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Liberahan Panel - 1

Mr Vajpayee is an honourable man

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam on the professed innocence of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee in the crime of Babri Masjid demolition

Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the civilised mukhauta  (mask) of the uncivil Sangh, has always had his way of hunting with the hound and running with the hare. He has, in the words of the late Kamlapati Tripathy, perfected the art of speaking with a forked tongue.

The Sangh has consistently used him to project a softer face while engaging in violent, hate-driven politics. That is the reason the Sangh’s former high-falutin jargon maker Govindacharya described him as the mukhauta  of the Sangh.

The Liberahan Commission report has disturbed the hornet nest called the Sangh Parivar. Instead of coming clean on the anti-national conspiracy to trigger nationwide anti-Muslim riots by demolishing the Babri Masjid, they have announced their intent to “take an aggressive stance” on the enquiry report. That is what we call “chori aur seena-zori ”.

Virtually every Sanghi is asking with an expression of injured innocence: “How come a gentleman like Vajpayeeji has been dragged into the demolition episode?” Even the hero of Ayodhya destruction, Mr LK Advani, has claimed to be surprised at the inclusion of Mr Vajpayee in Liberahan’s list of the indicted.

The Ayodhya crime took place on December 6, 1992. The Sangh combine is saying Mr Vajpayee was not there in Ayodhya on that fateful day. It is half true, as any other Sangh declaration is. The fact is that he was merely at a couple of hours drive from Ayodhya, sitting in Lucknow in the evening of December 5, 1992. He said there that he had come to Lucknow to go to Ayodhya to participate in Kar Seva  the next day.

His handlers, the RSS bosses, decided that the mukhauta should not be seen in the company of the vandals destroying the Babri Masjid. He said he was to proceed to Ayodhya when he was asked to go back. He said, “Mujhe kaha gaya hai ki tum Dilli wapas jao ”.

In his familiar blow-hot blow-cold style the honourable Mr Vajpayee did everything to aggravate the communal tension and create enough hysteria to demolish the mosque. He blew hot saying he did not know what was gong to happen at Ayodha the next day: “Mein nahin jaanta ki kal wahaan kya hoga ”. The honourable Mr Vajpayee knew everything, but he knew nothing.

He very well knew what the kar sevaks  and their ringleaders were up to. His veiled, “Mein nahin jaanta ki kal wahaan keya hoga ” was, in fact, a rhetorical way of saying, “I know that tomorrow our parivar  is going to commit a dastardly act”. This was his way of blowing cold.

The cynicism and evil intent of the Sangh was reflected clearly in his remark that the ground would have to be levelled there (at Ayodhya): “Wahaan zameen ko samtal karna padega ”. Naturally, what he meant was clear: that the Babri Masjid would have to be demolished and the ground to be levelled for a Ram temple to be built on it.

The Liberahan report has indicted Mr Vajpayee for his role in the crime. His name figures even ahead of Mr Advani. Some newspapers have a full report of what he said on December 5, 1992. That shows how deeply he was involved. The Sangh had not hatched the conspiracy by keeping him out of the loop.

He staged another charade in Delhi soon after the Ayodhya crime. He announced that he was to take sanyas  from politics. If somebody was foolish enough (which quite enough journalists were) he or she would believe that he was going to renounce politics. How true the honourable Mr Vajpayee was to his word can be known from the fact that he went on to become India’s prime minister twice, the first time for a humiliatingly short time.

Now that he has been forced out of politics by bad health and old age Mr Vajpayee cannot claim that he has voluntarily taken sanyas. Originally, the sanyas was meant to convey some measure of disapproval of the demolition.

The honourable Mr Vajpayee’s words and deeds have wrought serious damage in the past. The blood of hundreds of innocent Muslims is as much on his head as anybody else’s in the Sangh. On the day his first government was brought down unceremoniously the late Comrade CB Gupta told the Lok Sabha that the blood of 900 innocent people massacred in Nellie in the 80s was also on Mr Vajpayee’s head, who had triggered the bloodbath with his hate speech immediately before the incident.

Yes, Mr Vajpayee is an honourable man, above suspicion, above blame.  g