For a full text version  in PDF, Click here

 

The day after election results were declared, two Rashtraya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) senior leaders went to meet BJP leader L K Advani who had announced relinquishing the post of the leader of the opposition. These leaders had gone to endorse his decision on behalf of the Sangh. But to their surprise, nay shock, Advani informed them that he had decided to continue as opposition leader in view of the “request from party leaders” and in order to “cushion the post-defeat impact on the party”. The change came about within 24 hours.

 

Reason: Advani oscillates between a high sense of self-righteousness that makes him renounce the allurement or trappings of power at the drop of a hat (Hawala, Jinnah, Kandhar) and a perceived sense of duty that an `acquired’ image of a leader of `Hinduttva vintage’ forces him to carry.      

   

Again, two allegations were leveled against Advani in post- defeat slanging-match.  One that his Man Friday Sudheendra Kulkarni’s article lambasting the Sangh and putting the blame for defeat on the latter was written at the behest of Advani. Second, his `coterie’ made tacit attempt to see that another BJP senior leader is defeated. Even some senior Sangh leaders believe the first allegation to be true although few in the party give any credence to the second accusation. Advani was misunderstood.

 

The fault lies with this octogenarian’s personality. He has become prisoner of his own image in the last one decade. Those, who know Advani, instantly trash both allegations.

“Do you think he had asked Sudheendra to write an article lambasting the Sangh in an attempt to put blame on it” ask such people. “Second allegation is a product of a perverted mind” they add.       

 

But, then, why do some Sangh senior leaders believe in complicity of Advani with regard to Sudheendra’s article? Advani’s personality alternates between various paradoxes --what he has imbibed as culture and what political dispensation demands of him; a rational being who rejects identity politics and a leader of Rath-Yatra fame that allows him to bask in reflected Rama-glory; a quintessentially gentleman politician whose party is degenerating and a family-man who keeps telling the world how he loves Kamla, his wife and Pratibha, his daughter as any decent Hindu does to the institution of family.  

 

It is gentleman politician in Advani that too often hamstrings himself resulting in his giving scope for people to misunderstand him.  He would not stop a Sudheendra from writing anti-Sangh piece. Obviously, this gives scope to Advani-baiters to think that Sudheendra being his man cannot do so on his own. Sudheendra has a leftist background. Advani who has been trying to offload the Hindutva baggage to make the BJP a modern, aggregative and  all encompassing party  finds in Sudheendra a person who can be used for giving `right suggestions’.

 

Few people know that initially Advani was averse to Varun Gandhi’s anointment as youth hardcore Hindu icon. I was the first TV journalist to interview him during his election campaign. The news of Varun Gandhi’s arrest in Pilibhit was notified (through a slip) to Advani who was half way through his election speech in Gorakhpur. Advani did not mention the name of Varun nor did he criticize the Government for arresting the scion of Gandhi family. Later when I asked him in the aircraft why he did not mention Varun issue, he showed a palpable reluctance suggesting he did not endorse that kind of politics. But a day later BJP president Rajnath Singh, another leader sans any mass base visits jail to meet Varun. He and his cronies saw in the issue a major tool to galvanize Hindus. Advani again took the opprobrium. He was again misunderstood because he did not stand up to a plan which smacks of turpitude ---a recourse that normally leaders without mass support take.  

For a full text version  in PDF, Click here

 

 

Observe the contrast. In my interview Advani clearly said the party should reach out to Muslims and instill a sense of confidence. And under this perception he refuses to mentions even arrest of Varun in his election speeches. Two days later, when some party leaders forces him to allow Varun’s anti-muslim utterances a poll issue, he yields. 

 

Yes, Advani has a coterie –not because he is temperamentally scheming but because of his penchant for anglicized individuals who talk in sociological terminology. A Sudheendra, a Swapan and some Aruns who have no touch with ground realities but are in their argumentative best form part of his coterie. That is because of initial upbringing of Advani in a cultured but Anglicized atmosphere and therefore his penchant for seeking justification for identity politics through the prism of rationality and intellectualism.

 

That is the reason why not a single BJP chief minister was there in the group that fashioned election strategy. Is it not a paradox that those who have no touch with ground reality dictate those who have been facing the masses day in and day out in their respective states? Even when the strategists identified “Weak Manmohan” as one of the main issues, at least two Chief Ministers opposed the idea but they were ignored. Even the Sangh is shrieking from the rooftop saying “we do not endorse what Varun had

said” (MG Vaidya’s article).    

 

Apart from personality trait there is another reason behind why Advani oscillates, nay, dithers. Riding the crest of Hindutva wave the BJP and Advani did walk upto Raisina Hills seat of central power. But subsequent poll results showed pursuing hardcore Hindutva even in euphoric days of post-demolition phase could not win the party more than 16 to 18 per cent of total votes polled. The party realized that by and large Hindus are liberal. They found majority Hindus do not like dogmatically created anti-Muslim shrilled pitch. As 18 per cent votes are insufficient to win seats in the Lok Sabha it had become imperative to bring in an Atal Behari Vajpayee. As Vajpayee has faded out of scene, Advani wanted to don that mantle. Jinnah statement should have been scene in that light. But Advani erred again. He could not realize that saying that Jinnah was secular in a book release function in India is different from saying it in Pakistan (Karachi), a Muslim country with whom we have a history of four major wars. Sudheendras prevailed. A reasoning and fairly knowledgeable Advani could not see the obvious.    

 

Today Advani is caught in a cross-fire. The Sangh which has developed this political adjunct from a seed into a big political tree feels cheated when it is told about party’s  limitations in the new and emerging social context. “Yes, let them shun Hindutva in order to get more `secular’ allies”, said Sangh leader MG Vaidya in a recent article. In fact in his sarcasm he wanted to caution the BJP of the corresponding repercussions.

 

Advani’s predicament is that he can neither say goodbye to Sangh or Hindutva (for fear of losing 16 to 18 per cent base votes) nor can he allow the party as its senior most and most accepted mass leader to function in isolation ignoring the fact that majority of 80 per cent Hindus abhor high pitch anti-Muslim gestures.

 

Besides, Advani  as a rational leader also knows that priorities of  4.10 crore young voters who were included after 2004 elections are different as India is changing apace. They are either de-politicized or have job as their priority. Hindutva hardly influences them.     

 

For a full text version  in PDF, Click here

 

[The author is Political Editor, ETV , and can be contacted at email: singh.nk@etv.co.in , 2E/12, Jhandewalan Extnsn New Delhi 110055 M-bile 9312623020 ]