Who was the most divisive politician in post-Independence India? It was Indira Gandhi who didn't just split, and keep splitting, her own party, but who also engineered splits in the Janata Morcha. By introducing dynasticism into Indian politics at the Centre, she and her heirs ensured that Indian politics would be based on feudal loyalty on the one hand and incessant intrigue and factionalism on the other.
LK Advani helped turn the BJP into a unified party capable of taking and retaining power. If the Opposition is seeking to unite, it is because they wish to emulate the BJP. Sadly, so long as Congress remains dynastic, the Opposition can do no such thing.
Ram Guha, cretin that he is takes the opposite view. He thinks Advani was the most divisive Indian politician since Jinnah.
Advani’s yatra of 1990 was aimed explicitly at pitting one group of Indians against another.
Jinnah had done that. Congress responded with partition, ethnic cleansing and completely marginalizing Muslims in India- unless they were personally loyal to the dynasty.
He has been, without question, the most divisive politician in the history of independent India.
He put the BJP on the path to large majorities at the centre. Mod was his protege. Modi enjoys a 70 percent approval rating- thought that may have gone up to 80 percent thanks to the Pran Prathishta ceremony. India has never been more united though, it must be said, the Opposition has never been so disunited.
The Babri Masjid was demolished 25 years ago this week.
It was demolished in 1992. Guha published this in the Hindustan Times in 2017. He didn't foresee that the Ram Temple would come up in splendid style.
Many Indians, this writer among them, viewed the demolition as an act of vandalism;
but those writers had shit for brains.
whereas many others saw it as an act of vindication. The act, however, was divisive not merely in terms of perception. Preceding and following the demolition of the Babri Masjid were a series of riots,
the Muslims started those riots but they got stomped because they were a minority. The 'Sangh parivar' did well out of them.
in which tens of thousands of innocent Indians lost their lives. No single event in independent India has so polarised public opinion;
Mrs Gandhi's forced sterilization program and her locking up or killing her opponents didn't polarize the opinion of this cretin. He was cool with the killing of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.
no single event has so adversely affected life on the ground, generating widespread suspicion and hostility between groups of citizens — and leading to much violence and suffering too.
Muslims may have been adversely affected. Hindus were hardly affected at all. Those Muslim who rioted would have found some other excuse to riot.
Two politicians contributed significantly to the deepening of the Hindu-Muslim divide in the 1980s and beyond. The first was Rajiv Gandhi, who as prime minister, first appeased the Muslim fundamentalists by overturning the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case,
That didn't matter greatly. Rajiv should have built the Temple and thus gained the favour of not just the Mullahs but also the Pundits.
and then appeased the Hindu fundamentalists by opening the locks of the small Ram shrine in Ayodhya. The second was LK Advani, who, as the leader of the BJP (then in opposition) conceived, organised and led the Rath Yatra which galvanised Hindutva sentiment across northern and western India.
Advani's genius was to make the issue non-political. People were being given a chance to show their faith in Lord Ram by making voluntary contributions.
Thousands of young men flocked to Advani’s call, forming the bedrock of the army which sought to demolish the Masjid unsuccessfully in October 1990,
Mulayam Singh's police force opened fire killing kar sevaks. This was a political blunder.
before achieving ‘success’ two years later.
Why the scare quotes? The kar sevaks did indeed succeed.
Advani’s march was not, of course, the first yatra undertaken by an Indian politician. Mahatma Gandhi himself had undertaken three major yatras; the salt march of 1930, aimed at undermining British colonial rule;
It failed. The salt tax remained though Liaquat abolished it when he was Finance Minister. Under Nehru, it was brought back.
the anti-untouchability tour of 1933-34, aimed at awakening Hindus to the iniquities of the caste system;
again a failure, at least according to Dr. Ambedkar
and the peace marches of 1946-47, aimed at bringing Hindus and Muslims together.
That succeeded so well that millions died or had to flee across the border.
After Independence, lesser politicians have used the medium of the yatra to promote themselves. In 1983, the Janata Party leader Chandra Shekhar walked across the country, seeking to show that he cared more for the aam admi than the person who was then prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
Rajiv would later briefly prop him up as PM before pulling the rug from under him.
Before the last Karnataka assembly elections, Siddaramaiah undertook a padayatra to project himself as the alternative to the ruling BJP. Now, before the next state elections, with the BJP in opposition, BS Yeddyurappa is touring the districts of Karnataka in pursuit of his ambition to become chief minister once more.
