Calling former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee one of the party’s “pseudo-moderates” — along with L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi — the Liberhan Commission makes several references to Vajpayee bracketing him with his hardline colleagues when it came to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Indeed, Vajpayee figures as Number 7 in the list of 68 held responsible for pushing the country to the “brink of communal discord.”

There are at least 22 references to Vajpayee in the over 1029-page report but the most critical ones are in Chapter 14, titled Conclusions.

“The Commission is unable to hold even these pseudo moderates innocent of any wrongdoing. It cannot be assumed even for a moment that L K Advani, A B Vajpayee or M M Joshi did not know the designs of the Sangh Parivar,” Justice M S Liberhan writes on page 942.

The report goes on to say that former party ideologue K Govindacharya’s description of Vajpayee as BJP’s mukhauta (mask) could in fact be applied to all the three leaders together. It says that though these three were the public face of the organization, they hardly were in control of the situation.

“On one hand, the leaders like A B Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Advani, who are the undeniable public face and leaders of the BJP and thus, of the Parivar, constantly protested their innocence and denounced the events of December 1992. On the other hand, it stands established beyond doubt that the events of the day were neither spontaneous nor unplanned nor an unforeseen overflowing of the people’s emotions.

... contd.