POLITICS: Hawk or Dove, Advani Leads India’s Political Pack

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 9 2005 (IPS) - The teeming crowds outside Lal Krishna Advani’s bungalow on Thursday and the impassioned entreaties that he withdraw his resignation as party president say it all: India’s powerful pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no taller political leader than this 78-year-old man who now swears by secularism.

Advani, who served as deputy prime minister until the BJP lost power in the May 2004 national elections, resigned as party president after hardliners accused him of abandoning the ‘Hindutva’ (the Hindu cause) while on a trip to Islamic Pakistan last week with some calling him a traitor.

His crime? Praising Mohammed Ali Jinnah, expounder of the ‘two-nation theory,’ which led to the traumatic 1947 partition of India and Pakistan on the basis of religion as ‘secular,’ and paying homage to the Qaid-e-Azam (Father of the Nation) at his mausoleum in Karachi.

To the hawks within the BJP and its affiliates, notably the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with its military-style drills, this was nothing short of blasphemy. Advani had, in one stroke, negated the RSS ideal of ‘Akhand Bharat’ (an undivided Hindu-dominated sub-continent) dating to well before India’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

Advani, who is also leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) reacted to criticism and jibes by handing in his resignation, compelling the BJP rank and file to take stock, and realise that the party had no other leader with charisma enough to lead the party he had built.

Advani, who fled his native Karachi following the partition, has always opposed what he called the ‘pseudo-secular’ politics of the Congress party, accusing it of cynically converting the insecurities of India’s 140-million-strong Muslim minority into a ‘vote bank’ at each election while ignoring the interests and sensitivities of the Hindu majority.

He is associated most with ‘rath yatras,’ or rides across the length and breadth of the country in a motorised, air-conditioned bus decked up outside as a chariot, whipping up Hindu fervour and leaving in his wake tension between India’s two biggest religious communities.

Since abstract concepts like the ‘two-nation theory’ and ‘Hindutva’ were lost on the masses of India, Advani’s campaign began to revolve around the tri-domed Babri Masjid mosque in northern Uttar Pradesh state, built by 17th century Mughals invaders, allegedly over a temple that marked the birthplace of Hindu warrior deity Rama.

In 1992, Advani, accompanied by other prominent members of the BJP, personally oversaw the demolition of the mosque, sparking off nation-wide clashes between the Hindu and Muslim communities in which thousands died.

While archaeologists, lawyers and religious leaders wrangled over the authenticity of the claim that the Babri Masjid had stood on the site of a temple the BJP steadily went on from being an obscure political party to finally seizing national power in 1998, defeating the monolithic Congress party for popularity at the hustings.

One way or another, since 1992, Advani has dominated India’s political stage, with the prime ministership eluding him only because the many regional allies that the BJP needed to rule a large and diverse country were uncomfortable with his hawkish image and the Hindutva ideology.

These allies, grouped as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, preferred that the ‘moderate face’ of the BJP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, rule the country for six long years between 1998 and 2004 although Advani wielded real power by holding the home portfolio and being deputy prime minister.

After the BJP unexpectedly lost the elections last year, hardliners in the BJP and its affiliates such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) blamed the defeat on the leadership for losing popular support by not having pursued the Hindutva cause vigorously enough. For example, the temple to Ram at Ayodhya failed to come up.

On the other hand the BJP’s regional allies, notably the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in southern Andhra Pradesh and the Janata Dal (United) in eastern Bihar blamed the BJP for pushing the Hindutva line too hard – in particular for doing nothing to stop an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 in BJP-ruled western Gujarat which left at least 2,000 people dead.

As union home minister, Advani had prime responsibility for controlling the violence in Gujarat but was held back by the fact that he was elected to Parliament from the state and he thought it prudent not to take on hardliners in his own party. But he was to say that he regretted the riots and that they had indeed damaged his party’s chances in the elections.

And if the hardliners in his party and in the RSS and VHP are baying for his blood, Advani has now deftly slipped into the ‘moderate’ mould vacated by Vajpayee and found new acceptability within the NDA.

Following a meeting with Advani on Thursday, Nitish Kumar, leader of the JD (U), a key NDA constituent, said: ”I am in complete agreement with Advani and his views on such an important issue (secularism) – it will help Hindu-Muslim brotherhood and this is good for the country.”

Even more important than drawing the NDA closer to himself, Advani is seen as having taken head on an open challenge to his leadership mounted recently by V. Sudarshan, the leader of the RSS which provides both muscle and mind to the BJP.

He seems to have also stolen some of the ‘secular’ thunder from the Congress party, which fought and won the 2004 elections on that one plank after being in the political wilderness for eight long years.

”Whatever the outcome of this tussle (between the moderates and hardliners), Advani is a winner,” said the Indian Express newspaper in an editorial on Wednesday.

”By taking on the RSS, of all issues, on Jinnah, by expressing regret over the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Advani has shown the courage to take on the ideological presumptions of Hindutva,” the Express editorial went on to say.

Advani, the consummate politician, has refused to be persuaded to withdraw his resignation even after three days while allowing support in his favour to build up gradually.

He is however known to have been gratified by the fact that Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh (who held the key finance and defence portfolios in the last government) have rallied behind him and that on Thursday afternoon the BJP itself passed a resolution hailing Advani’s visit to Pakistan as a ”diplomatic and political success.”

But in a sign that the leadership crisis within the party continues, a crucial meeting of its parliamentary board scheduled to take place Thursday afternoon was suddenly declared postponed to Friday – reportedly under continuing pressure from the RSS to jettison Advani.