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Lal Krishna Advani's war with the parivar

Vidya Subrahmaniam

It is a long, hard road for the unlikely rebel. If Mr. Advani gives up under pressure, he will push the BJP deeper into the RSS' arms. If he continues, the spirit of his Pakistan trip must manifestly be felt at home.

WILL HE go? Or will he stay? If he stays will it be as party chief or as Leader of the Opposition? Who has had the last laugh? Lal Krishna Advani or his guiding light of 60 years, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh? Has the RSS bound him to a commitment to keep strictly to the straight and narrow? It says something for the iron in the loh purush that one and a half months after he saluted Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Jinnah country — fatally, most people concluded — he is still around to face the questions.

Not many thought Mr. Advani would survive the third degree that awaited him on his return from Pakistan. The outrage was not entirely misplaced. The Jinnah tribute was too fantastic a leap for a man who made a career of recreating and reselling Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's vitriolic 1923 essay on Hindu political identity. Unsurprisingly, the BJP chief's motives were discussed threadbare. The more charitable saw it as an aberration, a "momentary lapse" induced by the emotion of revisiting the land of his birth. His critics were convinced the makeover was a shortcut to power and the Prime Minister's office: The party would grumble but come around, the Sangh would protest but to no avail, and the allies would be over the moon at the Vajpayee-isation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's former deputy, one time rival, and current best friend.

Three rounds of fight between Mr. Advani and the RSS later, it is clear that the bulk of the party and all of the Sangh Parivar have turned against the once proud stalwart, leaving him to trudge a lonely path. It is also clear the plot is more complicated than most people first believed. Take the Sudheendra Kulkarni paper, for instance. The paper, authored by Mr. Advani's now-sacked aide and read out at a closed-door meeting in Bhopal on March 23 and 24, made a strong pitch for moderating the BJP: "... with a narrow Hindu-only approach, never will it [the BJP] occupy the dominant position in Indian politics that the Congress once enjoyed..."

Of course the paper has been rubbished and Mr. Kulkarni sent to the boondocks. But is it conceivable that the man who dispensed political advice to Mr. Advani, and in fact penned those near-fatal Jinnah lines, did not let his leader in on this "diabolical" plot to reform the BJP? If Mr. Advani knew nothing of this gameplan, how and why did he agree to mouth the Jinnah lines? Now consider what Mr. Kulkarni had to say in his June 24 resignation letter addressed to Mr. Advani: "The present chaotic and unsettled atmosphere in the party should not disturb you at all. You are on the right track. Others will realise it in time. You are in a unique position today to reorient the party."

The state of the BJP is currently much like what Mr. Kulkarni described, "chaotic and unsettled." Significantly, through the storm, Mr. Advani has remained calm. Perhaps intentionally. At a function to release a book on the Bhagvad Gita last month, the BJP chief compared himself to Arjuna and vowed to remain in the battlefield like the Pandava prince. Ultimately, it is irrelevant what Mr. Advani's motives are. Indeed, if this is all about ambition and little else, Mr. Advani ought to kick himself. The fast track to the PMO has turned out to be a slow, pot-holed track on which he must travel with a family only too intent on erecting more roadblocks.

In a way Mr. Advani has only himself to blame. His image and his actions precede him. Forget the frenzy of the Ram rath yatra and the horror of December 6, 1992. Mr. Advani could have made moderation the mission of his new term as president. There were many occasions to bring home this message to the cadre — his first press conference as president and his speeches at the party's national executive and national council meetings. Yet Mr. Advani unceasingly made the opposite point — that the BJP was inflexibly linked to the RSS, that the party's 2004 defeat owed to its neglect of its ideology.

Mr. Advani could have shown the door to Narendra Modi — that would have carried greater credibility with Muslims than praise showered on Jinnah. As the unfortunate Mr. Kulkarni was to point out in his paper, placating Hindutva's long suffering victims was central to the success of Mr. Advani's new agenda: "Was enough done to control the violence that took place after Godhra? Hasn't Gujarat ... sullied the image of the Hindu movement, both within India and abroad?"

