Liberhan Commission

The Liberhan Commission (Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Inquiry) was a long-running inquiry commissioned by the Government of India to investigate the destruction of the disputed structure Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Led by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan, it was formed on 16 December 1992 by an order of the Indian Home Union Ministry after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December and the subsequent riots there. The Commission was originally mandated to submit its report within three months. Extensions were given 48 times, and after a delay of 17 years, the one-man commission submitted the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. In November 2009, a day after a newspaper published the allegedly leaked contents of the report, the report was tabled in Parliament by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram.

The Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babur) was a mosque in Ayodhya on Ramkot Hill. It was destroyed in 1992 when a political rally developed into a riot involving 150,000 people, despite a commitment to the Indian Supreme Court by the rally organisers that the mosque would not be harmed. More than 2000 people were killed in ensuing riots in many major Indian cities including Mumbai, and Delhi.

The mosque was constructed in 1527 by order of Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India. Before the 1940s, the mosque was called Masjid-i Janmasthan ("mosque of the birthplace"). Babur's commander-in-chief, Mir Baqi, allegedly destroyed an existing temple at the site which commemorated the birthplace of Rama, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu and ruler of Ayodhya. The Babri Mosque was one of the largest mosques in Uttar Pradesh, a state in India with some 31 million Muslims. Although there were several older mosques in the city of Ayodhya, an area with a substantial Muslim population, including the Hazrat Bal Mosque constructed by the Shariqi kings, the Babri Mosque became the largest, because of the importance of the disputed site. The political, historical and socio-religious debate over the history and location of the Babri Mosque and whether a previous temple was demolished or modified to create it, is known as the Ayodhya Debate.

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