LK Advani turns 99 today. He may have been innocent of the destruction of the Babri Masjid (he was acquited in 2020) but he is guilty of laying the foundations for the BJP's coming to control 72 percent of India.
This happened in 1989 when he was the prime mover in the Palampur Resolution committing the party to building the Ram Temple come what may. Vajpayee wanted to stick to 'Gandhian Socialism' & didn't want to associate with the lumpen element in the VHP (which he dismissed as a 'monkey army). Advani's 1990 Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra, which was seen as a way to counter VP Singh's desire to extend reservations on the basis of the Mandal report, re-energised the party. Advani had explicitly warned V.P. Singh that if his yatra was disrupted, the BJP would pull the plug on the coalition. On October 23, 1990, Advani was arrested in Samastipur, Bihar, on the orders of Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. It was this specific arrest that directly prompted the collapse of the government because the BJP withdrew 'outside support'.
Modi began his rise as part of Advani's rath yatra and greatly benefitted from his support. However, as a small town boy himself, Modi saw the importance of 'last mile delivery' to farmers and rural folk. Advani had campioned connecting villages to the towns through roads. This was not enough. You had to go into the villages and ensure every family became a 'labharthi' (beneficiary). Thus, though Modi praises Advani's ideological clarity, his own welfarist politics differs sharply from it.
It must be said, Modi comes across a devout Hindu who practices Yoga. Advani, it was reported, had little time for religion. His estranged ex-daughter-in-law gained a lot of publicity for the claim that the Advanis were actually Sikh, not Hindu and that he faked a Bhardwaj Brahmin gotra for his 1990 rath yatra. Even more damaging was that the claim that his family had melted down gifted silver Hindu idols to make household cutlery. Interestingly, she also claimed that a Sikh diplomat, Hardeep Puri, then deputy High Commissioner in London, had wrongfully confined and pressured her at his London office regarding her marital dispute with Jayant Advani. Most dismissed such claims. Sindhi Hindus show high reverence for Guru Nanak but so do millions of other Hindus in different parts of India.
The truth about Advani was that he came of age, intellectually, at a time when secularism was gaining ground. As a refugee, he dreamed of an 'Akhand Bharat' where the whole sub-continent would become a federation on the basis of religious toleration.
Advani's grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar & the principal of a Government High School. His father was a successful businessman but Advani was not interested in making money. After a good education at an Irish Christian Brothers' school, he began teaching in Karachi at the young age of 17 in 1942. But for the tragedy of Partition, I suppose he would have become a Professor or research scholar. Instead, Advani chose the austere life of a celibate RSS pracharak, first in Rajasthan & then Delhi, and only began earning independently, as a journalist in his thirties. Prior to that, he had stayed in Atal's Government accomodation- which explains why they were so close.
Advani got married when he was 38 years old. His wife, a fellow refugee, took a job at the Post Office to support her family after her father passed away. She was about 5 years junior in age to her husband. She was a great support to him till she passed away a decade ago. His daughter took over that role.
Two years later, Advani, as the Jan Sangh's chief organised in Delhi, got a hat trick- viz. a majority of parliamentary, MDC & MC seats. Thus, he became the Chairman of the DMC. His success in this role paved the way for his entry into the Rajya Sabha in 1970. Like Atal, he was a brilliant parliamentarian more particularly when he was Leader of the Opposition. He had taken a law degree but hadn't practiced. It was his journalistic work and his wide reading which allowed him to speak in an incisive manner. Modi praises his ideological clarity. Atal was more emotional and trusted to flights of rhetoric rather than reason. What Modi mostt admires is Advani's obstinacy on the Ram Temple question. It was tangible and concrete. The 'rath yatra' involving brick donation created a sense of empowerment. The voters were tired of windy talk. Modi helped Advani secure Gandhinagar from 1991 onward (except 1996 when he did not contest because of the Jain Hawala scandal) and observed his style of operation closely. Later, in 2014, when Advani wanted to shift to Bhopal, Modi persuaded him not to. It was important that the party be seen to be united. But to keep winning elections, the party must focus on 'last mile delivery'. Some may say that Modi repeated Advani's 2004 mistake of hubris, or over confidence, twenty years later. He seems to have learned from his mistake.
Pramod Mahajan was in charge of the disasterous 2004 election campaign. Vajpayee felt he was a good communicator & the belief, at that time, was that support for the party was growing because of the strong economy. The problem was that the rural areas had not benefited much. 'India Shining' backfired because people could see poor village women getting trampled in a stampede to get a free sari worth Rs. 40.
It must be said, Modi & the post-Godhra riots had alienated Muslims & parties worried about the Muslim vote- e.g. DMK in Tamil Nadu which had previously been a reliable ally. DMK got 40 seats. BJP lost 44. Congress gained 31 seats- 24 of them in Andhra Pradesh, at the expense of Chandrababu Naidu who had foucussed on high tech industry in the cities while neglecting the rural hinterland.
Without Vajpayee, the BJP was at a disadvantage more paricularly becomes Rahul had become an MP and could take over from Manmohan at any time. Advani was even older than Manmohan and his messaging was poor. Mahajan was killed by his brother in 2007 and the party was in disarray. It lost a further 22 seats in 2009. Fairly, or unfairly, Advani got a lot of the blame.
Could Advani have won in 2014? No. He was 87 years old. Manmohan, at 81, was decrepit enough. Modi, however, was 64 and had run Gujarat very successfully for 13 years. Still, if Rahul had shouldered Manmohan aside and taken the top job, he probably would have won because he was 44 years old.
Indeed, it was Rahul's return to India in 2002 and his standing for parliament in 2004, which doomed the BJP coalition. Advani, it must be said, was unstinting in his praise for Manmohan's performance as Finance Minister. But this wasn't a smart move when the younger man was the Congress PM and he himself was the leader of the opposition. Even more foolish was his assertion, in 2005, that Jinnah was 'secular'. Why didn't the party replace this 82 year old for the 2009 election? The truth is, there was a leadership vacuum. The RSS had lost faith in Advani & got him to resign as President of the Party in December of 2005. But they had no one to replace him with. The Delhi 4 - Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj,Venkakah Naidu & Rajnath Singh (the party president from 2005 to 2009) - were factionalising and intriguing against each other. After the 2009 election debacle, the RSS replaced Advani with Suhsma Swaraj as Leader of the Opposition. Gadkari was made President but did not have the gravitas or auctoritas to function effectively. Thankfully, Modi- thanks to the allegation that he liked eating Muslim babies- was becoming the 'Emperor of Hindu Hearts'. But, he himself knew, only last mile delivery matters. This was his message in 2014 and he swept the polls. His first big speech was about toilets. He promised to end open defecation. Every home would have an indoor toilet. The age of ideology was over. Politics was now about solving collective action problems in a manner that directly benefitted the poorest. Advani, it seems, was unimpressed. In 2019, when he finally retired from Parliament at the age of 91, he scolded Modi & Shah, in all but name, for calling people anti-national even if they were anti-national and wanted to break up the country. Hilariously, a Congress politician tweeted that Rahul was the true inheritor of Advani's legacy! The next year, Advani was acquited in the Babri case. Four years later, he was invited to the inauguration of the Ram Temple. Because of the extreme cold weather and his advanced age, he was not able to attend. Still, one might say of it, as was said of Sir Christopher Wren- Si monumentum requiris, circumspice- if seek his monument look around you. Not a bad verdict on a man whose political career was overshadowed first by Vajpayee and then by Modi.
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