress can be charged on ‘guilt of association’.So what’s the big deal in this ATR?
Is it not a minimum norm of justice for the Commission to have sought evidence from AB.Vajpayee. Without even giving him a chance to speak for himself to have named him as one culpable of pushing the country to the brink of communal discord is not only wrong but justice warped.Vajpayee was not summoned even once during the long 17 years of the Commissions sittings after detailed arguments were heard by the Commission in its order of July 22nd 2003 accepted the submission of the Counsel for the Commission that there was no warrant for calling him(Vajpayee) and that there was nothing to connect him with the demolition. Now to indict Vajpayee without his being summoned is completely illegal. What a travesty of truth then to place before the Parliament something which is illegal at least in part.
That the Report is political and that the Congress is bend on using it towards its political agenda is crystal clear. I suggest the Congress to engineer an ethnic cleansing of all Hindus-starting from the leaders? This has already been undertaken by the ‘secular’ government in J&K and till date there seem to be no solution to get the Hindus to where they belong. One wonders on whose evidences and records the whole Report is based. Why has the evidence of Advani and other Hindu leaders rejected? This while the news papers day after day are filled with the setting free of terrorists on the plea that there is no evidence-/or that evidence is not collaborated, or the public witnesses withdrew.
The Justice system of this country will put to shame even the most legally illiterate .For example thousands of lives are done away by the terrorists’ serial blasts. But the government is in a stupor. It has no intelligence inputs and even if it has it is not keen on hurting any Muslim. Chidambaram had the audacity to plead guilty in the Mumbai blast exactly a year ago saying that Intelligence failed with an assurance that it will not happen again. Should not the Home Minister and the Intelligence Bureau be held guilty of culpability of exposing the citizens of this country to brutal bloodied deaths? We accept the apologies from the not so foolish Home Minister and light candles and the TV channels use the prime time to telecast the survivors’ stories.
We have any number of train accidents in which thousands are killed, maimed, crippled-sole bread winners of families are crushed by the Government structures falling on them-and the victim families have to grapple with their loss and continue their lives. We are told that the accidents are caused by technical failure, human error and intelligence failure. The government quickly distributes some compensation because it is people’s tax money. Should the railway minister and the officials not be held culpable of abetting large scale killings? Is the Government not aware that the security measures are almost nil-if not inadequate? It has to be wiped away and forgotten as the fate of the people.
But then the Commission report has made two most startling observations. One- that the demolition of Babri Majsid was one of the most abhorrent acts in the history of the nation. A structure is given such significance and is valued more than the lives of people. Was a single person attacked or killed Justice Liberhan? What kind of values if people can be snuffed off without any accountability and a structure’s one and half dome demolition requires 17 years of research to come to the conclusion that it one of the most abhorrent acts in the history of this nation?
Next if the BJP did not know what the kar sevaks were about to do according to the Report then it proves that the BJP is only a frontal organization for its parent body, the RSS. Let’s give Justice Liberhan the credit for this incisive insight. So what if it is only the frontal organization of its parent? The Congress party then is guilt and must be held responsible for all the riots in this country-for the ethnic cleansing in J&K-when it cadres ran amok and killed thousands of Sikhs. The Congress must be held guilty of culpability of association when it allowed Union Carbide to function without the minimum security to the workers and the people of Bhopal-thus it resulted in the horrific Bhopal gas tragedy. After more than 30 years the victims and those who survived are suffering-malformed, diseased, crippled and breathless from respiratory ailments. Whose fault is this? And who is responsible for the safety and security of the country’s citizens. So people can be squashed off like fleas –it is not an abhorrent act against this nation by the Congress-The above examples are mentioned because the Liberhan Report seems to be placed in a background of peace and tranquility-against a nation living in harmony-against a people who have not been brutalized and continue to be brutalized and dehumanized. There should be some kind of a balance in presenting a demolition of a structure- but to use big words like a ‘conspiracy’-‘one of the most abhorrent acts in the history of this nation’ and paint it with such a black brush making all those associated and involved as criminals is too far fetched and brings out the bias of Justice Liberhan.
The kid glove treatment given to the former Prime Minister Narashima Roa is shocking. There are instances when the Central government did not wait for the Governor’s report to dismiss the State governments. And ultimately he did dismiss the Kalyan Singh government based on the Central Intelligence? Could he not have resorted to it earlier? Did it not damage the federal structure of the Constitution when it was delayed? Strange logic it sounds. The Liberhan Commission Report is a political report and suits the ends of the Congress party. It is a sad commentary that Commissions are being used by the ruling party towards their own vested interest and it is still a greater tragedy that the Commission members cannot rise above their biases. All this at the cost of the people’s money. Do we need Commissions at all is the bottom line.
Finally it must be asserted that the religious divide and the culpability of leading the country to communal discord belongs only to the Congress-in this specific case of Babri Masjid to Rajiv Gandhi. Justice Liberhan has made no mention of the role of Rajiv Gandhi though he fished into all vast extensive waters for almost 17 years. One wonders if this great lapse made by Justice Liberhan is purposeful or something that slipped and fell by the wayside in his long onerous journey of writing this report.
Personally I would wish that this Report cements all the Hindu organizations and they work with greater vigor to uphold the lofty principles envisaged by the Founding Fathers. Vande Mataram
Dr Hilda Raja
Vadodara