New Del­hi’s con­science rests com­fort­ably if Sikhs do not get jus­tice even 33 years af­ter un­prece­dented, pre­med­i­tated, planned mas­sacre of nearly 5,000 plus mem­bers of the com­mu­nity on the roads of Delhi. It also rests com­fort­ably if Mus­lims are kept wait­ing for jus­tice on the ba­sis of Jus­tice Liber­han Com­mis­sion re­port which in­dicted Hin­dutva-in­spired kar­se­vaks and lead­ers mar­shalled by RSS-BJP-VHP-Ba­jrang Dal to de­mol­ish the Babri Masjid.

Jus­tice Man­mo­han Singh Liber­han called men like Va­j­payee and Ad­vani as ‘pseudo-mod­er­ates’ and said they and other lead­ers could have stopped the de­mo­li­tion but did not on De­cem­ber 6, 1992 and only made a sham of their un­will­ing­ness when the domes were brought down. 

Jus­tice M S Liber­han Com­mis­sion cited ev­i­dence to de­duce that the en­tire build-up to the de­mo­li­tion was metic­u­lously planned and that there was noth­ing to show that the BJP-RSS-VHP lead­ers were ei­ther un­aware of what was go­ing on or in­no­cent of any wrong­do­ing. 

The one-man Com­mis­sion probed the se­quence of events lead­ing, and all facts and cir­cum­stances re­lat­ing, to the oc­cur­rences at Ram Jan­mab­hoomi-Babri Masjid com­plex on De­cem­ber 6, 1992, the day the Babri Masjid was brought down by kar­se­vaks. The Com­mis­sion was set up 10 days af­ter the de­mo­li­tion as com­mu­nal ri­ots rocked sev­eral parts of the coun­try and sub­mit­ted its re­port af­ter 17 years and 48 ex­ten­sions, on June 30, 2009.

The re­port in­dicted and found cul­pa­ble the en­tire top brass of the Sangh Pari­var for push­ing In­dia to the brink of com­mu­nal dis­cord. Liber­han minced no words in say­ing that while Va­j­payee, Ad­vani and Joshi could have been used by the Pari­var as the pub­licly ac­cept­able faces of the move­ment, they were still party to all de­ci­sions.

“The en­tire build-up to the de­mo­li­tion was metic­u­lously planned and that there was noth­ing to show that the BJP-RSS-VHP lead­ers were ei­ther un­aware of what was go­ing on or in­no­cent of any wrong­do­ing.”

Jus­tice M S Liber­han

And that none of them had the ca­pac­ity to defy the or­ders of the RSS with­out dam­ag­ing their po­lit­i­cal fu­ture. In fact, the Com­mis­sion calls them tools in the hands of the RSS. 

How­ever, draw­ing from his­tory, par­tic­u­larly from the tri­als of Nazi sol­diers, at which the plea of hav­ing acted on the or­ders of su­pe­ri­ors was not ac­cepted, the Com­mis­sion con­cluded that these lead­ers can’t be given the ben­e­fit of doubt or ab­solved of cul­pa­bil­ity. Va­j­payee, Ad­vani and Joshi have also been in­dicted for hav­ing vi­o­lated the trust of vot­ers. 

Rath ya­tras by Ad­vani and Joshi, Liber­han con­cluded, were tar­geted at mak­ing the emo­tion­ally-charged com­mon man join the move­ment. The com­mis­sion’s re­port also tries to ex­plore the re­la­tions be­tween BJP and RSS, through prism of the events cul­mi­nat­ing in the de­mo­li­tion. If BJP did not know about what it’s kar se­vaks were about to do, then this only proves that the party is lit­tle more than a “frontal or­gan­i­sa­tion” for its par­ent body, the RSS, the re­port said.

Jus­tice Liber­han Com­mis­sion of In­quiry said the in­fil­tra­tion of the gov­ern­ment and of the ad­min­is­tra­tion by pro-Sangh el­e­ments was com­plete. Liber­han even said that its ‘traces and rem­nants are still thriv­ing all over the coun­try’ and pose as grave a threat as ever-con­tin­u­ing to spread in scope to en­com­pass every pil­lar of the Con­sti­tu­tional sys­tem.            

The Com­mis­sion con­cluded that di­ver­sion of funds to Faiz­abad and Ay­o­d­hya just be­fore the kar seva, mo­bi­liza­tion of kar se­vaks as well as arrange­ments made at the site with mil­i­tary-like pre­ci­sion, clearly proves that the plan was not just lim­ited to sym­bolic kar seva, as stated by Sangh and BJP lead­ers. 

