Advani’s change of heart
KALIDAS SAWKAR
This is the third time around that L K Advani has submitted and withdrawn his resignation from various posts in the BJP—the last apparently at the insistence of the RSS.
Did Advani really have a change of heart vis-a-vis Narendra Modi in 2013, given his stand on him in 2002? Why did his perception of the Gujarat Chief Minister change over the last 11 years since he rooted for him during the BJP conclave at this very venue. Modi was seen as an inheritor of Advani’s hardline Hindutva. Was Advani looking at the development of events—the Babri Masjid demolition (1991), the post-Godhra Gujarat riots (2002), the rout of BJP in the only southern state it has ever won (2013), the attacks on churches in Orissa and Mangalore and the corruption in BJP which was keeping in step with the Congress— as a sign?
What changed since 2002 for Advani to change his choice of a ‘future’ BJP leader and possibly a prime minister-to-be? Here is a politician who was a founder member of his party. A politician who came from undivided India, who witnessed the turmoil of the Partition that uprooted him from his soil.
The clue to Advani’s change of heart lies perhaps in his declaration on Jinnah, which he made in June 2005, a year after the BJP lost the general elections in 2004. The BJP/RSS philosophy on this is well known. So too the approach of erstwhile emigrants from undivided India who hate Jinnah for his role in partitioning India.
And here was L K Advani doing a volte-face by calling Jinnah—the father of the Partition—secular. Later, back in India, after the anticipated criticism from the RSS and other hardliners for his Jinnah speech, Advani resigned as BJP president only to retract it in the wake of parleys of top leaders. He later went on silence mode, but it appears he had already learnt his lesson. At least more in mathematics than ideology. From the result of the 2004 general election Advani saw that you cannot win elections democratically by dividing vote banks and forsaking large chunks of it necessary to gain a majority.
His speech on Jinnah was probably a feeler to gauge the response in which alone Advani seems to have succeeded. The issue was kept in cold storage, and if Advani was making any undercover efforts to enlist support from likeminded groups within the party, that remains a closely guarded secret.
M in Modi stands for monologue, so a dialogue with him is not possible, specially with him as overall in charge of the BJP with the blessings of those in Nagpur. A true BJP loyalist, Advani has concluded at age 86 that the chance to implement his idea of a different kind of secular India that could be different from that of Muslim appeasement practiced by Congress, is now or never. This indeed is an ideological war for Advani. It is not anti-Modi-ism. And if Advani’s vision were to succeed, it could change the course of Indian ethos and politics.
