The Liberhan Commission (officially Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Inquiry) was a long-running inquiry commissioned by the Government of India to investigate the destruction of the disputed Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Led by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan, it was formed on 16 December 1992 by an order of the Indian Home Union Ministry after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December and the subsequent riots there. The commission was originally mandated to submit its report within three months. Extensions were given 48 times, and after a delay of 17 years, the one-man commission submitted the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. In November 2009, a day after a newspaper published the allegedly leaked contents of the report, the report was tabled in Parliament by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
Dispute
The Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babur) was a mosque in Ayodhya on Ramkot Hill. It was destroyed in 1992 when a political rally developed into a riot involving 150,000 people,Babri mosque demolition case hearing today. Yahoo News – 18 September 2007 Despite a commitment to the Indian Supreme Court by the rally organisers that the mosque would not be harmed.Tearing down the Babri Masjid, Eye Witness BBC's Mark Tully BBC, 5 December 2002, 19:05 GMTBabri Masjid demolition was planned 10 months in advance – PTI More than 2000 people were killed in ensuing riots in many major Indian cities including Mumbai, and Delhi.The Ayodhya dispute. BBC News. 15 November 2004.
The mosque was constructed in 1527 by order of Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India on top of a destroyed Ram temple. Flint, Colin (2005). The geography of war and peace. Oxford University Press. .Vitelli, Karen (2006). Archaeological ethics (2 ed.). Rowman Altamira. . Before the 1940s, the mosque was called Masjid-i-Janmasthan ("mosque of the birthplace").Sayyid Shahabuddin Abdur Rahman, Babri Masjid, 3rd print, Azamgarh: Darul Musannifin Shibli Academy, 1987, pp. 29–30. Babur's commander-in-chief, Mir Baqi, destroyed an existing temple at the site which commemorated the birthplace of Lord Rama, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu and ruler of Ayodhya. The political, historical and socio-religious debate over the history and location of the Babri Mosque and whether a previous temple was demolished or modified to create it, is known as the Ayodhya Debate.
Terms and reference of the commission
To make an inquiry with respect to the following matters: The sequence of events leading to, and all the facts and circumstances relating to, the occurrences in the Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid complex at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 involving the destruction of the Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid structure. The role played by the Chief Minister, Members of the Council of Ministers, officials of the Government of Uttar Pradesh and by the individuals, concerned organisations and agencies in, or in connection with, the destruction of the Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid structure; The deficiencies in security measures and other arrangements as prescribed or operated in practice by the Government of Uttar Pradesh which might have contributed to the events that took place in the Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid complex, Ayodhya town and Faizabad on 6 December 1992; The sequence of events leading to, and all the facts and circumstances relating to, the assault on media persons at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992; and Any other matters related to the subject of Inquiry.
Duration and expenses
The one-man panel, one of the country's longest-running inquiry commissions, cost the government and wrote the report on the sequence of events leading to the destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu mobs on 6 December 1992 and the other issues mentioned in terms of reference.
Appointed by former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao two weeks after the demolition on 6 December 1992, to ward off criticism against his government for having failed to protect the mosque, the commission in August 2005 finished hearing its last witness Kalyan Singh – who was Uttar Pradesh chief minister at the time of the demolition and resigned soon after.
In 16 years of its proceedings, the commission recorded statements of several politicians, bureaucrats and police officials including Kalyan Singh, late Narasimha Rao, former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani and his colleagues Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati as well as Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Top bureaucrats and police officials of Uttar Pradesh, the then district magistrate R.N. Srivastava and Senior Superintendent of Police D.B. Roy of Ayodhya also recorded their statements on the demolition. In all, the Commission examined one hundred witnesses including
Mark Tully, BBC Journalist PR Kumaramangalam, Union Minister SB Chavan, Union Home Minister Uma Bharti, BJP leader KS Sudarshan, RSS leader Jyoti Basu, CPI(M) leader, member of the National Integration Council Murli Manohar Joshi, President, Bharatiya Janta Party, member of the Rajya Sabha LK Advani, Leader, Bharatiya Janta Party Vinay Katyar, Member of Parliament, Bharatiya Janta Party Vishnu Hari Dalmia, President, Vishwa Hindu Parishad VP Singh, Former Prime Minister, leader of Janta Dal Kalyan Singh, the then Chief Minister, of Uttar Pradesh P. V. Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India Tej Shankar, Supreme Court's observer in Ayodhya Arjun Singh, Union Cabinet Minister, Union Human Resource and Development Swami Sachidanand Sakshi, alias Sakshiji Maharaj, BJP Member of Parliament, Acharya of the Nirmal Panchayati Akhara, Haridwar Ashok Singhal, Leader, Vishwa Hindu Parishad Kalraj Mishra, President, Uttar Pradesh unit of Bharatiya Janta Party Mahant Paramhans Ramchander Das, President, Ram Janambhoomi Nyas Mulayam Singh Yadav, Former Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh Madhav Godbole, Union Home Secretary
Four years ago, the hearings of the Commission concluded but not before a controversy broke out with the sole Commission's Counsel Anupam Gupta dissociating himself from it owing to personal differences with Justice Liberhan. Advani, Joshi, Bharti and Kalyan Singh, who was the BJP Chief Minister at the time of demolition, appeared before the commission as witnesses. Kalyan Singh appeared only after the Delhi High Court lifted a stay order on his deposition.