But the BJP chief remained unflinching in his support to the symbol of the post-Godhra violence. Only months before he described Jinnah as a "great man," Mr. Advani had rescued Mr. Modi from dissidents clamouring for his exit. Jinnah was not the way to the Muslim heart. Far from it, the Quaid-e-Azam was anathema to Indian Muslims. Why would the community be pleased by praise of a man who has been the favourite whipping boy of the fanatical elements in the parivar? Jinnah and Partition were barbs thrown at Muslims for half a century and more.

The Jinnah project went awry because it reached execution stage without the necessary preparation. More importantly, it went awry because it was an Advani project. He jumped into it without clearing the cobwebs of his Hindutva past — some would say Hindutva present, citing his pre-Pakistan actions. The question naturally arises: Could Mr. Vajpayee have pulled off the Jinnah act? Most likely.

The USP of Mr. Vajpayee was a beguiling ability to fudge issues; in the space of a single day, the teflon "Atalji" could change his stand five times and suffer no damage. On the contrary, he would emerge from the welter of conflicting statements with the assured air of a statesman.

Mr. Vajpayee's cultivated ambiguity gave him the leeway he required to straddle two worlds — represented by the PMO and the Sangh Parivar. Contrast Mr. Vajpayee's big gesture in Kashmir and the path-breaking India-Pakistan peace initiatives with his defence of Narendra Modi. His "kisne lagayee aag (who lit the fire in Godhra?)?" was of a piece with Mr. Modi's action-reaction theory. Yet Mr. Vajpayee also counselled the Gujarat Chief Minister to follow the "Raj Dharma" of his office. No such prevarication for Mr. Advani, who stood rock-like behind Mr. Modi (barring a half-hearted apology in London).

If befriending Pakistan was the Lakshman Rekha a Sangh follower never dared cross, Mr. Vajpayee crossed the line with aplomb. In 1999, when he sang paeans to India-Pakistan friendship at the Minar-e-Pakistan, which to quote columnist Saeed Naqvi is the "very sanctum sanctorum of the idea of Pakistan." In 2001, when he invited Pervez Musharraf, author of Kargil and at that time a hate figure in India, to walk with him "on the high road to peace." In 2004, when he put the Agra debacle behind him and restarted the peace process. When some members of Mr. Vajpayee's 1999 delegation argued that visiting the Minar would amount to condoning the two-nation theory, Mr. Vajpayee said: "Who am I to give the seal of approval to the existence of Pakistan? It is a self-evident reality."

The Vajpayee persona

Mr. Vajpayee exploded the "Akhand Bharat" myth long before Mr. Advani and emerged unscathed from the adventure unlike the former Deputy Prime Minister who has been pilloried for doing the unthinkable. He reached out to Pakistan after the Kargil "outrage" (even if this was done under pressure from the United States) — a daring initiative unimaginable from anyone else. Mr. Vajpayee's now statesman, now Sangh persona allowed him unfathomable liberties. He could say a thing and as easily retract it. If the dodging did not help, there was always a poem to obfuscate the issue. "Atalji" ran rings round the RSS, which raved and ranted but to little effect.

Mr. Advani, in contrast, was the quintessential ideologue — not just focussed and committed but possessed with the imagination to translate theory into practice. It is inconceivable that anyone else could have harnessed Savarkar's Hindutva for votes. However, this clarity of vision forced him into a straightjacket. The Jinnah statement was not a great aberration given the Minar-e-Pakistan precedent. But it was unacceptable from a man who had spent the better part of his life denouncing the two-nation theory. The RSS reacted violently to it, setting off a churning in the parivar never seen before.

Yes, Mr. Vajpayee would have got away with Jinnah. But for the very reason that he got away, he would have missed the chance to shock and shake the RSS. Perhaps Mr. Advani's Jinnah act was not so unintelligent after all. It won him no plaudits and it did not work as a gesture towards Muslims. But it hit the RSS where it hurts. Only a loyal Sangh warrior could have dealt this sledgehammer blow.

It is a long, hard road for the parivar's unlikely rebel. If he gives up under pressure, he will push the BJP deeper — and more irrevocably — into the RSS' arms. If he continues, the spirit of his Pakistan trip must manifestly be felt at home. Otherwise, he will be seen as coveting power. He is approaching 80 and the Sangh is hot on his heels.

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