6 De­cem­ber is the mar­tyr­dom day of the Babri Masjid -a cen­turies old in­sti­tu­tion de­mol­ished by a mob in the name of Ram. As the Supreme Court takes up the mat­ter for fi­nal ad­ju­di­ca­tion, Jus­tice Liber­han, ques­tions the Supreme Court de­ci­sion to hear the case with­out dis­pos­ing off the mat­ter re­lat­ing to the guilt of those re­spon­si­ble for the de­mo­li­tion.  As the hate crescendo drowns the find­ings of the Jus­tice Liber­han Com­mis­sion, in the in­ter­est of jus­tice and truth, WSN re­pro­duces ex­cerpts from the Jus­tice Liber­han re­port. We also pro­vide link to off­beat film­maker Anand Pat­ward­han’s doc­u­men­tary, Ram ke Nam.

What hap­pened on Dec 6, 1992, was not the cul­mi­na­tion of a move­ment, but rather the re­sult of a mo­bi­liza­tion, fanned, fi­nanced and fa­cil­i­tated by the Sangh Pari­var, with Kalyan Singh re­duc­ing the UP ad­min­is­tra­tion to un­ques­tion­ing com­pli­ance, con­cludes the Liber­han Com­mis­sion of In­quiry. It makes lit­tle dis­tinc­tion be­tween the Pari­var’s ‘pseudo-mod­er­ates’ and ‘rad­i­cals’, say­ing the dif­fer­ence lay in the modes, not in the ends they may have been try­ing to achieve. Here are some ex­cerpts from the Liber­han Com­mis­sion re­port:

Ex­cept for self-serv­ing hy­per­bole, the Ay­o­d­hya cam­paign did not en­joy the will­ing and vol­un­tary sup­port of the com­mon per­son, even of the av­er­age Hindu…the de­mand for a tem­ple never re­ally be­came a pub­lic move­ment… The ral­lies and ya­tras were aimed at the emo­tion­ally charged com­mon man and to make him a part of the de­mand…

The mo­bil­i­sa­tion re­quired lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port for ac­com­mo­dat­ing the in­com­ing masses in tents and other shel­ters, pro­vid­ing foods and other ne­ces­si­ties for their board­ing and lodg­ing. Fa­cil­i­ties had to be pro­vided not only for the kar­se­vaks, but also for their lead­ers… It was sus­tained and fur­ther hyped up by the daily pub­lic meet­ings held at the Ram Katha Kunj since 1.12.1992. 

As is ev­i­dent from the ev­i­dence, in or­der to sup­port the pre­req­ui­sites for such a move­ment, the fi­nances re­quired were chan­neled from the cof­fers of the var­i­ous Sangh Pari­var or­ga­ni­za­tions through var­i­ous banks to ac­counts held in the names of var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions and in­di­vid­u­als.

Apart from the in­flow of the cash from uniden­ti­fi­able sources, cash was also trans­ferred and trans­acted through banks… The RSS, VHP, BJP and also other mem­bers of the Sangh Pari­var raised funds for con­duct­ing the move­ment from time to time. The re­cip­i­ent or­ga­ni­za­tions were mostly the Ram Janam Bhoomi Nyas, Bharat Kalyan Pratish­tan, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ram Janamb­hoomi Nyas Paduka Pu­jan Nidhi, Shri Ram Janamb­hoomi Nyas Shri Ram Shila Pu­jan, Jan Hiteshi and the ac­counts were op­er­ated by Onkar Bhave, Ma­hant Paramhans Ram­chan­der Das, Nritya Gopal Das, Gur­jan Singh and Narad Saran, Acharya Giri­raj Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmia, Nana Bhag­wat, Jaswant Rai Gupta, B P Tosh­ni­wal, Sitaram Agar­wal, Ashok Sing­hal, Ramesh­war Dyal, Prem Nath, Cham­pat Rai, Surya Kr­is­han, Yash­want Bhatt, Avdesh Ku­mar Das Shas­tri etc.  …the amounts trans­acted ex­ceeded many tens of crores of ru­pees which were utilised for ef­fect­ing the events of De­cem­ber 6th, 1992. 

