Dr Chua Soi Lek, Liow Tiong Lai, Ng Yen Yen, Wee Ka Siong, and Kong Chong Ha?Or Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Abdul Hadi Awang, Khalid Samad, Husam Musa, and Sallahudin Ayub?Who would you choose? If they had to pick between the two sets of politicians, which would Malaysians select? I dare say despite MCA’s doomsday-like rhetoric that a vote for Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) will be a vote for Islamic state/extremism/hardline Malaysia, most Malays/Chinese/Indians would still vote for Nik Aziz and gang over Soi Lek and his ministers.
New Delhi. In a day long drama near the brisk railway station Hazrat Nizamuddin here, full with stonesloganeering, tear gas and fire, an old mosque was demolished by the government body, DelhiDevelopment Authority (DDA). The chief Minister of the National Capital Territory of DelhiSheila Dixit assured the agitating public by the late night that it will be rebuilt.
In a small shanty settlement of poor families, just behind the posh locality of Jangpura, there existed a temple and a mosque for over 50 years; somehow a local court ordered for their demolition, but now only one of the place of worship remains extant, thanks to the partisan waysof administration.
The government intends to shift the illegal settlers from their present hutments, which they inhabited for several years from now, but without prior allotment of anyspecific area in the national capital to live on. There was a legal wrangle between the caretakers of the two places of worship belonging to Hindus and Muslims respectively and the biggest land owner of the city DDA, the latter got judicial order in favor of their demolition in ‘public interest’ and did the ‘half-hearted’ act of erasing only one.
In early chilling morning the police barricaded the area to prevent public support from outside and in a day long operation of the DDA workers, this partisan act was accomplished. Still, hundreds of people from different parts of the city assembled in the area, a demonstration was undertaken in front of H. Nizamuddin police station led by local MLAs Tejvinder Singh Khanna, Shoeb Iqbal and Asif Mohammad Khan.
Seeing the danger of wider public unrest and political pressure, the chief minister of the city state assured that needful would be done for rebuilding of the mosque and to carrying on prayer on the site.
The first inquiry into the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992 was completed within seven days. On the morning of Sunday, December 13, Sharad Pawar, then defence minister, invited a group of friends and colleagues to the home of an associate MP. He watched a film - live footage of the whole episode, taken by some government agency, possibly intelligence. Those antique reels should still be somewhere in the archives. There was little that any inquiry committee could have added about the sequence of events on December 6 that ended with the fall of the mosque by the evening.
The causes of this historic event were also a matter of public record. L K Advani's rath yatra was not a surreptitious journey. Indeed, extensive media coverage may have been part of the purpose, since he wanted to create mass momentum for his political project. Neither was there any secrecy when Congress laid the foundation stone of the temple to Lord Ram in the middle of the 1989 polls. Babri was a central theme, along with Bofors, of those dramatic elections. The 1989 BJP versions of Varun Gandhi were full-throated, not muted, in their slogans as parties sought votes with a rhetoric that has been subsequently banned: Mandir wahin banayenge! and Mussalman ke do sthaan, Pakistanya kabristan! No one hid anything: We shall build a temple on that precise spot! Muslims have two options, either Pakistan or the graveyard!
Democracy is a volatile game played in the open. What was there left to inquire into?
All that an official inquiry could do was place a stamp of judicial impartiality on known facts. It did not seem strange, then, that Justice M S Liberhan, appointed on December 16, 1992, was asked to deliver his report in three months. If he had extended it to six months or even a year, it would have been reasonable. Why did he take 17 years?
The key actors were known and available. No sleuths needed here. Why did Liberhan take more than nine years to obtain V P Singh's deposition, and nine-and-a-half for P V Narasimha Rao's? Surely they were not evading his orders? Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti were ministers in a BJP-led government when they gave evidence. Former RSS chief K S Sudarshan appeared only on February 6, 2001. Rao could have said all he had to long before April 9, 2001, four years after he lost his job as primeminister.
Had the commission already served its first purpose by 2001? It had outlived Rao's term in office and thereby, ensured that its findings could not be used to demand Rao's resignation. Rao survived December 6, 1992 by the cynical expedient of buying out those he feared most, Muslims within the Congress. Some inside government were given promotions; most outside were inducted in a January 1993 reshuffle. Conscience purchased, life went on.
