The Big Babri Sham

The entire Liberhan issue is about scoring political points and certainly not about holding any one accountable. Just glance at the ATR accompanying the report and it’s clear that the good justice appears to have decided to give the nation a sermon on secular values that is really so much hogwash. We can all read the constitution of India to reaffirm secular values. Liberhans indulges in the sort of ramblings about secularism and generalities about Hindus and Muslims that one may expect from the ageing neighbourhood bore who wants to hold forth on the state of the nation. 

This report will never have too much credibility for far too many reasons. First the extra-ordinary long time M.S. Liberhans took at public expense will always taint the credibility of the report. There are glaring procedural lapses such as the failure to question individuals like Atal Behari Vajpayee and K.N. Govindacharya, who was then the RSS point-man in the BJP and is also mentioned in the list of 68 accused. Surely the judge can’t claim he was pressed for time?

What is also damning in my view is that when he did finally submit the report at a time when the Congress is clearly on the ascendant, Liberhan gave a clean chit to former prime minister Narasimha Rao and failed to even mention the Congress leadership that ordered the opening of the locks at the Babri shrine.

The politics that will be played with the Babri issue is also now fairly obvious. The Congress clearly hopes to extract mileage from the report in its bid to win back Muslim votes in Uttar Pradesh, a project that is meeting with some success. Party sources say that at a more “opportune time” (closer to elections in UP) it is very possible that some sort of gesture will be made towards the Muslim community--perhaps supplementary charges against BJP/VHP/RSS leaders, the cases speeded up or even a special court set up. A Congress MP from UP told me last week: "it was important for us that the Congress leadership be cleared and we can only take advantage of the report now that the BJP is on the backfoot."

The party of the gods can shout Jai Shri Ram, but the Babri matter is now most certainly a dead weight around its neck. All the MPs and strategists actually engaged in the business of winning elections know there are no votes to be gained from issues like Ayodhya. Indeed, the young voter is quite repulsed by the sort of identity issues the party is perennially trapped in.

Yet winning elections is not the sole compulsion that drives BJP leaders; they must also please the RSS masters at Nagpur and continue to pay lip service to Hindutva. They are currently in a most unenviable position. Veterans like L.K. Advani will continue to tie themselves in knots on the issue as he will pledge commitment to a Ram temple one day and the next day speak of "the saddest day…" But the wheels within wheels in the inner party and RSS relations mean that Advani, like Liberhan, should also manage to squeeze out a few more extensions.

So the shoddy theatre of the Ram bhakts will continue for a while. President Rajnath Singh will yet again affirm faith in the Ram temple. Sushma Swaraj will try to divert the issue to Atal Behari Vajpayee being held culpable and demand P. Chidambaram’s resignation for the leak of the report. But ask whether Advani who holds a constitutional post as LoP should resign for being indicted and there is no reply from the otherwise voluble party spokespersons.

We can also expect more sound and thunder on Babri from the Samajwadi Party that is quite desperate to hang onto Muslim votes. Across political parties our politicians appear to be one in the belief that you can fool all the people all of the time.