The uti­liza­tion of such huge monies is a cat­e­gor­i­cal pointer to the plan­ning and pre­plan­ning car­ried out… In con­for­mity with the army-like dis­ci­pline of or­ga­ni­za­tions like the RSS, the man­ner in which the arrange­ments and mo­bi­liza­tion was car­ried out does not cor­rob­o­rate the the­ory that (it)… was for sym­bolic kar­seva alone…

The mode of as­sault, the small num­ber of kar­se­vaks who car­ried out the de­mo­li­tion and the con­straints of the space to ac­com­mo­date the num­ber of peo­ple, veil­ing of the iden­tity of the kar­se­vaks en­ter­ing the domes, the re­moval of the idols and the cash box from un­der the dome and the sub­se­quent re­in­stal­la­tion in the makeshift tem­ple, con­struc­tion of the makeshift tem­ple, avail­abil­ity of in­stru­ments and ma­te­r­ial for de­mo­li­tion and for the swift con­struc­tion of the makeshift tem­ple lead to the con­clu­sion that the de­mo­li­tion was car­ried out with painstak­ing prepa­ra­tion and pre­plan­ning. The in­volve­ment of quite a num­ber of kar­se­vaks… or­di­nar­ily could not have been kept se­cret from peo­ple like the Chief Min­is­ter… or from K S Su­dar­shan who was head­ing the RSS while their swayam­se­vaks were de­tailed on the spot for each and every act re­quired to be car­ried out; or lo­cal lead­ers like Vinay Kati­yar or Ashok Sing­hal or the per­sons pre­sent at the spot prior to De­cem­ber 6th, 1992. 

CM showed the way

There are not doubts about the cul­pa­bil­ity of Kalyan, his min­is­ters, cho­sen as co­horts

The very fact that the Chief Min­is­ter of the state of Ut­tar Pradesh, its min­is­ters and its man­darins sup­ported the de­struc­tion with tacit, open, ac­tive and ma­te­r­ial sup­port at every step, but did not make it part of the of­fi­cially stated agenda lends cre­dence to the fact that they were aware of the gross il­le­gal­ity…they were guilty of…

The RSS, Shiv Sena, Ba­jrang Dal, BJP etc… are col­lec­tively an im­mense and awe­some en­tity with a shrewd brain, a wide en­com­pass­ing sweep and the crush­ing strength of a mob… the de­struc­tion of the dis­puted struc­ture was only one vic­to­ri­ous bat­tle in their on­go­ing cam­paign against sec­u­lar­ism and the mul­ti­cul­tural so­ci­ety, clothed in the garb of re­li­gion, re­gions, reser­va­tions, castes etc… 

There is no man­ner of doubt ad­mis­si­ble in the cul­pa­bil­ity and re­spon­si­bil­ity of the Chief Min­is­ter, his min­is­ters and his co­horts who were hand­picked to oc­cupy se­lected posts. Paramhans Ram­chan­der Das, Ashok Sing­hal, Vinay Kati­yar, Vishnu Hari Dalmia, Vamdev, K S Su­dar­shan, H V She­shadri, Lalji Tan­don, Kalraj Mishra, Govin­dacharya and oth­ers… formed this com­plete car­tel led by Kalyan Singh and sup­ported by the icons of the move­ment like L K Ad­vani, M M Joshi, A B Va­j­payee. 

Chief Min­is­ter Kalyan Singh stood on guard against the pos­si­bil­ity of any pre-emp­tive or pre­ven­tive ac­tion by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment or the Supreme Court of In­dia or the other courts or any other in­sti­tu­tion… 

There were few who re­sisted the be­trayal of democ­racy; those who did were swiftly re­moved, side­lined and ren­dered tooth­less… The po­lice and the ad­min­is­tra­tion were openly sup­port­ing the RSS…

“It can’t be as­sumed even for a mo­ment that Va­j­payee, Ad­vani or Joshi did not know the de­signs of Sangh Pari­var -the fund­ing, the plan­ning, tens of cror­ers went out from cof­fers of Pari­var to out­fits, in­di­vid­u­als.”

The Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was crip­pled by the fail­ure of the in­tel­li­gence agen­cies… It stayed its hand de­fer­ring to the Hon’ble Supreme Court which had taken up the mat­ter… The Supreme Court was in turn mis­led by the pre­ten­tious un­der­tak­ings given to it by the UP gov­ern­ment and the lead­er­ship of the move­ment and the all-is-well re­ports by its rap­por­teur Tej Shanker…

The RSS, Shiv Sena, Ba­jrang Dal, BJP etc… are col­lec­tively an im­mense and awe­some en­tity with a shrewd brain, a wide en­com­pass­ing sweep and the crush­ing strength of a mob… the de­struc­tion of the dis­puted struc­ture was only one vic­to­ri­ous bat­tle in their on­go­ing cam­paign against sec­u­lar­ism and the mul­ti­cul­tural so­ci­ety, clothed in the garb of re­li­gion, re­gions, reser­va­tions, castes etc…

A Gov­ern­ment that was­n’t

RSS writ ran in state, gov­ern­ment em­barked on pogrom that led up to De­cem­ber 6, 2017

The ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cers, the po­lice and se­lec­tive sec­tions of the bu­reau­cracy were a part and par­cel of the car­tel of the BJP CM and will­ingly helped it achieve its elec­tion man­i­festo… They could have at least at­tempted to stem the tide of com­mu­nal­ism and the rape of democ­racy. But they chose to re­main deaf, dumb and blind through­out…

Im­me­di­ately af­ter en­ter­ing into of­fice, the gov­ern­ment of UP… em­barked on the pogrom lead­ing up to the events of De­cem­ber 6th, 1992.  The Kalyan Singh gov­ern­ment sys­tem­at­i­cally and in a pre-planned man­ner re­moved in­con­ve­nient bu­reau­crats… dis­man­tled and di­luted the se­cu­rity ap­pa­ra­tus, lied con­sis­tently to the High Court and the Supreme Court of In­dia and to the peo­ple of In­dia…

The CM of UP and his cab­i­net mem­bers con­sciously al­lowed the writ of… the RSS to run in the state. Rather it was the swayam­se­vaks of the RSS who car­ried out the pogroms or ex­e­cu­tion at the spot. The CM and his cab­i­net were the prover­bial in­sid­ers who caused the col­lapse of the en­tire sys­tem. Even when it was brought to his no­tice that the dis­puted struc­ture had been de­mol­ished and mobs were at­tack­ing the Mus­lim pop­u­lace of Ay­o­d­hya, he did not di­rect the po­lice to use force or re­sort to fir­ing… did not use the cen­tral forces… 

With­out Kalyan Singh and his cab­i­net col­leagues or the icons of the BJP, the Ay­o­d­hya cam­paign could not have suc­ceeded. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in the past had been han­dled by an ear­lier CM deny­ing the mis­cre­ants the op­por­tu­nity to wreak havoc… 

All-clear on road to de­mo­li­tion

CCTVs miss­ing as pli­ant of­fi­cers made ac­cess eas­ier, cen­tral forces kept out

Chief Min­is­ter Kalyan Singh on as­sum­ing of­fice em­barked on a fo­cused mis­sion to re­place the ad­min­is­tra­tive and po­lice of­fi­cers who were in­clined to re­sist a change in the sta­tus quo or who demon­strated the slight­est hes­i­ta­tion in con­niv­ing, sup­port­ing or col­lab­o­rat­ing…  These post­ings and trans­fers had the sin­gu­lar in­tent, pur­pose and ef­fect of smoothen­ing the ride for the de­mo­li­tion…

The sec­ond step af­ter en­sur­ing the pres­ence of a be­nign po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tive set-up was to en­sure that the hands that wielded the ba­tons and car­ried the guns were friendly to the kar­se­vaks… This gra­tu­itous dis­man­tling was se­cured by post­ing raw untested per­son­nel or trainees and sym­pa­thetic provin­cial armed con­stab­u­lary in the twin towns… They had been turned into uni­formed kar­se­vaks rather than pro­tec­tors… 

The blame or the credit for the en­tire move­ment at Ay­o­d­hya must nec­es­sar­ily be at­trib­uted to the Sangh Pari­var… As the in­ner core of the Pari­var, the top lead­er­ship of the RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, Ba­jrang Dal and the BJP bear pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity.

