Word: bjp
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...hundreds of years earlier, and it triggered a wave of Hindu-Muslim violence that left more than 2,000 people dead. Seventeen years later, leaks from the report of the Liberhan Commission (named for the presiding judge), which allegedly held some current leaders of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) culpable for the destruction of the mosque, provoked scuffles in Parliament, offering a reminder that beneath the "Shining India" image of modernity the BJP had once proclaimed lie some ugly, unresolved communal tensions...
...government was required to produce an action-taken report (ATR) within six months before introducing the findings for discussion in Parliament. It had planned to raise the topic before Parliament adjourns in December, but earlier this week, the report was leaked to the media. Furious members of the BJP demanded that the government immediately release the report in Parliament, which Singh authorized Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to do on Tuesday. (See TIME's pictures "The Tempestuous Nehru Dynasty of India...
...BJP leaders have long maintained that the destruction of the mosque had been a spontaneous act, but the new report calls the attack "meticulously planned" and carried out with the approval of senior members of the BJP, implicating L.K. Advani, who had been present at the site, and other top party leaders such Murli Manohar Joshi, and Kalyan Singh, then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. (See who's who among India's most influential people...
...most controversial name raised in the report is that of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a moderate on the BJP spectrum who, while not directly implicated in the attack, was found by Liberhan to have been aware of the demolition and to have done little to stop it. The almost 1,000-page report comes at a particularly inopportune time for the BJP, whose leadership is increasingly fractured and subject to internal power struggles. As it seeks to rebrand itself for a younger electorate that sees communal politics as a thing of the past, the BJP is struggling...
...presented eight of its 49 witnesses, with the next hearing set for Dec. 19. Although Liberhan was only a fact-finding commission whose findings and suggestions carry no legal weight, they may give new impetus to the cases currently pending. But concern to avoid creating martyrs for the BJP to rally around and stoke new tensions might prompt the government to let the matter pass...