One of the abiding tragedies of modern India has been that the Babri Masjid dispute could never be dealt with within a forensic legal framework. The central proposition of a constitutional democracy, that law must be allowed to take its own course, rang hollow when law was not taking any course. That the dispute itself languishes in courts, decades after it was originally instituted, is itself testament to the limited power of the law in framing this dispute. In the meantime every single political entity acquired an investment in keeping the dispute alive. The Congress ran with the hare and hunted with the hound by allowing shilanyas on the site (read Narasimha Rao’s account of Buta Singh’s conduct as home minister). Many secularist parties were less interested in finding a solution than in using the dispute to display their credentials, and many groups used the dispute to politically use minorities. Ayodhya, to borrow Emily Dickinson’s phrase, became the narcotic that nibbled away at India’s soul.

None of this context can detract from the central culpability of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar in the destruction of the mosque. The destruction was a denouement of a movement that baited minorities and left death and destruction in its wake. The only question was whether the Liberhan Commission could translate culpability into a forensically legal framework. This remains to be seen. On the face of it there is very little surprising in the revelations in relation to the BJP. When it came to the BJP it was politically convenient for all of us to hold on to distinctions without a difference. What did the distinction between saying the movement and the frenzy was planned but the destruction was not amount to? Even Rao acknowledged that the BJP leaders were pleading with the kar sevaks to stop. But that was like trying to stop an already fired bullet in mid air. Even Vajpayee’s self-exoneration, personal decency and expressions of regret were always compromised by the fact that his government did not give the slightest evidence of pursuing the perpetrators of this enormous crime. The BJP tried to dissociate itself from the act, while continuing to nurture the actors. The surprise is not in the revelations. The surprise is in our feigning surprise. For if all this is true, the report actually indicts our democracy. We were the ones trying to hold on to the ceremonies of innocence, so that we could allow a space where Hindutva was politically acceptable, but no one had to own up to its consequences.

... contd.