The well-doc­u­mented or­ders pro­hibit­ing the use of firearms or force against the kar­se­vaks and the or­gan­is­ers were also al­lowed to be in­ter­preted as a for­bear­ance of use even of less deadly meth­ods such as tear gas or the plain old lathis. In­stead of us­ing the riot shields to op­pose the vi­o­lent kar­se­vaks, they were ac­tu­ally handed over will­ingly to them by the po­lice per­son­nel and used or mis­used by them.

When push came to shove, the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were at hand to en­sure that their men toed the line and that the de­mo­li­tion of the dis­puted struc­ture was al­lowed to go ahead with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion as or­ches­trated by the lead­ers pre­sent at the spot and car­ried out by their hench­men whom they re­fused to iden­tify even be­fore me. 

…The lev­el­ling of the sur­round­ing topog­ra­phy made it easy for the peo­ple to con­gre­gate and rush (to) the dis­puted struc­ture. The earth that had been ex­ca­vated had been dumped around the perime­ter wall and the Ram De­war and acted as con­ve­nient ramps for scal­ing these mea­gre bar­ri­ers. The elec­tronic mea­sures in­clud­ing closed cir­cuit tele­vi­sions, metal de­tec­tors etc were in­ten­tion­ally ren­dered in­op­er­a­tive…

…the state gov­ern­ment did not arrange even for a sin­gle video cam­era to record the events for pos­ter­ity… The closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion cam­eras, which the state had promised the cen­tral gov­ern­ment would be mon­i­tor­ing every inch of the dis­puted struc­ture, were ei­ther in­op­er­a­tive or their footage had been hid­den away from the pub­lic and this com­mis­sion… 

The only non-man­age­able vari­able, from the Sangh Pari­var’s point of view, was the pos­si­ble de­ploy­ment of cen­tral forces in the state… This threat was also neu­tralised by se­nior and well-re­spected in­di­vid­u­als stat­ing bla­tant lies on oath be­fore the Supreme Court, apart from protest­ing against even the sta­tion­ing of cen­tral para­mil­i­tary forces…. 

The role of the Supreme Court’s ob­server in not alert­ing the Court to the clearly un­fold­ing du­plic­ity is also some­thing that raises con­cerns… Even at the mo­ment that the domes were be­ing pulled down, he was not at the spot, hav­ing been de­layed by his fam­ily mem­bers whom he had brought along to wit­ness the spec­ta­cle. 

United Colours of Cul­pa­bil­ity

They por­trayed a be­nign face, made false promises to courts, the coun­try

For the pur­pose of quan­ti­fy­ing the cul­pa­bil­ity, the var­i­ous per­sons and or­gan­i­sa­tions named in this re­port have been di­vided into three groups. 

The first group rep­re­sents those who bear the pri­mary and the great­est re­spon­si­bil­ity… These in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions were a part of the de­ci­sion mak­ing or were in­stru­men­tal in the as­sault… 

The sec­ond group con­sists of those who bear phys­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual re­spon­si­bil­ity. These per­sons and or­gan­i­sa­tions were not de­ci­sion mak­ers and could not change the course charted by those bear­ing pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity. Nev­er­the­less, with­out their sins of com­mis­sion or omis­sion, the sit­u­a­tion would not have de­te­ri­o­rated as much as it did. These in­clude those who por­trayed the be­nign face of the Ay­o­d­hya cam­paign and gave false re­as­sur­ances to the courts, the peo­ple and the na­tion as a whole.

Those who have been put in the sec­ond cat­e­gory are re­ferred to as ‘pseudo-mod­er­ates’ in con­trast to the rad­i­cals form­ing part of the first group. This is not to sug­gest that their ob­jec­tions do or do not dif­fer from the rad­i­cals. The term is used in­dica­tive of the modes that these peo­ple adopted, rather than the ends they may have been try­ing to achieve. 

It may be prob­a­ble that the pseudo-mod­er­ate el­e­ments while be­ing com­mit­ted to the erec­tion of a Ram tem­ple, were in­ter­ested for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­ency in ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of its co­ex­is­tence with the dis­puted struc­ture, at least for the time be­ing. The other dis­tinc­tion be­tween the rad­i­cals and the pseudo-mod­er­ates is also that the lat­ter had the con­struc­tion of the tem­ple on their pri­mary agenda while the for­mer were more fa­nat­i­cal about the de­mo­li­tion of what they called a na­tional shame. 