It would be interesting to know if the Liberhan Commission has disclosed the one mystery of December 6: what was Rao doing that entire day? Babri was not destroyed by a sudden, powerful, maverick explosion. It was brought down stone by stone, the process punctuated by the rousing cheers of kar sevaks.
So, what was Rao doing during those minutes and hours from morning till sunset? Sleeping. That is what his personal assistant said to the many agitated Congressmen and women who phoned to ask why the government was asleep. They were shocked to learn that this was, literally, the official explanation. Their agitation cooled when they realized that the party would have to pay a horrendous price if government was destabilized. Plus, of course, there were concrete benefits in silence.
There may not be a rational explanation for a 17-year inquiry, but there is a political explanation. Every government between 1992 and 2004 had a vested interest in delay. The minority governments of H D Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral could not have survived a day without support from the Rao-Sitaram Kesri Congress. (Mrs Sonia Gandhi was not party president then.) Neither Gowda nor Gujral would have wanted a report that indicted their benefactors.
The BJP-led coalition that ruled for six years had the guilty on its front row. Only Uma Bharti has been candid enough to say that she was delighted when the mosque fell ("I'm ready to own up to the demolition and will have no problem even if I'm hanged"
. Justice Liberhan could have punched mortal holes into the BJP front row when it was in office. And so when he sought one extension after another, there was public silence and private relief.
Whether advertently or inadvertently, Justice Liberhan protected politicians on both sides of the great divide. There remains a curiosity question. Why did he not submit his report in 2004? Admittedly Dr Manmohan Singh was finance minister in the Rao government, but he had nothing to do with the politics of Babri. When delay becomes so comfortable, why bother? A mere handful of professions are honoured with an honorific that survives beyond the office. Priests, judges, armed services officers, professors and doctors, of both the medical and academic disciplines: that’s about it. Journalists, even editors, and politicians, even cabinet ministers, would invite ridicule if they handed out visiting cards marked ‘Editor X’ or ‘Cabinet Minister Y’. Indians are, at best, ambivalent about media and politics. They respect our guardians of law, knowledge and security. There is a new tendency among former envoys to add ‘Ambassador’ before their name, a practice borrowed from America, but this is a title snatched from vanity rather than bestowed by popular acclaim.
Ego sometimes persuades a pompous politician to flaunt a bogus ‘Dr’ on his nameplate. This is not a reward for academic brilliance but an upgrade to a peacock feather, the ‘honorary doctorate’, a worthless piece of paper handed out by an institution desperate for attention. However, this does not matter too much, since we do not expect a high level of honesty from our politicians. Only two letters separate use from abuse, so there will always be a quack preening himself in the garb of a doctor. But when a person held in high esteem dilutes the trust reposed in him, it affects the collective reputation of the brotherhood.
Justice M S Liberhan did not need 17 years and a thousand pages to tell us what has been public knowledge since December 6, 1992. The Babri mosque was not torn down in the dark of night. It was brought down slowly, stone by stone, in Sunday sunlight, before hundreds of journalists, to the cheers of countless thousands of kar sewaks in and around Ayodhya. The mosque was not dynamited in a minute; it was demolished by crowbar and shovel.
Of course, senior leaders of the BJP and RSS were present, for they were kar sewaks as well. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not there, but he was in nearby Lucknow, albeit a reluctant guest, but unable to refuse the invitation to the party. Newspapers the next day, and magazines the next weekend, published their pictures, some of which became iconic. We did not need a wait of 17 years to learn that Vinay Katiyar was responsible: he has been claiming responsibility for over 6,000 days.
Sharad Pawar, then defence minister, showed a filmed record of December 6 to an invited group at the home of a party MP a few days later. The Liberhan Commission could have completed half its report by taking a look at that film. The media was equally comprehensive in its coverage of the brutal riots that followed: The Sri Krishna report has done far greater justice to the truth in its findings on the Maharashtra riots, so much so that there is all-party collusion on its non-implementation. There was only one question trapped in doubt: What was prime minister P V Narasimha Rao doing while Babri was destroyed on the longest day of the last two decades? Why was home minister S B Chavan, father of the present Maharashtra chief minister, immobile, inscrutable and stolid?
