The News International
April 05, 2008
Advani: the truth behind the mask
by Praful Bidwai
From time to time, the Indian media appoints itself the spin-master of certain political leaders. Take former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. This cynical advocate of defeatism in the face of Hindutva and globalisation was glorified as both a scholar extraordinary who knew 14 languages, and a master tactician. Reality was more prosaic. Rao was no linguist. He allowed the Babri mosque to be razed through "masterly" inaction. And he accelerated his Congress party's decline.
Now, the media is building up LK Advani as a leader whose swearing-in as PM is only waiting for the general election. Advani, we're also told, is an erudite person, with analytical faculties and eager to engage with ideas. He has a gentle, even humane, side too. Those who have followed Advani's career will find it hard to believe this. His autobiography My Country, My Life should confirm their worst assessments. Reading it doesn't lead to the conclusion, set out in Vajpayee's Foreword, that it's authored by an "outstanding leader whose best… is yet to come".
Advani emerges as a leader whose time has already passed. His ideology and politics have no 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 deprivation, and who are yet to enjoy real, substantive democracy. Advani's 986-page book is a descriptive account, with numerous anecdotes, some interesting, but most without insights into events or personalities. One doesn't expect full, candid disclosures about the past from practising politicians because that would limit their options. But one can hope for some analysis, honest reflection, new information, or self-doubt.
Advani doesn't rise to the mark. He doesn't take distance from events to look at them critically. The book is compulsively self-justificatory. It also reveals some obsessions: "Hindu India's" centuries-long victimhood, prejudice against efforts (e.g. Gandhiji's) to forge a citizen-based identity independent of religion, blind faith in aggressive nationalism and India's emergence as a Great Power. Even in the book's best part, pertaining to the Emergency, Advani doesn't rise above petty, person-centric polemics. He makes no attempt to understand the deeper causes of the structural crisis of governance it represented. He condemns Indira Gandhi for saying that "the nation is more important than democracy", and invoking "the foreign hand" to violate civil liberties. He accuses her of having "explored the possibility of installing a presidential system of government".
But Advani's own party is distinguished by placing the nation before democracy. As home minister, he himself attributed the Kashmir unrest to "the foreign hand" (Pakistan). And it's the BJP-led NDA which established the Commission to Review the Constitution--expressly, but unsuccessfully, to promote presidential government. Advani closely observed or played a role in some momentous events--the Emergency, the Ram Janmabhoomi mobilisation, the 1998 nuclear tests, strategic embrace of the US, and India's worst state-sponsored violence, in Gujarat. But there's no self-critical reflection into these. Totally missing is the larger social-political context which made these events possible--including the historic decline of the Congress, rise of identity politics, neoliberal economic changes and rise of a new middle class.
The book doesn't once mention the RSS's interference in day-to-day governance, which became starkly visible when it vetoed Jaswant Singh's appointment as finance minister. Advani also hides the rationale of the 1998 nuclear blasts. He presents the decision as a straightforward corollary of the Jana Sangh's 1964 resolution calling for an Indian Bomb. 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 in popular discontent and Indian policies. Terrorism must be, can only be, smashed with force. There's no need for addressing its root-causes. This thinking befits a small-town thanedar, not India's home minister.
Advani always advocated a matching answer to "threats" from Pakistan. 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 Vajpayee extended "the hand of peace" to Pakistan in April 2003, barely a week after he had ruled this out Advani held 20 secret meetings with former Pakistan high commissioner Qazi Jehangir Ashraf, but doesn't explain why they produced no results at Agra or later.
The book contains outright lies too. During Advani's June 2003 US visit, India all but agreed--subject to "clarifications"--to send troops to Iraq. He says: "Right from the beginning … Atalji and I were firmly of the view that sending …troops… was out of the question…".
However, it was officially reported that India agreed in principle to send troops. A June 8 statement by the Indian embassy in Washington says Advani told Secretary Rumsfeld "that the matter was under consideration …" He was quoted by Aaj Tak that those opposed to sending troops were "uninformed" and had a "one-sided opinion".
Advani is silent on who pressed for his resignation after his remarks on Qaide Azam Jinnah's "secularism" during his 2005 Pakistan visit, but it's known they included his own protégés (e.g. Arun Jaitley). He recalls: "One day,… I was told I should step down from the presidentship of the BJP..." He calls this "profoundly agonising", but doesn't gather the courage to say it was the RSS which issued the directive!
Advani's account of the Kandahar hijack episode is a white lie. He repeatedly claims the BJP would never compromise with "terrorists"--when it actually exchanged hostages with them. He ludicrously says he was unaware that Jaswant Singh was asked by the Cabinet Committee on Security to go to Kandahar and carry out the exchange. This is contradicted by every available account, including George Fernandes'.
Whatever the truth, this gravely damages Advani's USP as Loh Purush (Iron Man). If he was unaware of Singh's brief, he was unfit to be Home Minister. If he was party to the CCS decision, that demolishes his claimed resolve to fight terrorism Either way, Advani loses.
Advani's idea of "secularism" is grotesque. He never rises above the religion-based "us" and "them" identities. He condemns missionary Graham Staines' killing, and repeats the cliche, "some of my best friends are Christians", but reverts to crass Hindutva on the freedom of religion: conversion is "a threat both to Hindu society and national integration".
The most nauseating part of the book pertains to Gujarat. Advani rejects the settled truth that the post-Godhra violence was state-sponsored. As proof, he narrates two instances in which he interceded with Narendra Modi and prevented Muslims from being killed. But for every such example, there are probably 10 instances of premeditated murder, including the gruesome dismembering alive of former MP Ehsan Jafri, which Advani/Modi didn't prevent.
Advani ends up tailing Modi and lionising him as "the most viciously, consistently and persistently maligned leader, both nationally and internationally". Modi logically emerges as Advani's successor--a shameful comment on the BJP's evolution. Advani wanted to use the book as a launching-pad for the next election and put the Congress in a spot. Why, he even went uninvited to gift Sonia Gandhi a copy on Holi day--to score a PR point. All he has succeeded in doing is expose his own pettiness.
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