The BJP is doing a padyatra to protest the removal of a Hanuman flag by the Congress administration.
However, of the many tours undertaken by politicians before and since Independence, Advani’s yatra of 1990 remains in a class of its own.
Because it was an end in itself- viz devotion to Lord Ram.
Hindu-Muslim relations were already more fragile than they had been for many decades. In late 1989, Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists organised brick worship ceremonies for their proposed Ram temple, provoking riots in many places. In Bhagalpur, more than a thousand Indians, mostly Muslims, perished as a result.
In other words, when Muslims protested about what the Kaffirs were getting up to, they were stomped by the majority.
I visited Bhagalpur in the wake of the 1989 riots, to see villages burnt, looms destroyed, and thousands of my fellow citizens, now without homes and livelihoods, living in refugee camps open to the sky.
Congress CM, S.N Sinha, who was forced to step down as a result of the riots, blames rivals within his party for instigating, if not orchestrating, the violence.
I do not know if LK Advani visited Bhagalpur himself. But he surely knew of what had happened there. And yet, a few months later, he led this provocative and divisive rath yatra. The symbols of Advani’s march, wrote one observer, were ‘religious, allusive, militant, masculine, and anti-Muslim’. The rath yatra provoked further rioting. The yatra was a major contributory factor to the horrific communal violence of the 1990s and beyond. As Khushwant Singh bluntly told Advani to his face, ‘you have sowed the seeds of communal disharmony in the country and we are paying the price for it’.
Khushwant Singh also said that the RSS had protected Sikhs while Congress had slaughtered them.
To be sure, the Republic had witnessed major riots both before and after L K Advani’s rath yatra. They included the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984,
after two Sikhs killed Indira Gandhi
and the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002.
after a Muslim mob killed Hindu pilgrims
A great deal has been written of the complicity of the top political leadership in both.
But all that writing was useless because the writers were stupid.
Rajiv Gandhi, as prime minister of India in 1984, and Narendra Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002, have both been criticised for , first, not doing enough to stop the rioting; and second, with using the riots to polarise majority voters in their favour, riding to electoral victory on the backs of dead bodies.
Nehru rode to victory on the backs of far more dead bodies.
Both these criticisms are fair. Rajiv Gandhi, in 1984, and Narendra Modi, in 2002, could and should have done more to stem the rioting, and much more to provide succour and relief to those who suffered.
They should also have watched admiringly as Guha ate his own shit.
However, neither Rajiv Gandhi, in 1984, nor Narendra Modi, in 2002, actually initiated the riots that occurred under their watch. By this token, LK Advani is far more culpable.
Advani exercised his right to conduct a yatra just as Rahul is exercising his right to conduct a yatra. If a minority community starts rioting as a result, chances are it will get stomped.
For, with hate and violence already in the air, he set out to capitalise on it.
No. Advani's genius was to offer Hindus something they wanted- viz. a chance to show their devotion to Lord Ram.
To quote Khushwant Singh on Advani once more: ‘He, more than anyone else, sensed that Islamophobia was deeply ingrained in the minds of millions of Hindus; it needed a spark to set it ablaze’.
Hinduphobia had become ingrained in the minds of many Sikhs. They killed Hindus. But the Punjab turned into a bloody quagmire for a decade. Khushwant was irrelevant.
When faced with growing animosity between Hindus and Muslims, Mahatma Gandhi went on long walks and undertook long fasts to promote tolerance and harmony.
Gandhi failed completely. Millions were killed or had to flee their ancestral homes. There could have been an orderly exchange of populations but neither Congress nor the League was interested in saving lives.
On the other hand, when confronted with a similar situation, LK Advani seemed to have worked to intensify rather than contain religious conflict.
Why did he not simply convert to Islam or starve himself to death? The answer is that Advani wanted to link his party to the devotional sentiments of the vast mass of the Indian people. In the long run, he succeeded.
And, as the recent attacks on minorities across northern India show, the politics that Advani promoted is still exacting its price. LK Advani has been,in my opinion, the most divisive politician in the history of independent India.
Advani enabled his party to come to power- initially as part of a coalition. The BJP has not split or become factionalized. It is now winning majorities in many States and at the Centre. India now has a Prime Minister with the highest approval rating of any elected leader in the world. Meanwhile, the Opposition INDIA alliance has already imploded. Guha truly is a cretin. His opinions are worthless.
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