Outlook magazine was mentioned in both houses of Parliament in the course of the debate on the Liberhan Commission report last week. In the Lok Sabha BJD MP Pinaki Mishra quoted from the excellent story done by my Chandigarh based colleague Chander Suta Dogra about intelligence reports sent to the offices of S.B. Chavan and Narasimha Rao for five day before December 6, 1992 that warned that “a rehearsal was conducted” that eventually led to the demolition of the Babri mosque.
In the subsequent debate in the Rajya Sabha Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi referred to the story Outlook did after it procured the CD of A.B. Vajpayee’s speech made to kar sevaks in Lucknow on December 5, 1992. In February 2005 I had given Vajpayee a copy of the CD and a transcript and subsequently met him for half an hour. He had said that the speech was made in a certain context and that “mera ayodhya andolan mein zyada role nahin tha (I did not have much of a role in the Ayodhya movement)” Vajpayee also said that there was nothing in the speech that could be questioned in a court of law. But given the atmospherics of that time, and the events that took place the next day, the evocative speech was certainly suggestive.