There has been somewhat of an uproar in Indian politics this week, after the release of an extensive government report on the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid, the “Liberhan” report. According to news coverage in the Indian media, the main findings of the report are 1) the destruction of the Masjid was a planned, rather than spontaneous event, and 2) the leaders of the BJP at the time were involved in the planning of the event. One of the controversial elements in the publishing of the report at this time came from the fact that it was leaked to the press before being officially published, leading the government to “table” the report in Parliament sooner than it ordinarily might have done.

The full report is here, for anyone who has an interest in reading it. (I would be curious to hear any comments from readers who’ve looked at some of it closely.)

Meanwhile, The Hindu has an editorial focusing on the leak, and how in effect it is a good thing for Indian democracy that this report finally sees the light of day:

But then the leak occurred because the government sat on the findings of an exercise that took more than 16 years to discover and establish “the sequence of events leading, and all facts and circumstances relating” to the demolition of the Babri Masjid by communal vandals on December 6, 1992. The habit of withholding from Parliament and the public the findings of expensive Commissions of Inquiry, which lack teeth in any case, until ‘action taken’ reports are readied by a slow-moving bureaucracy is indefensible. It devalues the whole exercise, aggravates the already indefensible delays, and serves up plenty of opportunity for motivated campaigns, speculation, and leaks. The news media in the present case, The Indian Express and NDTV 24x7, certainly cannot be faulted for doing their best to penetrate the veil of secrecy and get the essential findings out. This role is demonstrably in the cause of truth-discovery, and serious journalists and editors are not going to be deterred by sanctimonious cries of ‘breach of parliamentary privilege.’link)

In effect, the report is what everyone already knew. One can still argue, as the The Hindu does, that it’s important to have a formal recognition of the history, so people can finally begin to move on. The question isn’t why this report was leaked to the press now; the question is, why wasn’t it prepared and released 10 years ago or more?