Almost six months after it entered, the cat of the Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission Report is finally out of the bag.
The people it indicts (need they be named here?) are crying "cheating, cheating" like kids playing hide and seek.(Obviously, you don't expect them to pop champagne...)
Those who kept the truth hidden from the Nation, even when it spells trouble for their political rivals are sorely disappointed now that their trump card has slipped out of the sleeve. Maybe they were waiting for another trump card called Gujarat Riot Probe so that they could have a good hand by the time Gj and MP came up for assembly elections.
After all, no one would mind if a report that took 17 years to complete took another 2-3 to be tabled in Parliament.
The Action Taken (?) Report is another example of the standard actions taken by our governments in such matters. Setting up of new Commissions, an increased load on the EC, a couple of new Bills and Amendments to keep Parliament noisy and the President('s) rubber stamp wet with ink.
Trial and punishment to those indicted ?... why, whoever heard of such a thing in this country?
Then again the punishment given to tired old men (because thats what the culprits are now) will be lenient, especially when they are people in really high places.
Commissions and Bills...will they unite our religiously divided society? Or teach the generations to come the value of unity?
Ayodhya, Babri, riots, 1993 and Liberhan will never find their way into history books (because children have to learn about our glorious freedom struggle thrice, don't they? ) and even if they do, into unbiased ones.
Our generation and the ones to come are left to piece together from the old timers in their families and popular culture, what exactly happened, and so most will learn the religiously bigoted versions, on both sides of the communal divide, because our older generations are essentially bigoted.
(Quite an accusation, but just try analyzing the religious tolerance levels of the older members of your family).
Only one thing can hope to slightly correct this great mistake and that is trial and severe punishment of all those indicted by the Liberhan report, with proper media coverage so that the people know who is being punished, how much, and for what, and making sure that generations to come know this dark chapter of our history.
If the government is moral enough to carry out the punishment , it could be said that the election was not a complete mistake.
But the trump card approach has already shown that the government is all set to do as it pleases because there is no opposing force powerful enough. So even if it does carry out the punishment now, the motive will be, clearly, the systematic ideology-execution of their greatest political rivals and an assurance of power, so that there is no one with the political will to pursue the culprits of Bofors, 1984, Bhagalpur, et al.
It is high time we realize that this immoral government which we have elected "because the others are worse" will soon be becoming just like them, maybe even worse. We all need to do something, the least of which is, having an idea of what is going on.