Shock raced through Delhi when word filtered through that an assault had begun in Ayodhya. Phone calls began to pour into the prime minister’s residence in the hope that he would use the authority of the state to uphold the rule of law and fulfil a political and moral obligation. There was a monstrous response from the prime minister’s personal secretary. The PM was either unavailable or, worse, asleep. It was a lie. Rao’s inaction and Chavan’s collaboration were deliberate.
Liberhan protects Rao with an equally conscious fudge, shuffling the blame on to unspecified intelligence agencies. Everyone knew what was going on, IB officers better than most. Rao called a Cabinet meeting only in the evening, when there was nothing left to be saved — not even reputation. By this time, fires of hatred were lighting up the dusk of Mumbai and dozens of cities across the nation. An elaborate programme of blame, reward and punishment was put into place. Those (including bureaucrats and journalists) who acquiesced in Rao’s charade were rewarded; Congress Muslims got a bonus for silence. Rao remained in power till 1996, but he neither ruled nor lived in peace.
The words of this column will make no difference. A government can reduce the past to rubble as easily as an Opposition party can erase a centuries-old mosque. My apologies for a rare detour into the personal, but this is a rare moment. I was a minor part of the Rao government and resigned on the night of December 6 since the stone wall constructed around the prime minister’s house had become impervious to anything except sycophancy. Words demand a different kind of loyalty, and one was relieved to return to the world of words
Dr Chua Soi Lek, Liow Tiong Lai, Ng Yen Yen, Wee Ka Siong, and Kong Chong Ha?
Or Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Abdul Hadi Awang, Khalid Samad, Husam Musa, and Sallahudin Ayub?
Who would you choose? If they had to pick between the two sets of politicians, which would Malaysians select? I dare say despite MCA’s doomsday-like rhetoric that a vote for Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) will be a vote for Islamic state/extremism/hardline Malaysia, most Malays/Chinese/Indians would still vote for Nik Aziz and gang over Soi Lek and his ministers.
New Delhi. In a day long drama near the brisk railway station Hazrat Nizamuddin here, full with stone
sloganeering, tear gas and fire, an old mosque was demolished by the government body, DelhiDevelopment Authority (DDA). The chief Minister of the National Capital Territory of DelhiSheila Dixit assured the agitating public by the late night that it will be rebuilt.
In a small shanty settlement of poor families, just behind the posh locality of Jangpura, there existed a temple and a mosque for over 50 years; somehow a local court ordered for their demolition, but now only one of the place of worship remains extant, thanks to the partisan waysof administration.
The government intends to shift the illegal settlers from their present hutments, which they inhabited for several years from now, but without prior allotment of anyspecific area in the national capital to live on. There was a legal wrangle between the caretakers of the two places of worship belonging to Hindus and Muslims respectively and the biggest land owner of the city DDA, the latter got judicial order in favor of their demolition in ‘public interest’ and did the ‘half-hearted’ act of erasing only one.
In early chilling morning the police barricaded the area to prevent public support from outside and in a day long operation of the DDA workers, this partisan act was accomplished. Still, hundreds of people from different parts of the city assembled in the area, a demonstration was undertaken in front of H. Nizamuddin police station led by local MLAs Tejvinder Singh Khanna, Shoeb Iqbal and Asif Mohammad Khan.
Seeing the danger of wider public unrest and political pressure, the chief minister of the city state assured that needful would be done for rebuilding of the mosque and to carrying on prayer on the site.
The government intends to shift the illegal settlers from their present hutments, which they inhabited for several years from now, but without prior allotment of anyspecific area in the national capital to live on. There was a legal wrangle between the caretakers of the two places of worship belonging to Hindus and Muslims respectively and the biggest land owner of the city DDA, the latter got judicial order in favor of their demolition in ‘public interest’ and did the ‘half-hearted’ act of erasing only one.
In early chilling morning the police barricaded the area to prevent public support from outside and in a day long operation of the DDA workers, this partisan act was accomplished. Still, hundreds of people from different parts of the city assembled in the area, a demonstration was undertaken in front of H. Nizamuddin police station led by local MLAs Tejvinder Singh Khanna, Shoeb Iqbal and Asif Mohammad Khan.
