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Hyderabad: Lateef Mohammad Khan, secretary of Hyderabad-based Civil Liberties Committee, said in a press statement here that people should take a lesson from the last days of former prime minister, Narasimha Rao. No body could have imagined that a man who has been a freedom fighter, intellectual, linguist, economist, chief minister of a state, central defence and external affairs minister and ultimately prime minister of a great country, one who was credited with initiating economic liberalisation and privatisation in the country, was lost to ignominy and oblivion. Congress Party did not assign him any role in the recent assembly elections in his home state. A senior Congressman was deputed to make an appeal to the electorate not to punish the Congress party for the misdeeds of Narasimha Rao.

When Rao recently visited Gandhi Bhawan in Hyderabad, there was no one to receive him. Congressmen tried to keep him away from party meetings because they feared that his misdeeds could harm the party. Congrees president Sonia Gandhi’s efforts have washed the blot on the face of the party which was caused by the demolition of Babri Masjid during Narasimha Rao’s tenure as prime minister.

When Rao recently visited Gandhi Bhawan in Hyderabad, there was no one to receive him. Congressmen tried to keep him away from party meetings because they feared that his misdeeds could harm the party. Congrees president Sonia Gandhi’s efforts have washed the blot on the face of the party which was caused by the demolition of Babri Masjid during Narasimha Rao’s tenure as prime minister.

Congress leaders after his death in Delhi did not allow the last rites to be held there or a samadhi built for him in Delhi like other national leaders. And in Hyderabad, Congress leaders did not consider it proper to keep his body in Congress Bhawan for public darshan even for a few hours. The government hurriedly arranged tons of sandal wood for his cremation. And after setting the pyre on fire, Congress leaders, his near relatives and even his own sons did not consider it expedient to stay there for more time. People were astonished to see his naked and half-burnt body, and dogs hovering around it in the cremation ground. Nobody could believe that a man who was called ‘Telugu Buda’ and ‘Chanakya’ would meet such a humiliating end.

Some people may not believe it but the truth is that nature had turned him into an object from which people could learn a lesson. A learned man with so many qualities was lost in ignominy because of the demolition of Babri Masjid. His role in Babri Masjid’s demolition demeaned him in the eyes of secular-minded people of the country. When the Babri Masjid was being demolished, Narasimha Rao with all powers at his disposal, remained a silent spectator. But nature made him a spectacle for the whole world to see the humiliating end of the latter-day Chanakya. Rao should have been given a status equal to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru but the fate had something else for him in store. His name will be written in black letters in history for his role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. 

His sad end is pointer to the fact that Babri Masjid is chasing everybody who was complicit in the conspiracy of its demolition. The faces of Vajpayee, Advani, Thakre and Uma Bharti and others tell that since the demolition of Babri Masjid they have not been at ease. After seeing the humiliating end of Narasimha Rao, these people could predict their own finale also.  «