Rao offered puja while Babri Masjid was being demolished: Kuldip Nayar
By NVONews.Com Correspondent,
New Delhi: A few days after a couple of national dailies came out with articles on the 91st birth anniversary of the former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao––one of them showered fulsome praise on him––a new book highlighting his failure on the Babri Masjid front is about to hit the stand. This book follows the one of the former President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam and is likely to generate heat too.
Written by renowned journalist and India’s ambassador to Britain, Kuldip Nayar, the book alleged that Rao had connived at the demolition of Babri Masjid.
The book “Beyond the Lines,” published by Roli Books, claimed that the late Prime Minister had sat in a puja on Dec 6, 1992 when thousands of kar sevaks from all over the country led by the BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani began pulling down the Babri Masjid and rose only when everything was over.
Though Rao’s son rubbished Nayar’s version, questions are being raised as to why has the author come up with this sensational charge almost two decades after the demolition of Babri Masjid.
In a chapter on “Narasimha Rao’s Government” he wrote: “My information was that Rao had connived at the demolition. He sat at puja when the kar sevaks began pulling down the mosque and rose only when the last stone had been removed.”
Quoting the late Socialist leader he wrote: “Madhu Limaye later told me that during the puja, Rao’s aide whispered in his ears that the masjid had been demolished. Within seconds, the puja was over”, he said in the book.
However, P V Ranga Rao, son of the late Prime Minister, has been quoted in the media as saying “It is unbelievable and untenable…There is no way father would have done so. He was in anguish when the Babri structure was demolished, for he loved Muslims for years and was their ardent supporter. He told us many times that it should not have happened.”
He regretted that a journalist of the stature of Kuldip Nayar could write such things. He held “vested interests” responsible for maligning his father who is no more alive to respond.
Nayar, who is also a witness to the partition holocaust of 1947, said that when there were riots in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition, Narasimha Rao invited some senior journalists to his house.
“He was at pains to explain to us how his government had made every arrangement to stop the demolition. Rao said he was betrayed by the UP chief minister Kalyan Singh.”
“Rao’s government will always be held responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The curious thing was that he was conscious of such an eventuality but did virtually nothing to avert it”, Nayar’s book said.
Nayar is not only a reputed journalist with high political connection, but is a human rights activists and the champion of India-Pakistan friendship. Though he is 89 years old he still writes his weekly Between the Lines column which is carried by various newspapers of India and abroad.
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