Seeing the danger of wider public unrest and political pressure, the chief minister of the city state assured that needful would be done for rebuilding of the mosque and to carrying on prayer on the site.
The first inquiry into the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992 was completed within seven days. On the morning of Sunday, December 13, Sharad Pawar, then defence minister, invited a group of friends and colleagues to the home of an associate MP. He watched a film - live footage of the whole episode, taken by some government agency, possibly intelligence. Those antique reels should still be somewhere in the archives. There was little that any inquiry committee could have added about the sequence of events on December 6 that ended with the fall of the mosque by the evening.
The causes of this historic event were also a matter of public record. L K Advani's rath yatra was not a surreptitious journey. Indeed, extensive media coverage may have been part of the purpose, since he wanted to create mass momentum for his political project. Neither was there any secrecy when Congress laid the foundation stone of the temple to Lord Ram in the middle of the 1989 polls. Babri was a central theme, along with Bofors, of those dramatic elections. The 1989 BJP versions of Varun Gandhi were full-throated, not muted, in their slogans as parties sought votes with a rhetoric that has been subsequently banned: Mandir wahin banayenge! and Mussalman ke do sthaan, Pakistanya kabristan! No one hid anything: We shall build a temple on that precise spot! Muslims have two options, either Pakistan or the graveyard!
Democracy is a volatile game played in the open. What was there left to inquire into?
All that an official inquiry could do was place a stamp of judicial impartiality on known facts. It did not seem strange, then, that Justice M S Liberhan, appointed on December 16, 1992, was asked to deliver his report in three months. If he had extended it to six months or even a year, it would have been reasonable. Why did he take 17 years?
The key actors were known and available. No sleuths needed here. Why did Liberhan take more than nine years to obtain V P Singh's deposition, and nine-and-a-half for P V Narasimha Rao's? Surely they were not evading his orders? Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti were ministers in a BJP-led government when they gave evidence. Former RSS chief K S Sudarshan appeared only on February 6, 2001. Rao could have said all he had to long before April 9, 2001, four years after he lost his job as primeminister.
Had the commission already served its first purpose by 2001? It had outlived Rao's term in office and thereby, ensured that its findings could not be used to demand Rao's resignation. Rao survived December 6, 1992 by the cynical expedient of buying out those he feared most, Muslims within the Congress. Some inside government were given promotions; most outside were inducted in a January 1993 reshuffle. Conscience purchased, life went on.
It would be interesting to know if the Liberhan Commission has disclosed the one mystery of December 6: what was Rao doing that entire day? Babri was not destroyed by a sudden, powerful, maverick explosion. It was brought down stone by stone, the process punctuated by the rousing cheers of kar sevaks.
So, what was Rao doing during those minutes and hours from morning till sunset? Sleeping. That is what his personal assistant said to the many agitated Congressmen and women who phoned to ask why the government was asleep. They were shocked to learn that this was, literally, the official explanation. Their agitation cooled when they realized that the party would have to pay a horrendous price if government was destabilized. Plus, of course, there were concrete benefits in silence.
There may not be a rational explanation for a 17-year inquiry, but there is a political explanation. Every government between 1992 and 2004 had a vested interest in delay. The minority governments of H D Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral could not have survived a day without support from the Rao-Sitaram Kesri Congress. (Mrs Sonia Gandhi was not party president then.) Neither Gowda nor Gujral would have wanted a report that indicted their benefactors.
The BJP-led coalition that ruled for six years had the guilty on its front row. Only Uma Bharti has been candid enough to say that she was delighted when the mosque fell ("I'm ready to own up to the demolition and will have no problem even if I'm hanged". Justice Liberhan could have punched mortal holes into the BJP front row when it was in office. And so when he sought one extension after another, there was public silence and private relief.
