EDITS | Tuesday, January 12, 2010 | Email | Print | 
Decoding the Liberhan code
A Surya Prakash
Since we are prone to appointing commissions of inquiry at the drop of a hat, political writers often have to suffer the tedium of wading through hundreds of pages of dull prose when the reports of such commissions are tabled in Parliament or State legislatures.
While many commissions are appointed with the best of intentions, the quality of their output can never be guaranteed. Some commissions, which are headed by men of stature, often do painstaking work and this diligence is obvious when one reads their reports.
Such commissions ensure a logical connect between the evidence gathered and the conclusions drawn. However, there are others which just do not measure up to the task either because the person heading it is ill-equipped for the job or is unable to gather evidence — or, worse still, allows pre-conceived notions to dictate the outcome.
The Liberhan Commission, which drained the public exchequer of Rs 8 crore and took a record 17 years to probe the destruction of the structure known as the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, most certainly falls in the latter category. Large parts of this report are so incomprehensible that if we ever institute a prize for the worst report ever produced by a commission of inquiry, the Liberhan Commission would win it hands down.
While much has been written about this commission’s conclusions, not enough has been said about the unintelligible parts of this report. Since public money has gone down the drain because of the prolonged existence of this commission, it would be in public interest to reproduce excerpts from its report and ask readers if any of them has any clue about what it is trying to say!
Let us begin with para 149.13 on page 886, which is a real gem. The commission says, “No one should be allowed to recognise religion from political ends as was done in the case in hand. There is no doubt that constitutional philosophies always have political results but it is understood that they should not have political intentions.” Can someone please decipher this gobbledygook?
Next, take a look at this paragraph on page 884: “At the cost of repetition it may be observed that enduring freedom is pretence for manipulating Indian affairs. Political and religious overlords attempted to rewrite the national statistics, citing the protection of Hindus or Hindu as a religion as their sole fiefdom. Political parties supported by religious parties may have secured majority in particular state legislatures… etc.”
Will the commission please tell us what it means when it says that “enduring freedom is pretence for manipulating Indian affairs”? Is the commission hinting that we should not be a free nation? In which case, does it want us to do away with our hard-earned freedom? Further, will someone explain what the commission had in mind when it said that some people “attempted to rewrite national statistics”?
Finally, here is one more Liberhan ‘finding’ on page 20: “During inquiry, it has been rightly been impressed and patently has come on record that casteism and communalism exists in almost all organisations and institutions. Its infiltration in the community starts among the very young persons.”
There are many more examples of such ‘wisdom’ in this report, but this newspaper will have to bring out a special edition if one ever gets down to reproducing all of them.
Further, the commission ties itself in knots when it dabbles in history and comes up with the most extraordinary formulation in regard to the country’s partition. It says on page 874 that “two religious groups in a nation cannot claim a separate nation only by virtue of religious identity. Though prior to partition the two-nation theory propounded by the Muslim League was not accepted, now it has become an established fact…”.
What does the commission mean when it says the two-nation theory propounded by the Muslim League was not accepted prior to partition? The statement that “two religious groups in a nation cannot claim a separate nation only by virtue of religious identity” makes no sense at all when we all know that the Muslim League did make that claim and succeeded in dividing India. Also, the Hindus did not seek partition. So where is the question of “two religious groups” claiming separate nations?
Justice MS Liberhan also tries to defend bogus historians and rewrite history on page 875: “Hindu nationalist(s) draw on Indian history to point out that the Muslim kings destroyed many Hindu temples. Most of the Muslim emperors with passage of time were Hinduised, and to cast a typical Muslim in the same mould as the Moghul emperors in India would be a travesty of history.” Mr Liberhan, please make up your mind. If most of the Muslim emperors were ‘Hinduised’, what is the problem in casting a ‘typical Muslim’ in the mould of the Moghul rulers?
Finally, in its anxiety to run down the BJP, the commission goes so far as to offer a blanket ‘secular’ certificate to all other political parties in the country. On page 874, it says, “There is no doubt that during the elections three quarters of Hindus in India have not voted in favour of BJP rather for secular parties.” How extraordinary. According to this commission, all non-BJP votes went to ‘secular parties’. Therefore, it would like us to believe that Mr Ram Vilas Paswan’s party that paraded a Bin Laden lookalike at public meetings is a secular party and so is the Muslim League, the Majlis Itehadul Muslimeen and the rabid PDP headed by Abdul Nasser Madani in Kerala. Needless to say, the commission has no doubt whatsoever about the ‘secular’ credentials of the Congress which executed a pogrom against Sikhs in 1984.
Strangely, the commission is not even aware of the detailed work done just a few years ago by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, which was headed by one of our most eminent and upright judges — Justice MN Venkatachalaiah. Justice Liberhan makes the laughable suggestion that “it is high time” we looked into the working of the Constitution. He says Parliament must constitute “an assembly” for this purpose.
We must now appeal to the Union Government to appoint yet another Commission of Inquiry to decode the report of the Liberhan Commission.
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