The demolition before Liberhan

Displaying his way with words, Narasimha Rao built an elaborate constitutional edifice over three hearings of the Liberhan Commission to justify his failure to save the Babri Masjid. But this week, in his fourth appearance before the Commission, Rao’s structure was demolished as completely as the mosque was eight years ago.

Except, of course, that the kar seva was performed this time with the subtle tool of cross-examination. In legal parlance, Rao broke down as a witness. He was caught lying on two vital counts while he was being questioned about his failure to deploy the Central forces in the run-up to the demolition in Ayodhya. Finding himself groping for words, Rao took permission to think over the matter for a few days and revert with a written reply. No matter what excuse he comes up with, there is little he can do to reconcile the contradictions that have come to light in his deposition.

Those lies confirm like never before his complicity in one of the most traumatic episodes in Indian history. Rao’s defence all through has been that as prime minister he did the maximum he could have done within the constitutional framework to save the Babri Masjid. At his own initiative, he stationed 195 companies of the Central forces near Ayodhya a fortnight before the kar seva scheduled for December 6, 1992. This is the most he could have done because, according to him, all that the Constitution permitted the Centre to do was to station its forces anywhere in the country. Their deployment or utilisation was entirely in the hands of the Kalyan Singh government in Uttar Pradesh. As it happened, Singh protested the stationing of the forces and did not use them till the end.

A fortnight after the demolition, Rao disclaimed any respon- sibility in the Lok Sabha as follows: ‘‘I sent my troops, para military forces. I sent them because I wanted them to be available to the state government. At no point of time do the state government tell me that they will not use them. Yet, they do not use them. I have yet to come across a scrap of paper from Kalyan Singh to say that he refuses to use the para military forces sent by the Centre.’’

Two months later, the Rao government said the same thing about Kalyan Singh in its White Paper on Ayodhya: ‘‘It was not the position of the state government that they would not use Central paramilitary forces even if it became necessary to do so. In fact, the services of the bomb detection squads and sniffer dog squads were actually utilised by the state government after the Central government brought to its notice the possibility of threat by explosives. The presumption thus appeared to be that the state government would use the Central forces if the need arose.’’

The Commission’s counsel, Anupam Gupta, confronted Rao with a detailed letter Kalyan Singh wrote to him on November 30, 1992, not only demanding the withdrawal of the Central forces but also ruling out the prospect of using them in Ayodhya. Thus, contrary to Rao’s claim in Parliament, there was indeed ‘‘a scrap of paper from Kalyan Singh to say that he refuses to use the paramilitary forces sent by the Centre.’’ More importantly, in the face of Kalyan Singh’s letter, how did Rao make the presumption that the state was open to using the Central forces? All that Rao could say in his defence was, since the state used the bomb and dog squads at the Centre’s instance, it was ‘‘a fair inference’’ that Kalyan Singh would use the Central forces as well. Realising how specious his reasoning was, Rao requested for the first time that he be allowed to respond later in writing.

He sought the same facility again when Gupta grilled him about the letter his home minister S.B. Chavan wrote to Kalyan Singh on December 3, 1992. Making a distinction between stationing and deployment of forces, Chavan said: ‘‘There can be no doubt about the constitutional and legal right of the Union government even to deploy the Central forces anywhere in the country in certain situations.’’ The unequivocal message of Chavan’s missive was, though the Centre had only stationed its forces near Ayodhya, it reserved the right even to deploy them. If this was his government’s view at the relevant time, how can Rao now interpret the Constitution to mean that deployment of the Central forces in Ayodhya was entirely in Kalyan Singh’s hands?

Gupta worsened his predicament by pointing out that the position adopted in Chavan’s letter is actually consistent with the report of the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations. This is the very report Rao — repeatedly but selectively — quoted from throughout his deposition to suggest just the opposite. Sarkaria said if ‘‘a state is unwilling or unable to suppress a serious breakdown of law and order or refuses to seek the aid of the armed forces of the Union in such a situation, the Union may of its own motion deploy its forces under its control and take whatever other steps are considered reasonably necessary for suppressing the disturbance in discharge of its duty under Article 355 of the Constitution.’’ Rao’s cross-examination can well be said to have blurred whatever difference the Congress Party claims to have with the BJP on the issue of secularism.

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