Without resulting action, inquiries into Iraq and Ayodhya serve no purpose except to rake over old wounds, writes Aijaz Zaka Syed* My copy of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary explains "inquiry" as an "examination into facts or principles or a systematic investigation of a matter of public interest". Right now, two inquiries are in the news. Britain's probe into the Iraq war and India's investigation into the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. One has just begun and the other one has already wrapped up. The Ayodhya Commission presented its findings nearly six months ago, which were made public by the Indian government last week. Indeed, they have nothing in common. Yet I am struck by the unity and commonality of approach of the two inquiries conducted on two continents thousands of miles apart. Both commissions of inquiry, led by men of impeccable credentials and integrity, have been -- or had been -- tasked with looking into something that has been public knowledge for years. Justice M S Liberhan had been appointed by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao to look into the circumstances that led to the demolition of the historical 16th century mosque in Ayodhya at the hands of religious extremists 17 years ago. It took some ingenuity and imagination on the part of Rao to order a probe into the apocalypse of Ayodhya, after having slept at the wheel in the days and weeks before the destruction of the mosque on 6 December 1992. The day the karsevaks, or "religious volunteers", began dismantling the mosque, brick by brick, using shovels, crowbars and whatever that came in handy, in full view of the international press and duly presided over by Hindutva bigwigs, hundreds of calls were made by desperate officials, politicians and even journalists to the prime minister's residence seeking his intervention to stop the madness. And every time they were told the prime minister was praying. Clearly, he had a lot to pray for. Rao emerged only in the evening to summon an emergency meeting of his restless cabinet to deliberate on the crisis and on steps to "save the mosque". By then there was little to save in Ayodhya. All this is part of India's recent history. The record of that dark day with eyewitness accounts has been saved for posterity by hundreds of Indian and international newspapers and even television networks. Everyone who was alive then knows and remembers what happened that day, or in the days and weeks that followed. India went up in flames and burnt for nearly three months. Nearly 3,000 people died in the inferno that raged in dozens of cities across the country. More important, the Ayodhya incident split a great and diverse country once again along religious lines. As a Muslim leader from the Congress later put it, India might have been partitioned in 1947 but we felt the pain of that divide in 1992. Justice Liberhan himself observes in his long report that those who unleashed the December outrage on India took the country to the "brink of communal discord". But, my lord, haven't we known this all along? Why did we need a retired judge to tell us what happened nearly 17 years ago? That, too, after spending Rs800 million of the taxpayer's money and after numerous extensions? Even the Ayodhya movement did not take this much time to carefully choreograph and orchestrate the dénouement of the demolition. In the meantime, Rao passed into oblivion and a new generation of Indians was born. It perhaps mercifully doesn't know what Ayodhya was all about and how the mosque/ temple conflict ripped their nation apart. Meanwhile, the "truth" that Justice Liberhan has opted to magnanimously disclose after all these years has been sitting right there, staring us in the face. Visit any newspaper archive online and click on the issue of 3 December 1992 and the truth Justice Liberhan took 18 years to "expose" will leap at you from its front pages. The only "finding" in Justice Liberhan's 1,000-page long report is the revelation that former prime minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party's tallest leader, Vajpayee, was as "culpable'" as his deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, and 66 others. Liberhan calls Vajpayee and other BJP bigwigs "pseudo moderates". It appears Vajpayee after all had been a soft mukhauta (mask) of his party. But pray, why Judge Liberhan are you silent on the Congress Party's role in this shameful episode of the nation's history? Is it because Prime Minister Rao constituted this commission? Conveniently, Liberhan fails to see the elephant in the room. There's not a word about the conspiracy of silence that the governing Congress shared with the BJP. I know -- and thank God for that! -- Sonia and Rahul Gandhi's Congress is as dissimilar from Rao's party as cheese is from chalk. But the Ayodhya conspiracy wouldn't have been successful without the then Congress government's complicity that enabled the karsevaks to bring down the mosque at leisure -- in full view of a shocked global community. We hardly need the services of a retired judge to tell us how that sordid drama unfolded. Similarly, we do not need a former British civil servant to tell us what happened in Iraq six years ago. Clearly, Sir John Chilcot means well when he earnestly insists that his inquiry into the Iraq war will not be a "whitewash". He has vowed to produce a "full and insightful" account of the most debated war in recent memory and whether it was really necessary. But again, who doesn't know the sham of the Iraq war and how it had been inflicted on a helpless country, which was already on the verge of collapse after years of punishing UN sanctions dictated by Western powers? Having watched the news with me all these years, even my seventh grade child is probably familiar with how this totally unreasonable war was imposed on Iraq despite worldwide demonstrations and protests. And everyone knows how Bush and Blair lied through their teeth to take the world to war, against an enemy that did not exist. Trust me, Sir John; we do not need a panel of retired civil servants and experts, however distinguished, to tell us who and what destroyed Iraq. After all, this is not the first probe into the Iraq fiasco. At least three other inquiries have already been conducted in Britain into the Iraq war. What will this inquiry accomplish what the others failed to? No. What we need is action -- on Iraq, and on Ayodhya. Unless real and meaningful steps are taken in that direction, all inquiries on both counts amount to little but politicians' jugglery in semantics. More than a million lives have been wasted in Iraq, not to mention the widespread destruction of the country, and the region. On Ayodhya too, it's important to do what is right. It's not a mosque or an ancient structure that was razed in Ayodhya in the winter of 1992. What the fanatics sought to destroy was India's claim to being the world's greatest democracy and a truly pluralist society where everyone is equal before law. Justice must be dispensed in India -- and in Iraq -- if we want to make a fresh start and heal the wounds inflicted by self-serving politicians. Besides, this is the only way to avoid a repeat of those tragedies. Otherwise, these inquiries serve no purpose except to rake up old, festering wounds and add insult to injury. As Churchill once said, it is not enough to do our best; sometimes it is important to do what is necessary. * The writer is opinion editor of Khaleej Times .
