P.V. Narasimha Rao not a hero?

Speaking in a panel discussion on ‘Narasimha Rao: The Forgotten Hero’ at the Tata Literature Live festival in Mumbai, P.Chidambaram said that the failure to take adequate steps to protect the Babri Masjid from demolition was a fatal political mistake of the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. A lot of people had warned Narasimha Rao that the mosque was under threat but no decisive action was taken by him to protect the mosque.

The former Finance minister also said that the threat to the mosque was not sudden and neither was it a spontaneous action on part of ‘karsevaks.’“Stones were being carried from as far as Rameshwaram and they were travelling by trains. Whole trains were being booked. Everybody knew that lakhs of people would assemble. Threat to Babri Masjid was a real one which had been there from at least 1987—88.” he said.

Mr. Chidambaram said that Rao should have moved the paramilitary forces and the Army and should have made it absolutely clear that the Babri Masjid area was under control of the Central government.“But the failure to position the paramilitary and [the failure] to say that the area was under the control of the Central government was a fatal political error, and the consequences since then for the country have been disastrous.”

Too late a revelation and too little to assuage the alienation felt by many after this “fatal mistake.”