On Wednesday, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court acquitted all the 32 surviving people accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case. The court said that the leaders of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement that pushed for a temple to be constructed at the spot where the Babri Masjid stood were not responsible for the actual demolition of the mosque by hundreds of Hindutva supporters on December 6, 1992. What is more, the court held that the leaders of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement actually tried to prevent the mosque being demolished.
However, the Union government’s Liberhan Commission, constituted in 1992 to inquire into the demolition, had come to a starkly different conclusion when it submitted its report in 2009. The commission maintained that the Ramjanmabhoomi movement – which was fuelled by a motorcade campaign by Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani through…