FORAY | Sunday, November 29, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Liberties Liberhan took
Chandan Mitra
Remember Gulzari Lal Nanda? Although he was Prime Minister twice, I can bet only the 60-plus generation of informed citizens and quiz show participants will recall the name, fame or lack of it. GL Nanda last hit the news pages about 20 years ago when he was unceremoniously thrown out bag and baggage from a flat in Delhi’s Defence Colony for non-payment of rent. The elderly Gandhian leader died shortly thereafter in near-penury after leading a long ascetic life. The ramrod straight Congress leader of yesteryear used to wash his own clothes and cook his own meals till he was too old, infirm and bed-ridden. Upon the death of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1963 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in early 1966, Nanda was sworn in as Prime Minister for brief periods by virtue of being the senior-most member of the Cabinet. Although described as Acting PM by the media, his name adorns the record books because the Constitution does not recognise any category as ‘Acting’. He dutifully resigned on both occasions after the party chose Shastri and Indira Gandhi respectively to head the Government and was re-inducted into the Cabinet by both his successors.
Poor Gulzari Lal Nanda has been resurrected once more, this time in rather unflattering light. On page 336 of the 1,000-page-plus Justice MS Liberhan Report, there is a stinging indictment of Nanda along with former RSS chief Prof Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiyya) and Dau Dayal Khanna (a respected advocate of post-Partition refugee rehabilitation). They have been blamed for being “ardent Hindus” who created an atmosphere in which radical Hindu sentiment could grow. Nanda’s ashes must be churning in their urn at the bracketing. But more sinisterly, Liberhan insinuates that the efforts by leaders like GL Nanda eventually culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid!
If anyone has the patience or masochistic passion to labour through Liberhan’s voluminous essay on the state of the Indian polity since Independence, he will discover many prize gems of this nature. Still one thing must be said in Liberhan’s favour: Loyalist ho toh aisa! The man who appointed him to the job to which Liberhan clung on for 17 long years emerges as the silent hero of the so-called inquiry report. And why not, for thanks to PV Narasimha Rao, the retired Supreme Court judge was able to secure a bungalow in Central Delhi, a posse of staff, vehicles and other facilities at his disposal. As a result of Rao’s largesse and the indecision of subsequent United Front, NDA and UPA Governments, Liberhan’s Commission cost the exchequer a whopping Rs 8 crore in salaries alone! We don’t as yet know what the total extent of us taxpayers’ money that was squandered on producing the costliest essay in history!
Having plodded through much of this alleged report, I was left wondering who actually wrote the document. Almost every page reeks with JNU’s left-secularist ardour, barring the occasional bad grammar. It seems so pre-determined that the entire purpose of undertaking what was meant to be an “impartial inquiry” becomes a breathless blitz against Hindu sentiment. Terms like pseudo-moderate, used particularly to lampoon Atal Bihari Vajpayee give the game away. It’s typically JNU intelligentsia’s too-clever-by-half retort to LK Advani’s famous coinage — pseudo-secularist. There are long passages of pedestrian political philosophy lamenting how some politicians prioritise pursuit of power, as if politicians are supposed to renounce politics, abjure power, migrate to the jungles and meditate over their destiny!
Copious tears are shed over the presumed attempt by some people to perpetuate casteism (what’s that got to with Babri?) and damage India’s secular fabric although that is a basic feature of the Constitution. (The word ‘secular’, incidentally, was introduced in the Preamble of the Constitution along with ‘socialist’ only by an amendment passed during the Emergency years by Indira Gandhi). Also ironic is the fact that Justice Liberhan took nearly 182 months to compile his report when the same thing was completed by the CBI in 9! Cases are going on in various courts on the basis of CBI charge-sheets since then. In other words, the Liberhan report is of mere academic interest today although the use of ‘academic’ in the context of this boring essay is rather misplaced.
It is not my intention to compete with Justice Liberhan to produce an antidote for insomnia. I shall, therefore, refer only to something that concerns me personally. Having just come across LK Advani’s testimony before the Commission spanning from April 2001 to January 2002, I was surprised by the number of references to my reports regarding the fateful events of December 6, 1992, that appeared in Hindustan Times (of which I was then Executive Editor). On several occasions, the Commission’s counsel Anupam Gupta, whose ideological affinities are well known, attempted to trip up Advani by referring to passages in two reports I filed from Ayodhya (“All domes collapse under kar sewaks’ onslaught” published December 7 and “Control room that had no control”, December 8, 1992). In his reply to one of Gupta’s queries, Advani said: “I would think that as Chandan Mitra has said this, Chandan Mitra would be a very valuable witness before the Commission because I can affirm that he was present on the terrace (Ram Katha Kunj, makeshift dais where BJP/VHP leaders had assembled) for most of the time. And, therefore, if the Commission were to hear from him what precisely he saw and heard, that would be a very valuable testimony.”
Interestingly, I never got any summons from the Commission although it questioned 1,500 witnesses and virtually every journalist who was present in the Ram Mandir/Babri Masjid complex that day. In its report, the Commission narrates at length the alleged manhandling of Ruchira Gupta who was reporting for Business India those days. It reproduces without verification her (patently false) claim that she was manhandled by kar sewaks and her clothes torn. Had the Commission summoned me I would have testified under oath that nothing of the kind happened. She accompanied me, despite my pleas to the contrary, when I decided to visit the structure under destruction. In fact, she was saved by an assistant to Pramod Mahajan who pushed her out of the way because some kar sewaks got agitated by her remarks and demanded to know who she was, doubting her claim to be a kar sewak despite the saffron bandana she wore to pretend being a member of the demolition squad.
I was not remotely associated with the BJP those days and my reports in HT were factual and non-commentative, unlike those of my Leftist compatriots. Those two reports are still widely referred to by Western researchers into the demolition and its aftermath. Yet, the Commission never thought it fit to call me for evidence. But then, I am in august company. Justice Liberhan who liberally savages Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his report, never called him to testify either. After the leak of the document, Liberhan even denied on camera that Vajpayee had been pilloried. I can excuse the retired judge. If anybody takes 17 years to compile a litany of half-truths and untruths, memory can well play truant. Unless, of course, the report’s authorship itself is in some doubt!
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