Express News Service: Wednesday, Dec 09, 2009
New Delhi: Rising above the clamour in the Lok Sabha this evening, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram launched a blistering attack on the BJP and the Sangh Parivar’s “pre-planned, conspiratorial and cold-blooded” destruction of the Babri Masjid.
Breaking off from his written reply to the Liberhan Commission debate, Chidambaram emphatically invoked the idea of India to question the appeal of the Sangh’s temple politics. It had been rejected by the “people of India,” he said, adding that this rejection was an indictment far stronger than Justice Liberhan’s.
To loud applause from the Treasury benches, he said there were “two ideas of India — one the Congress and other secular parties stood for, the other which the Sangh Parivar and its allies stood for.”
“The two ideas of India clashed in 2004,” said Chidambaram. “Forget the Justice Liberhan Commission report... The people of India voted for our idea. They rejected your idea in 2004 and again in 2009. Only our idea of India will prevail — the idea of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose. India will be inclusive and a pluralist nation.”
Chidambaram admitted that the then P V Narasimha Rao government had erred but added that this was “induced by” the lies of the BJP. “Looking back, I may say that the government of the day made a wrong political judgment. Mr Narasimha Rao paid the price for this. The Congress Party paid the price for this wrong political judgment. But it was induced by the lies and false promises of the BJP,” he said.
Earlier, the din over a biting speech by Beni Prasad Verma, a recent entrant into the Congress, and his use of a Bhojpuri pejorative to describe Atal Bihari Vajpayee, threatened to take over the evening.
