What is the point of setting up commissions?

The Liberhan report on the Babri Masjid could have been a template for resolution

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most polarising events witnessed in independent India, the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The violence that followed claimed over a 1,000 lives. It was with considerable alacrity that the Narasimha Rao government set up the Justice Liberhan commission within ten days of the incident to look into issues of political complicity, and administrative and security lapses. There was nothing speedy about the investigation, though. The commission received 40 extensions and submitted its report 17 years later in 2009. Within days, its findings were leaked in the media. It squarely blamed politicians, among them LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh, for allowing things to come to such a pass. But no sooner was the report actually tabled than a fight broke out on how useless the whole exercise had been, and how costly it had proved.

This has been the way with most commissions that have probed incidents like communal riots. A commission is set up, it meanders on for years, it submits its findings which promptly become fodder for politicians, and, then, nothing really happens. Commissions that investigate events which profoundly affect the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people have to result in closure for the victims. Their findings should become templates for the authorities to find a resolution.

If the matter has to be eventually settled in the courts, as is happening with the Ayodhya dispute, then we must ask what the purpose of the commission was in the first place. The Liberhan commission should have had a much shorter timeframe. By the time it concluded, many who were considered complicit were out of power, many witnesses had changed their stands or had died and the political landscape itself had changed. The only thing that people can be thankful for is that another commission was not set up. That’s actually happened in many other cases.