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INDIA'S GLOBAL MAGAZINE

Politics

Advani—at the Berlin Wall—faces a wall of opposition from
the Sangh against his Pakistan policy

A day later, in a speech to the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Advani cited from Jinnah's August 11, 1947 speech: “What has been stated in this speech—namely, equality of all citizens in the eyes of the state and freedom of faith for all citizens—is what we in India call a secular or a non-theocratic state. There is no place for bigotry, hatred, intolerance and discrimination in the name of religion in such a state. And there can certainly be no place, much less state protection, for religious extremism and terrorism in such a state.”

So why did Advani choose to make all these pronouncements which he should have known run cumulatively against the grain of his own party and that of the Sangh Parivar?

Tarun Vijay, the editor of the Sangh mouthpiece, Panchajanya, said in an article: “After all, Advani was not invited by the Pakistan government for personal reasons. He is an honest, tough and strong Hindu nationalist leader who Pakistan wished to befriend, and therefore, he was invited. This means that behind the invitation was the perception that Advani held certain views and the party workers had a big role to play in building his image. But only he can say if he has done justice to them.”

Vijay, believed to be close to the BJP chief, said if Advani wanted to be a “true friend” of Pakistan , there was no need to compromise on basic issues. “Whoever bends down to make a friend will not even get the respect an enemy deserves.”

The Sangh's English language mouthpiece, the Organiser in an article titled “Don't give Jinnah a second chance” said: “It was not the Sangh that portrayed Jinnah as the khalnayak (villain) of Indian politics. Jinnah is a topic on which there is a rare national consensus cutting across the political divide. To say that Jinnah is secular is like saying that Ravana is a symbol of goodness. Every nation has its icons and every nation loves to hate some hate figures.”

The BJP did not react to the articles. “This is glasnost, perestroika and it is very good because it shows that organisations which were supposed to be concealed by an iron curtain are actually open,” a spokesperson said.

Advani's defiant resignation attracted substantial coverage in the Western press. The New York Times described Advani as the chief architect of the political ascendancy of Hindu nationalism in India in the 1990s. The paper said the resignation signalled “efforts by Advani, once the iconic hawk on India-Pakistan relations, to salvage his party from creeping irrelevance by casting himself as a moderate”.

“The decision (to resign) reveals the split within Advani's Bharatiya Janata Party, India 's biggest opposition party, between its hard-line loyalists and those who seek to broaden its base,” it said.

The Post has a point. The BJP is maturing now. It could afford to be radical before they got into power but once they got into power it transformed the party. According to The Hindu, a leading southern daily, Advani's decision to invest so much significance in the Quaid-e-Azam's one speech in isolation does not jell with the national recollection and memory about Jinnah. Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, delivered the contemporary judgment, in a letter, dated July 9,1948 ,

: Once a keen film critic, Advani shares some pearls of wisdom with

Kareena Kapoor

Today it is fashionable to talk of India-Pakistan amity, so Advani would go to Pakistan and talk of the imperatives of waging peace. Or, it is possible that Advani has understood the need for the BJP to re-define the party's orthodoxy? He feels that the Pak-bashing has lost much of its appeal among Indian voters. By that account, perhaps it was a smart move to move centrestage with his the hawk-turns-dove approach.

bitterness but he reminded the good Nawab that “the poison that Mr Jinnah instilled into India 's public life spread in all directions.” That sentiment remains intact.

Advani's statements strike at the very root of the RSS ideology, of the BJP's politics. Advani has come uncomfortably close to departing, suddenly, without any warning, from the prescribed text. During his Pakistan visit, when he was asked by Hamid Mir of GEO TV, whether it was true that he was “the only person responsible for the failure of the Agra talks in 2001?”

Advani replied: “Why are you talking about the past? It will not serve today, but I can say that the Indian Cabinet at that time took a decision. It was not a decision of an individual. It was the decision of the whole Government but I don't mind these allegations.”
May be the reason for visiting Pakistan was not just extracting political mileage. A film critic in the early years of his professional life, there's a die-hard romantic inside Advani. That romanticism took him to his school in Karachi , and the bylanes where he grew up.

“I have not said or done anything in Pakistan which I need to retract or review,” Advani said. It's a statement that reflects not just Advani's but the BJP's new outlook.