. Justice Liberhan could have punched mortal holes into the BJP front row when it was in office. And so when he sought one extension after another, there was public silence and private relief.Whether advertently or inadvertently, Justice Liberhan protected politicians on both sides of the great divide. There remains a curiosity question. Why did he not submit his report in 2004? Admittedly Dr Manmohan Singh was finance minister in the Rao government, but he had nothing to do with the politics of Babri. When delay becomes so comfortable, why bother? A mere handful of professions are honoured with an honorific that survives beyond the office. Priests, judges, armed services officers, professors and doctors, of both the medical and academic disciplines: that’s about it. Journalists, even editors, and politicians, even cabinet ministers, would invite ridicule if they handed out visiting cards marked ‘Editor X’ or ‘Cabinet Minister Y’. Indians are, at best, ambivalent about media and politics. They respect our guardians of law, knowledge and security. There is a new tendency among former envoys to add ‘Ambassador’ before their name, a practice borrowed from America, but this is a title snatched from vanity rather than bestowed by popular acclaim.
Ego sometimes persuades a pompous politician to flaunt a bogus ‘Dr’ on his nameplate. This is not a reward for academic brilliance but an upgrade to a peacock feather, the ‘honorary doctorate’, a worthless piece of paper handed out by an institution desperate for attention. However, this does not matter too much, since we do not expect a high level of honesty from our politicians. Only two letters separate use from abuse, so there will always be a quack preening himself in the garb of a doctor. But when a person held in high esteem dilutes the trust reposed in him, it affects the collective reputation of the brotherhood.
Justice M S Liberhan did not need 17 years and a thousand pages to tell us what has been public knowledge since December 6, 1992. The Babri mosque was not torn down in the dark of night. It was brought down slowly, stone by stone, in Sunday sunlight, before hundreds of journalists, to the cheers of countless thousands of kar sewaks in and around Ayodhya. The mosque was not dynamited in a minute; it was demolished by crowbar and shovel.
Justice M S Liberhan did not need 17 years and a thousand pages to tell us what has been public knowledge since December 6, 1992. The Babri mosque was not torn down in the dark of night. It was brought down slowly, stone by stone, in Sunday sunlight, before hundreds of journalists, to the cheers of countless thousands of kar sewaks in and around Ayodhya. The mosque was not dynamited in a minute; it was demolished by crowbar and shovel.
Of course, senior leaders of the BJP and RSS were present, for they were kar sewaks as well. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not there, but he was in nearby Lucknow, albeit a reluctant guest, but unable to refuse the invitation to the party. Newspapers the next day, and magazines the next weekend, published their pictures, some of which became iconic. We did not need a wait of 17 years to learn that Vinay Katiyar was responsible: he has been claiming responsibility for over 6,000 days.
Sharad Pawar, then defence minister, showed a filmed record of December 6 to an invited group at the home of a party MP a few days later. The Liberhan Commission could have completed half its report by taking a look at that film. The media was equally comprehensive in its coverage of the brutal riots that followed: The Sri Krishna report has done far greater justice to the truth in its findings on the Maharashtra riots, so much so that there is all-party collusion on its non-implementation. There was only one question trapped in doubt: What was prime minister P V Narasimha Rao doing while Babri was destroyed on the longest day of the last two decades? Why was home minister S B Chavan, father of the present Maharashtra chief minister, immobile, inscrutable and stolid?
Shock raced through Delhi when word filtered through that an assault had begun in Ayodhya. Phone calls began to pour into the prime minister’s residence in the hope that he would use the authority of the state to uphold the rule of law and fulfil a political and moral obligation. There was a monstrous response from the prime minister’s personal secretary. The PM was either unavailable or, worse, asleep. It was a lie. Rao’s inaction and Chavan’s collaboration were deliberate.
Liberhan protects Rao with an equally conscious fudge, shuffling the blame on to unspecified intelligence agencies. Everyone knew what was going on, IB officers better than most. Rao called a Cabinet meeting only in the evening, when there was nothing left to be saved — not even reputation. By this time, fires of hatred were lighting up the dusk of Mumbai and dozens of cities across the nation. An elaborate programme of blame, reward and punishment was put into place. Those (including bureaucrats and journalists) who acquiesced in Rao’s charade were rewarded; Congress Muslims got a bonus for silence. Rao remained in power till 1996, but he neither ruled nor lived in peace.
