Alienated Advani

Vimal Sumbly
Lal Krishen Advani is the best Prime Minister India could never have. However, he is the last person to accept it as he seems to feel that he is still capable of becoming one even though his own party is thinking otherwise. The 85 year old Bhartiya Janata Party stalwart today stands alienated, if not isolated, within his party with most of the party rank and file finding it difficult to project him as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 General Elections and instead opting for Narendra Modi, a more stringent and radical face of Hindutva.
It goes beyond saying that the modern day BJP owes much to Advani than to anybody else. If the former Prime Minister and soft spoken Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the face of the party, Advani was its backbone. From just two seats in 1984 when the entire opposition was wiped out in the post Indira Gandhi assassination nationalistic fervour with everybody voting for the Congress, Advani got the party to power at the centre just within 13 years as the BJP formed a government leading the National Democratic Alliance at the centre.
Known for his strong views on nationalism, rather Hindu nationalism it was Advani who led the Rath Yatra for the “liberation” of the Ram Janambhoomi in Ayodhya that ultimately culminated in the demolition of the sixteenth century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 in his presence. He was instrumental in successfully building up a strong Hindu nationalist movement mostly in the cow belt of north India and parts of South India like Karnataka and some parts of Andhra Pradesh.
Advani’s Rath Yatra was also timed to stem the sharp divisions with the Hindu community that had started erupting in the post anti-Mandal Commission riots across the country. The implementation of the Mandal Commission Recommendations, which extended 27 per cent reservation to the Other Backward Classes within the Hindu community, had virtually divided Hindus among the upper and lower castes. The Rath Yatra, also known as Ram Janambhoomi Movement, helped in uniting the Hindu society again. Thus the Rath Yatra served the twin purpose of consolidating the Hindus, mostly in north India, into a one community besides strengthening the BJP.
When the BJP finally stormed to power in 1998, Advani had to be content with being the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister is no constitutional post in India and is just a consolatory prize for someone who ideally should have been the Prime Minister but could not become, like Advani and before him Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, a leader with whom Advani is always compared to and he also likes to be compared to, and Devi Lal.
It goes to Advani’s credit that he gracefully accepted the number two position in the government as long as his long time friend and colleague Vajpayee was around despite his proportionately large contribution. After all faces alone do not build the parties. He always waited for his moment which finally seemed to had come in 2009. He was projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate by the BJP led National Democratic Alliance in 2009. Described as the Loh Pursh (iron man) like Sardar Patel during the entire campaign and placed against a “weak and meek”, as the BJP would describe Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance, he was thought to be on the way of becoming the Prime Minister.
As bad luck would have it, the NDA lost and so did Advani. He was already over 81 years old at that time thus ruling out his options for the future in 2014. He will be nearing 87 by that time, making him it highly improbably to be named as the Prime Ministerial candidate despite his being hale and hearty and physically quite active. He probably still considers himself to be fit to lead the party hence is not able to reconcile to the fact that the party has found someone more saleable than him in Narendra Modi.
Advani still seems to have hope in the opposition to Modi’s candidature by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. And that probably explains his “illness” at a crucial hour when the party is almost ready to designate the leader who will be leading its campaign for 2014 General Elections. By abstaining from the deliberations aimed at anointing Modi to the prestigious position, he has escaped being part of the process to endorse Modi’s candidature for leading the campaign that may eventually lead to his being the Prime Ministerial candidate which Advani may not like, not at least at this point of time.

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