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RIP Ram Janmabhoomi
The Liberhan report took its time coming. But its impact is underwhelming in today’s polity.
Like the MS Liberhan Commission of Inquiry report on the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, this editorial could have been written ten years ago. Going by the reported contents of the text submitted to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, there’s nothing that Mr Liberhan has to offer the government by way of information that we didn’t already know. The dramatis personae that led up to the demolition of the old mosque in Ayodhya are part of India’s political mythology. The Prime Minister at that time, PV Narasimha Rao, whom Mr Liberhan has mentioned as failing to act in time to stop the destruction of the masjid, has since died. The then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh, whom Mr Liberhan cites as failing to control the rampaging kar sevaks, has since changed political teams. All the characters allegedly involved in the downfall of the Babri Masjid and thereby responsible for directly or indirectly unleashing Hindutva politics into the political mainstream are now well past their political prime. Some like L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti have realised the hard way — Mr Advani admitting as much while Ms Bharti is still holding on to an expired unique selling proposition — that Hindutva politics doesn’t cut much ice even among the BJP’s traditional flagwavers.
Mr Liberhan certainly took his time to come up with something that is deeply underwhelming. He has cited difficulties in getting witnesses to speak and some of the main players involved in the Babri Masjid demolition to cooperate. But 17 years after he was assigned the task, Mr Liberhan has come up with something that he certainly believes to be a job well done. Well, it isn’t much of a job considering that this will hardly bring any real judicial closure to the event. Instead, memory and public interest had dealt with the whole Babri Masjid issue once and for all.
If there are political watchers who believe that the tabling of the Liberhan report in Parliament will lead to charges being filed, they are likely to be disappointed. As will those who think that the report will in any way affect the fate of the BJP by nudging it back on the Hindutva track. What Justice Liberhan has delivered for the Babri Masjid issue is the political equivalent of a lifetime achievement award for anyone in the entertainment business: a polite marker that its ‘career’ as a Hindutva lightning rod is over.