The words of this column will make no difference. A government can reduce the past to rubble as easily as an Opposition party can erase a centuries-old mosque. My apologies for a rare detour into the personal, but this is a rare moment. I was a minor part of the Rao government and resigned on the night of December 6 since the stone wall constructed around the prime minister’s house had become impervious to anything except sycophancy. Words demand a different kind of loyalty, and one was relieved to return to the world of words
Malay group plans protest over ‘azan dispute’
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I would like to question the blatant abuse of power by the DAP Komtar State Assemblyman who arrogantly orders the Penang City Council Enforcement Team to confiscate stainless steel equipment and even a refrigerator from the Nasi Kandar outlet that became the latest victim of official DAP tyranny over there in Penang?
Would the DAP be as strict with enforcing such action on all traders there in Penang where those of us who are Penangites know as to the obvious bias there with regard to the DAP closing one eye on the Chinese illegal traders who outnumber the Malays and Mamaks at any one time if we are to conduct a spotcheck without giving a damn as to who is flouting the laws there?
One look at the face of this obvious arrogant @#$%^&*! and we know the kind of bloody pompous power crazy maniacs we have terrorizing the Muslim traders over there!
I call upon all Muslim traders and businessmen of Penang to rally behind the victimized trader and seek the return of all his trading equipment back to him promptly!
Hangpa nak tunggu apa lagi?
I would like to question the blatant abuse of power by the DAP Komtar State Assemblyman who arrogantly orders the Penang City Council Enforcement Team to confiscate stainless steel equipment and even a refrigerator from the Nasi Kandar outlet that became the latest victim of official DAP tyranny over there in Penang?
Would the DAP be as strict with enforcing such action on all traders there in Penang where those of us who are Penangites know as to the obvious bias there with regard to the DAP closing one eye on the Chinese illegal traders who outnumber the Malays and Mamaks at any one time if we are to conduct a spotcheck without giving a damn as to who is flouting the laws there?
One look at the face of this obvious arrogant @#$%^&*! and we know the kind of bloody pompous power crazy maniacs we have terrorizing the Muslim traders over there!
I call upon all Muslim traders and businessmen of Penang to rally behind the victimized trader and seek the return of all his trading equipment back to him promptly!
Hangpa nak tunggu apa lagi?
By Adib Zalkapli
January 14, 2011
Muslims leave after Friday prayer at the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur January 30, 2009. — Reuters pic
A text message has been circulating over the past few days urging Muslims to gather outside the Al Kalsiah Mosque in Pantai Dalam here, claiming that a “Chinese lawyer” had demanded the mosque stop the “azan” (call to prayer) recital.
“What right does he have to stop the call for prayers? The Chinese lawyer had arrogantly written an objection to the prime minister and cited human rights to justify his demand,” said the text message.
“All members of ‘jamaah’ are requested to attend the Friday prayers on January 14 at the Al Kalsiah Mosque Pantai Dalam and to join in the protest against the Chinese lawyer for demanding that the call for prayers be stopped,” added the unsigned message.
The lawyer, however, was not named in the brief message.
It added that the mosque situated near a new commercial development area called Bangsar South, was first opened 30 years ago, while the lawyer only moved to the Malay-majority neighbourhood about a year ago.
Pantai Dalam used to be dominated by squatters and low-cost flats but has seen the development of luxury apartments and commercial property in recent years.
Meanwhile, an official from the Muslim welfare group Pekida confirmed that it would lead the protest outside the mosque after claiming that the mosque has been forced to turn off its loudspeaker for two weeks.
“It has been two weeks since the mosque was forced to silence the call for prayers and the residents were wondering what happened. Later they found out it was because of pressure from this Chinese lawyer,” said Rahimuddin Harun from Kuala Lumpur Pekida’s Majlis Ayahanda or council of elders.
“This should not have happened as his house is about one kilometre from the mosque, but the mosque was forced to give in to the demand, because he had written letters to everyone,” he told The Malaysian Insider.
The Muslim call for prayer’s five recitals daily first became a political issue in 2008, when Selangor Executive Councillor Teresa Kok was arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for allegedly asking a Puchong mosque to stop playing the azan over its loudspeaker.
Kok, who was released a week after her arrest, denied the allegation while the mosque’s committee members also came forward to defend the Selangor DAP chairman.
