New Delhi, December 09: BJP chief Rajnath Singh may have elbowed out party colleague and deputy leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj to open the debate on Liberhan Commission report in Lok Sabha but Swaraj beat him by making an impassioned defence of her party as well as taking a strident Hindutva line that appeals to the Sangh.
Leader of Opposition L K Advani, architect of the Ayodhya movement, placed his hands over his deputy’s head in blessing her in appreciation of her performance, which also took the party “back to basics”.
She even tried keeping Muslims on board by declaring that the Liberhan report had the potential of starting communal riots, as it asked Hindus and Muslims to dump their community leaders. While asking the home minister to scrap the Liberhan report “lock, stock and barrel”, she said “khuda ke liye is report ko kharij kijiye”, using the Urdu word for God instead of the usual BJP style of invoking Ram or Ishwar.
Harping on the Hindutva theme, Swaraj said the report should be dismissed as it says the Ram temple agitation was “not a people’s movement”. Slamming Justice Liberhan, saying he would not know the facts of the wave in favour of the temple by sitting in an air-conditioned office in Chandigarh, Swaraj told the House, “It was the largest people’s movement of post-Independent India that turned L K Advani into a mass leader.”
She went on to say how during Advani’s Ayodhya yatra, she participated in the Haryana leg and every morning she would do an “aarti” of the vehicle and pick up the dust from the wheels and put it on her head. She said Liberhan had dared to call Ram a Hindu God when “Ram was really the soul of India”.
Swaraj dared the government by declaring that its leaders were ready for any punishment. “Did kar sewaks dismantle the disputed structure? Yes. Was there a conspiracy? No,” she said, adding “Yes, we are ready for any punishment, if you want to punish us. Both leaders inside and outside the House are ready.”
-Agencies