There are also those who bear ter­tiary re­spon­si­bil­ity for the sit­u­a­tion. These peo­ple may or may not have been as­so­ci­ated with the Sangh Pari­var or had any in­flu­ence over the sit­u­a­tion at all. How­ever, it was their sworn and statu­tory duty to pre­vent ex­actly the kind of events which took place… 

The Pari­var, The Pseu­dos

The Pub­lic faces, a Sangh Façade, can’t claim ben­e­fit of the doubt

The blame or the credit for the en­tire move­ment at Ay­o­d­hya must nec­es­sar­ily be at­trib­uted to the Sangh Pari­var… 

As the in­ner core of the Pari­var, the top lead­er­ship of the RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, Ba­jrang Dal and the BJP bear pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity.

The co­nun­drum which faced the com­mis­sion… was to rec­on­cile the stance of the pub­lic face of the Sangh Pari­var with the ac­tions which de­fied law, moral­ity and po­lit­i­cal ethics.

On one hand, lead­ers like A B Va­j­payee, Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Ad­vani, who are the un­de­ni­able pub­lic face and lead­ers of the BJP and thus, of the Pari­var, con­stantly protested their in­no­cence and de­nounced the events of De­cem­ber 1992…. 

“When push came to shove, the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were at hand to en­sure that their men toed the line and that the de­mo­li­tion of the dis­puted struc­ture was al­lowed to go ahead with mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion as or­ches­trated by the lead­ers pre­sent at the spot and car­ried out by their hench­men whom they re­fused to iden­tify even be­fore me.”

On the other hand, it stands es­tab­lished be­yond doubt that the events of the day were nei­ther spon­ta­neous nor un­planned nor an un­fore­seen over­flow­ing of the peo­ple’s emo­tions… 

The com­mis­sion…is un­able to hold even these pseudo-mod­er­ates’ in­no­cent of any wrong­do­ings. 

It can­not be as­sumed even for a mo­ment that L K Ad­vani, A B Va­j­payee or M M Joshi did not know the de­signs of the Sangh Pari­var… they were party to the de­ci­sions which had been taken.

The BJP was and re­mains an ap­pendage of the RSS which had the pur­pose only of pro­vid­ing an ac­cept­able ve­neer to the less pop­u­lar de­ci­sions and a fa­cade for the brash mem­bers of the Sangh Pari­var.

The much re­peated and much de­nied re­marks at­trib­uted to Govin­dacharya who called Va­j­payee a mukhota or a mask may be more ap­pro­pri­ately ap­plied to the BJP’s top lead­er­ship at the time col­lec­tively… 

These lead­ers can­not how­ever be given the ben­e­fit of the doubt and ex­on­er­ated of cul­pa­bil­ity. The de­fence of ‘su­pe­rior or­ders’ has his­tor­i­cally never been avail­able, and least of all to those whom the peo­ple have trusted and voted into power.

The Other Side

Mus­lim Lead­er­ship failed the com­mu­nity

The Mus­lim lead­er­ship pro­vided the ra­bid Hindu ide­o­logues suf­fi­cient cause to in­still fear into the com­mon cit­i­zen of In­dia… The elite po­lit­i­cal Mus­lim lead­er­ship… was nei­ther re­spon­si­ble to, nor car­ing for the wel­fare of those they pur­ported to cham­pion… 

The pres­ence of the en­emy is the pre­req­ui­site for un­rest and dis­cord. The Mus­lim lead­er­ship, wit­tingly or un­wit­tingly, ful­filled this re­quire­ment for the founders of the RSS and the VHP.

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Pos­si­bly for fear of be­ing la­belled anti-In­dian or anti-na­tional, the Mus­lim lead­er­ship did pre­cious lit­tle to counter the dis­tor­tions of his­tory that were be­ing bandied about by the Sangh Pari­var… The Mus­lim lead­er­ship… also failed to high­light the…ex­tra le­gal meth­ods adopted… to in­stall the idols in the dis­puted struc­ture or to open the locks on the gates…  The com­mis­sion holds these or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als guilty at a ter­tiary level…