The Liberhan Commission’s difficult legacy

JUSTICE (RETD.) MANMOHAN SINGH LIBERHAN passed away on August 2, 2026. He was 87. An obituary for a former judge, in the normal course, shall contain references to her/his judgments, whether in a positive light or otherwise. This, however, seems not possible in case of Justice Liberhan. Even as Justice Liberhan served for thirteen years as a judge across Chandigarh, Madras and Hyderabad, for eight of those thirteen years, he was straddled between his judgeship and the Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Inquiry. Justice Liberhan is remembered, in his death, for having headed this One-man Commission of Inquiry whose life lasted longer than his years as a judge – seventeen years. In the end, in June 2009, the report noted  that the Babri Masjid’s demolition was “neither spontaneous nor unplanned”, but the result of a carefully orchestrated conspiracy. It alleged that cadres and leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (‘VHP’), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (‘RSS’), the Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’) and Shiv Sena had actively and passively supported the demolition. 

However, beyond stating the obvious, it is far less discussed that the report failed to recognise the accountability of the Union government in the events leading up to the demolition, apportioned blame upon Muslims for being led by “fanatic” leaders, and helped establish the logic that the ‘dispute’, arising from a brutal demolition, was something to be “negotiated” between the communities. In some ways, it paved the logic of how constitutional courts, in later years, would frame and eventually dispose of the issue.    

“Oversimplified approach”

The Justice M.S. Liberhan Commission of Inquiry, appointed on December 16, 1992, exactly ten days after the Black Sunday, which marked one of the darkest chapters in independent India’s short history, witnessing the demolition of the Babri Masjid by an organized mob, was meant to submit its findings before March 16, 1993. Seventeen years and forty eight extensions went by before the judge submitted the report – a pretty much shoddy one indeed – on June 30, 2009. 

Justice Liberhan and the Commission lived through several regimes: P.V. Narasimha Rao, H.D. Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh. By the time the report came out, had himself moved on from being a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which he was when then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao left him with the onerous task of unravelling the circumstances behind the demolition of the “disputed structure” on December 6, 1992, among a few other things connected with the demolition. 

There was an element of absurdity even in the words chosen. The notification called it the “disputed structure” rather than the “Babri Masjid”. Even the least privileged sections of the society then, whose source of information and knowledge those days were news on Doordarshan knew the anatomy of the confrontation over the 16th century mosque in Faizabad and its eventual demolition in December 1992. The police had registered FIRs, even on December 6, 1992: FIR 197/1992 against unknown kar sevaks and FIR 198/1992 naming such persons as L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. The chargesheets were already filed in courts in Rae Bareli and Lucknow even while Justice Liberhan was tasked with finding out the truth. And all that the judge would tell us, after seventeen years, was that “the demolition was pre-planned.”  

The report contained some more such obvious facts as findings. That the BJP and its leaders, whom the Commission described as ‘pseudo-moderates’, were also responsible for the demolition, even while, it underscored, they were not party to the planning. In an interview to Frontline in 2009, Anupam Gupta, the sole counsel for the Liberhan Commission for eight years, between 1999 and 2007, who left the Commission because of differences with Justice Liberhan also noted that the final report adopted an “oversimplified approach”, seeing nothing but the “hands and the brains of the RSS”, and significantly overlooked the role of the VHP which was “directly germane and vital to the Ayodhya movement.” 

The report also concluded, rather limitedly, that the Uttar Pradesh state government, then headed by the BJP’s Kalyan Singh, did all things at its command to ensure the demolition and the Union government was crippled with lack of intelligence. Justice Liberhan did not even consider the grounds, then in public domain, of the Supreme Court’s decision, in S.R. Bommai (1994), upholding the dismissal of the BJP led state governments of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, on December 15, 1992 by the President of India (using Article 356 of the Constitution), a day before the Liberhan Commission was appointed.  

The S.R. Bommai judgment contained elaborate details about the guilt of these state governments, all led by the BJP, in planning and executing the heinous act, defeating the constitutional scheme. The judgment was delivered as early as in March 1994, by when Justice Liberhan was already into his work. Unfortunately, the Commission made no reference to the extensive documentation relied upon by the Supreme Court and absolved leaders of these BJP led state governments of playing any role in orchestrating the act.