The Praful Bidwai Column
The prosaic truth about LK Advani
DRIVEN by the Bharatiya Janata Party's massive spin-machine, the media has built up Mr. LK Advani as a leader whose swearing-in as prime minister only awaits the next election. He is being presented as an erudite man, with sharp analytical faculties, as well as a gentle personality.
This resembles the past lionising of PV Narasimha Rao as a Chanakya (master-tactician), or of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee as a "soft" liberal.
Those who have followed Mr. Advani's career won't believe such hype. His autobiography My Country, My Life should confirm their worst assessments. Reading it doesn't validate the Vajpayee foreword's blurb that it is authored by an "outstanding leader whose best … is yet to come."
Mr. Advani emerges as someone whose time has already passed. His ideas and politics lack relevance for most Indians who want an open and just society free of discrimination on grounds of birth or religion, who long to be emancipated from poverty, and who are yet to enjoy real, substantive democracy.
The 986-page book is tediously descriptive and has numerous anecdotes, but few insights. One doesn't expect full, candid disclosures about the past from practising politicians. But one can hope for some analysis, reflections that step back from events, and a little self-doubt.
Mr. Advani disappoints here. His book is compulsively self-justificatory. It also reveals some obsessions: "Hindu India's" centuries-long victim-hood, prejudice against efforts (e.g. Gandhiji's) to forge a citizen-based identity independent of religion, and blind faith in ultra-nationalism and India's emergence as a Great Power.
Even in the book's best part, on the Emergency, Mr. Advani doesn't rise above petty, person-centric polemics. He shows no understanding of the deeper causes of the structural crisis of governance of that period.
He condemns Indira Gandhi for saying that "the nation is more important than democracy," and for invoking "the foreign hand" to violate civil liberties. He accuses her of having "explored … installing a presidential system of government."
But his own party is distinguished for placing the nation before democracy. As home minister, he attributed the Kashmir unrest wholly to Pakistan. And it is the BJP-led NDA, which established the Commission to Review the Constitution -- expressly, but unsuccessfully, to promote presidential government.
Mr. Advani closely observed, or played a role in, some momentous events -- the Emergency, the Ayodhya mobilisation, the 1998 nuclear tests, and India's worst state-sponsored violence, in Gujarat. But there's no self-critical reflection on these.
Totally missing is the larger social-political context of these events -- including the Congress's historic decline, rise of identity politics, and neo-liberal economic policies.
The book doesn't once mention the RSS's interference in governance, which became starkly visible when it vetoed Mr Jaswant Singh's appointment as finance minister. Mr. Advani also hides the rationale of the 1998 nuclear blasts. He presents the decision as a straightforward corollary of the Jana Sangh's 1964 pro-Bomb resolution!
Mr. Advani's entire discourse on national security is banal, and his understanding of terrorism driven by a Pakistan obsession -- as if the Kashmir militancy never had indigenous roots. Terrorism must be, can only be, smashed with force. Its root-causes don't need addressing.
This thinking befits a small-town thanedar, not India's home minister.
Mr. Advani always advocated a matching answer to Pakistan's "threats." But he doesn't explain why India's 10 months-long post-December 2001 mobilisation of 7 lakh troops was no answer. Nor does he explain why Mr Vajpayee extended "the hand of peace" to Pakistan in April 2003, a week after ruling this out.
The book contains outright lies too. During Mr. Advani's June 2003 US visit, India all but agreed -- subject to "clarifications" -- to send troops to Iraq. But he now says sending troops was "out of the question … right from the beginning… "
However, India did agree to this in principle. A June 8 statement by its embassy in Washington quotes Mr Advani as saying "the matter (is) under consideration …" He also told Aaj Tak that those opposed to sending troops are "uninformed," with a "one-sided opinion."
Mr Advani doesn't disclose who pressed for his resignation after his remarks on Jinnah's "secularism" in Pakistan in 2005, but it is known they included his protégés (e.g. Arun Jaitley).
He recalls: "One day … I was told I should step down from the presidentship of the BJP..." But he doesn't gather the courage to say it was the RSS, which told him!
Mr. Advani's account of the Kandahar episode is a white lie. He repeatedly claims the BJP wouldn't compromise with "terrorists" -- when it was exchanging hostages with them. He says he was unaware that Mr. Jaswant Singh was authorised by the Cabinet Committee on Security to do so. This is contradicted by every available account, including Mr George Fernandes.
This gravely damages Mr Advani's USP as Loh Purush (Iron Man). If he was unaware of Mr Singh's brief, he was unfit as Home Minister. If he was party to the CCS decision, that demolishes his claimed resolve to fight terrorism Either way, he loses.
Mr. Advani's grotesque "secularism" never rises above religion-based "us" and "them" categories. He condemns Staines' killing, and repeats the cliche, "some of my best friends are Christians," but reverts to crass Hindutva, terming conversion "a threat … to Hindu society and national integration."
The most nauseating part of the book concerns Gujarat. Mr. Advani rejects the settled truth that the post-Godhra violence was state-sponsored. As proof, he narrates two instances in which, with Narendra Modi's help, he prevented Muslims from being killed. But for every such example, there are probably 10 instances of unprevented murder, including the dismembering-alive of former MP Ehsan Jafri.
Mr. Advani lionises Modi as "the most viciously, consistently and persistently maligned leader" anywhere. Mr. Modi logically emerges as his successor -- shamefully for the BJP.
Mr. Advani wanted to use the book as an election launching pad and embarrass the Congress. He even gifted Ms Sonia Gandhi a copy -- to score a PR point. All he has successfully done is expose his own pettiness.
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