Other former officials against whom criminal cases are pending in the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya include Bajrang Dal's, Vinay Katiyar.
Even before the findings of the commission were out, Congress and BJP leaders clashed over the issue.
The contents of the report
On 23 November 2009, the media began reporting on the contents of the report, which had been leaked before being made available to the legislature. It indicted top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders as being actively involved in the meticulous planning of the demolition of the mosque. It was a day of angry exchanges in parliament and cries of "Shame, shame!" in the Lok Sabha as the opposition accused the Home Ministry of deliberately leaking the report. The Parliament session had to be adjourned for the day. Parliament delayed the discussion of the report and the accompanying Action Taken Report (ATR), which contained mostly recommendations, until 22 December 2009.
The report was finally discussed and debated in the Parliament after a delay caused by demands from some members of the Parliament for the Hindi-translated version of the report. The Lok Sabha debated the report on 8 November 2009 and the Rajya Sabha followed on 10 and 11 November.
The report holds 68 people culpable, including L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and more critically, Kalyan Singh, the then-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The report accused the RSS of being the chief architect of the demolition and names it as the core of the Sangh Parivar.
The commission has identified the Kalyan Singh-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh as the key to the execution of the conspiracy to demolish Babri Masjid. Justice M S Liberhan termed Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi as pseudo-moderates, pretending to keep a distance from the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign when they were actually aware of the whole conspiracy. The report said, "They have violated the trust of the people.... There can be no greater betrayal or crime in a democracy and this Commission has no hesitation in condemning these pseudo-moderates for their sins of omission".
Findings
Kalyan Singh, who was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh during the mosque's demolition, was harshly criticized in the report. He was accused of posting bureaucrats and police officers who would stay silent during the mosque's demolition in Ayodhya. Indicting the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, the one-man commission said in its report: "Kalyan Singh's government was the essential component needed by the Sangh Parivar for its purposes. Kalyan Singh lived up to the expectations of the Parivar".
The commission's report said that Singh and his Cabinet allowed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to directly run his government. It also stated that the government had "systematically and in a pre-planned manner removed inconvenient bureaucrats from positions of power, dismantled and diluted the security apparatus and infrastructure, lied consistently to the high court and the Supreme Court of India and to the people of India to evade constitutional governance and thus betrayed the confidence of the electorate".
The Liberhan Commission stated about the demolition:
To the commission's observation that the demolition was planned, Chapter 1: page no 15, para 7.4 of the report wherein it admits: "No evidence, lead or information was provided to the commission with respect to the conspiracy or pre-planning or the joint common enterprise by any of these counsels... (of the Muslim organisations)".
Moreover, the commission noted (at page 782, para 130.24) that, "...Home Secretary Godbole stated that there was no information of planning and as such it could not be inferred that there was a conspiracy of the Congress and BJP for demolition."
"The chief minister and his cabinet were the proverbial insiders who caused the collapse of the entire system."
Singh allegedly maintained a "studied silence" even at the height of the crisis in December 1992 and "refused to allow even a single measure which might impede the Ayodhya campaign or prevent the assault on the disputed structures, the journalists or the innocent people."
He allegedly did not direct the police "to use force or resort to firing to chase away the miscreants or to save the lives of those wretched innocents..." even though he was alerted that the mosque had been demolished and rioters were attacking Muslims in Ayodhya.
"The wanton violence against human life and property continued unabated and even at that late stage, the chief minister did not use the central forces which could have been swiftly deployed", the report further states.
Uma Bharti, Govindacharya, Kalyan Singh and Shanker Singh Vaghela, all of whom were members of the BJP then, are held primarily responsible for the destruction of the mosque and the report says that they could have prevented the assault. Senior BJP leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi are called "pseudo-moderates". The report holds them intellectually and ideologically responsible for the mosque's destruction. The report says that they gave false assurances to court, people and the nation. Vajpayee, Prime Minister in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, was not present on 6 December 1992 when the mosque was brought down, but the report says it cannot be assumed that Vajpayee, Advani and others did not know of the designs of the Sangh Parivar.