Babri case: I'll produce tape before panel, says Basu

KOLKATA, JAN. 2. The former West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr. Jyoti Basu, today said he would produce an audio tape containing a controversial statement by the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Kalyan Singh, before the Liberhans commission inquiring into the Babri Masjid demolition case on January 29.

``I would submit an audio tape containing an overjoyous statement of the former UP Chief Minister that while the contractors would have taken one and a half months to bring down the Babri structure (`Dhacha' as he called it), the kar sevaks accomplished the job in five hours,'' Mr. Basu told the 61st session of the Indian History Congress, here.

Condemning the demolition of the 500-year-old historical structure by a `band of frenzied kar sevaks' on December 6, 1992, he said ``there are some who would say that the structure was not pulled down, but it collapsed, or that it was an accident and not organised, as the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, personally told me.''

Mr. Basu termed `unfortunate' the manner in which a high official in a government body in Delhi had `gone out of his way' to suggest that the mosque had no religious significance and Muslims should hand over the site to the Hindus.

Hindutva

Lashing out at the BJP's `Hindutva' agenda, he said the `tragic upsurge' of sectarian and fundamentalist political forces in recent times sought to use history to take the country backwards and mould people's intellect with ``obscurantism and fundamentalist values.''

``At a time when historians should be encouraged to enlighten us on other issues, attempts are being made in an organised manner to divert popular attention to the Mandir-Masjid-Church issue. I feel perturbed by the venom being spread against religious minorities and the violence perpetrated against them.''

On the pretext of curriculum reforms, textbooks were being rewritten on the basis of communal ideology. ``While we are speaking of IT revolution, we are also toying with ideas of vedic mathematics and a course in astrology. I also understand that in some school books, the map of India is being shown as including not only Pakistan and Bangladesh, but also the entire region of Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and even parts of Myanmar. I wonder what our neighbours think of this,'' Mr. Basu said.

In a book series for school children, the section on the Freedom movement eulogised Hegdewar and Golwalkar, but undermined the contributions of mainstream national leaders, Muslims and communists, he observed.

``The changes proposed in history texts go against our perceived wisdom and certainly do not rest on consensus. Hindutva, now being assiduously propagated, is a direct assault on secularism, a basic feature of our Constitution,'' Mr. Basu rued.

`Historians being stifled'

Lambasting the Centre for ``stifling the voices of historians who refuse to toe the government line,'' he said, the Towards Freedom Episode edited by two leading historians, Sumit Sarkar and K N Panikkar, were `unceremoniously withdrawn.'

``There is a widespread suspicion that these volumes were not published because they contained documents indicating the `anti- national role of the RSS and other sectarian organisations during our freedom struggle,'' he said.

``...The government should clear this suspicion. But perhaps the suspicion has gained credibility from recent researches indicating contacts between sections of Hindu nationalists of the 1930s and members of the Italian fascist State.''

Mr. Basu wondered how a senior official of the Human Resource Development Ministry was allowed to ``cross the accepted limits of bureaucratic discipline'' to suggest prohibition of conversion in a government- sponsored journal and assert that intellectual freedom in the country suffered with the advent of some monotheistic religions having a single holy book, ``obviously implying Islam and Christianity.''

Regretting that nothing had been as tragic in the 53 years of Independence as undermining national culture through a ``systematic misinterpretation'' of history, Mr. Basu called upon historians to cater to objective information to counter such ``distortion and falsification.''

- PTI

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