The re­port said that the emer­gence of a host of lead­ers to lead the move­ment from among the ranks of the BJP, RSS, Ba­jrang Dal and other Sangh Pari­var groups was be­cause of the lure of wealth and power rather than ide­ol­ogy. 

Liber­han wrote that these lead­ers saw the Ay­o­d­hya move­ment as their road to suc­cess, and they acted as ex­e­cu­tion­ers wield­ing swords pro­vided by the ide­o­logues.

Re­fer­ring to the funds col­lected by lead­ers of the Ram Jan­mab­hoomi move­ment, the Com­mis­sion said that many tens of crores of ru­pees col­lected from the peo­ple were de­posited into bank ac­counts op­er­ated by these lead­ers. These funds were used to pro­vide in­fra­struc­ture and other ameni­ties for kar se­vaks in the days lead­ing to the de­mo­li­tion. 

But what was per­haps the most scathing of the in­dict­ments of not just the RSS pari­var but of the very way the brah­man­i­cal pow­ers within the In­dian polity con­duct their agenda, the Com­mis­sion said the en­tire gov­ern­ment ma­chin­ery was used to and al­lowed it­self to be used to  sub­vert the sys­tem so that the Sangh Pari­var could achieve its goal of de­mol­ish­ing the Babri Masjid.

The Jus­tice Liber­han Com­mis­sion of In­quiry said the in­fil­tra­tion of the gov­ern­ment and of the ad­min­is­tra­tion by pro-Sangh el­e­ments was com­plete. Liber­han even said that its traces and rem­nants are still thriv­ing all over the coun­try and pose as grave a threat as ever con­tin­u­ing to spread in scope to en­com­pass every pil­lar of the Con­sti­tu­tional sys­tem.

“The en­tire gov­ern­ment ma­chin­ery was used to and al­lowed it­self to be used to sub­vert the sys­tem so that the Sangh Pari­var could achieve its goal of de­mol­ish­ing the Babri Masjid.”

Jus­tice M S Liber­han

The com­mis­sion’s re­port also tries to ex­plore the re­la­tions be­tween BJP and RSS, through prism of the events cul­mi­nat­ing in the de­mo­li­tion. If BJP did not know about what it’s kar se­vaks were about to do, then this only proves that the party is lit­tle more than a `frontal or­gan­i­sa­tion for its par­ent body, the RSS’, the re­port said.

Liber­han pointed to the mode of as­sault on the dis­puted struc­ture as well as easy avail­abil­ity of in­stru­ments and ma­te­r­ial. The small num­ber of kar se­vaks who ac­tu­ally car­ried out the de­mo­li­tion, the hid­den faces of such kar se­vaks, the re­moval of idols and cash boxes from un­der the domes and the even­tual in­stal­la­tion in the makeshift tem­ple clearly show that de­mo­li­tion was car­ried out with painstak­ing prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning, the re­port said.

Jus­tice Liber­han was most scathing in his con­dem­na­tion of for­mer UP chief min­is­ter Kalyan Singh and his min­is­te­r­ial col­leagues and of­fi­cers. He said that Kalyan, his min­is­ters and their cho­sen of­fi­cers cre­ated cir­cum­stances that led to the de­mo­li­tion of the Babri Mosque and split Hin­dus and Mus­lims re­sult­ing in mas­sacres across the coun­try. And that at every step, the state gov­ern­ment sup­ported the im­mi­nent de­mo­li­tion by tacit, open and ma­te­r­ial sup­port.

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Liber­han said af­ter com­ing to power, Kalyan Singh worked to iden­tify and re­place of­fi­cers who could have re­sisted his at­tempts and stopped the de­mo­li­tion. Trans­fer was a weapon used with alarm­ing fre­quency, al­most al­ways to re­place these of­fi­cers with pli­ant ones. The trans­fers re­sulted in giv­ing the Sangh Pari­var and its af­fil­i­ates a free run on the dis­puted struc­ture, the re­port said.

Liber­han also ob­served that as part of the same game plan, the state gov­ern­ment sta­tioned fresh re­cruits to the armed po­lice in Faiz­abad and Ay­o­d­hya and these re­cruits got so close to the kar se­vaks that they would­n’t have fired at them even if they were asked to do so. One of the key con­clu­sions of Liber­han was that Kalyan Singh stood guard against any pre­emp­tive and pre­ven­tive ac­tion by the Union gov­ern­ment or the Supreme Court. He also ob­served that Kalyan tied the hands of se­cu­rity forces and agen­cies by is­su­ing or­ders that di­rected them not to fire at any cost.