National

Justice M.S. Liberhan

Not many know this but since my school days a guiding principle of mine has been ‘slow and steady wins the race’

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Justice M.S. Liberhan
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The tabling of the Babri report in Parliament has indeed worked wonders. The other day someone from Guinness World Records rung up to say they are considering honouring me as the judge who presided over the longest inquiry commission in recorded history. Not just that, literary agents have been flooding me with lucrative offers to write a book. One London-based agency even came up with a tentative title—‘Liberhan And The Art Of The Slow Draft’. Well, I’m yet to sign up although I hope to do so in the next 6-8 years. Anyway, since I have decided to eventually detail how I spent 17 years to write the 1,000-page report (that’s approximately 58 pages a year, 4.9 pages a month) I think I should immediately mend fences with Anupam Gupta, the commission’s ex-lawyer who helped with the writing. We were once thick friends but fell out after a heated argument on whether scribbling notes in slow motion was more aesthetic than walking backwards. To cut a long story short, Anupam has been sore ever since, even accusing me of taking too much time to complete the report.

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Of course, I have my justifications. Now, not many know this but since my school days a guiding principle of mine has been ‘slow and steady wins the race’. I remember spending hours writing an essay which others would dash off in 30 minutes flat. And as a lawyer I was all for seeking adjournment after adjournment since I always believed that justice delayed is justice delivered. Of course, all this earned me the moniker ‘Slow Hand’. But that aside, the crowning glory of my career has been the Ayodhya report. You may wonder how I spent 17 years writing it. (Incidentally, that’s longer than a life sentence and three years more than Ram’s vanvas!).

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Well, it was easy for Slow Hand. The first six months I spent locating a suitable office. Then I read all the IB reports (later adapted for the big screen, the flop Thodo Thodo by Ram Gopal Varma). Incidentally, the film, for which yours truly anonymously wrote the script, was delayed by several years and when it premiered there was no one in the theatres except the hapless producer and his creditors. Anyway, once I finished with the film, I finally began the business of recording the depositions of witnesses. And believe me, once you started on that, 17 years went by in no time!

Interestingly, a Chandigarh school recently held a precis competition where the task was to condense my voluminous report. And the winning entry was: “Kar sevaks, goaded on by senior BJP and Sangh parivar leaders, demolished the Babri Masjid on December 6, ’92.” Rather too concise for my liking....

Finally, when I look back, do I have any regrets? Just one, I should have thought of a Hindi translation of the report. That would have extended the commission’s term by at least another decade....

(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)

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