L. K. Advani : Requiem For A Dream
Political epitaphs have a way of
returning to reclaim the hand that buried them.
If the present prime minister of India,
spares no effort to berate Jawaharlal Nehru for perceived injustice to his
deputy Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, how would Narendra Modi be rated when posterity evaluates him for putting to
pasture two of his own party patriarchs-L.K.Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi? Lot less flatteringly then he desires.
Lack
of basic courtesy bordering on utter disdain marked the manner in which the two were sent packing. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the
third of the triad that sculpted the BJP to power, had already been reduced to a ritual when he bowed
out.
Every dawn comes with a timed sunset but
it is the way you treat your revered that shows the moral fibre of a leadership
and the pedigree of a party. It is common knowledge that BJP president Amit
Shah did not even care to inform the two that their candidature was not in the reckoning in the 2019 general elections.
By any yardstick this was a serious breach of protocol. Shah may hold the post
but has hardly the stature to take such a decision on his own without the
concurrence of Modi. It was only after Joshi came calling on Advani and their
anger at the deliberate snub spilled into public domain that an apologetic Shah
sought to make amends. It was too little, too late.
Advani
along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi constituted the three
founding pillars of the BJP. Vajpayee’s
relevance stood reduced after the party’s defeat in the 2004 hustings and his
health issues subsequently turned him into a ceremonial relic until he passed
away last year(August 16,2018). Always the bridesmaid never the bride, Advani’s highpoint was being deputy prime minister in the NDA government under Vajpayee before
Modi caught up with him. Joshi ,a six term Lok Sabha member is the founding
general secretary of the BJP and has been
its national president from 1919-93. Presently the chairman of the
parliamentary estimates committee, he is locked in a losing battle for
relevance in his own outfit. Electoral possibilities for both come later.
The mirthful irony of evolving politics
is that while Modi owes his rise to chief ministership of Gujarat solely to Advani, the latter was the
first person he sidelined on his way to prime ministership. In fact ,Modi had
been banished from Gujarat in the
aftermath of Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebellion in 1995 that led to the fall of
the first BJP government in Gujarat headed by Keshubhai Patel. Vaghela had
flown to Khajuraho with 48 party legislators. A compromise was worked out by Vajpayee to save the
government.
According to the truce formula , Keshubhai was replaced by Suresh
Mehta and state party organization secretary Narendra Modi was sent packing out
of Gujarat. However the Mehta government could barely survive 11 months as behind the scene machinations by Modi and
VHP leader Pravin Togadia triggered a chain of events that led to it’s fall and
a stint of President’s rule later brought Vaghela to power at the head of a
regional party,RJP with Congress support. The RJP government lasted about 500 days and opted for elections in
which Keshubhai returned to power in
1998 heading a BJP government. He was replaced by Narendra Modi in the aftermath of the earthquake, as
chief minister in 2002 with Advani playing a pivotal role in the change of
guard.
Even thereafter, it is common knowledge,
that Vajpayee wanted Modi replaced in the aftermath of the 2002 statewide communal riots that followed the Godhra train carnage.
However it was Advani again ,who
ingeniously scuttled the move. Modi was at best a shadow presence when both
Advani(1990) and Joshi (1993) took out their respective ‘yatras’ from Gujarat to
criss-cross the country.
Incidentally, Gujarat chief minister
Modi’s three day ‘sadbhavana’fast - Sept
17-19,2011- wherein he first unsheathed his national political preferences came
just a month before Advani’s ‘Jan Chetna’ yatra from Bihar in October the same
year. It was then seen as an attempt by Modi to upstage his mentor in the run
up to the Prime Ministerial sweepstakes. Factspeak is that in June 2013 Modi
took over as head of the BJP campaign committee for the 2019 parliamentary
polls and two months later was declared the party candidate for prime
ministership . The rest is history. Soon after Modi took charge as Prime
Minister in 2014, both Advani and Joshi were dressed into a ’margdarshak
mandal’, a sort of apex advisory body with nowhere to go !
How times change. On September 28, after
a road show in Kalol town of Gandhinagar
constituency during the 2009 Lok Sabha campaign Amit Shah stood head bent bearing the brunt
of an angry Advani after a particularly lukewarm public response. Now seen standing
hands folded at public engagements before his two helming disciples, Modi and
Shah, ignored and sidelined, does not
make for a pleasant sight.
Ideally, a fitting finale to Advani’s
illustrious political career would have been his anointment as the country’s
president by his most favoured disciple but there are latent insecurities which would prevent the ruling duo from any
such act of grace. Modi is a champion of the ‘weak’ and detests anyone ‘strong’
,moving swiftly to neutralize a possible future threat. No wonder Advani was
passed over in favour of then Bihar Governor Ramnath Kovind though the Congress
proved more graceful in rewarding Pranab Mukherjee with the top job. Advani’s journey to oblivion is just a logical
progression of a continuing sequence of events.
Even in 2014, there was drama and suspense in his ticket allocation.
Inspired media reports emanating from within the party spoke of him being
looked over. ”Testing the ground’, said a senior BJP leader . It was only after
MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan announced that he would be happy to accommodate Advani
from his state, that his candidature from Gandhinagar was confirmed.
Modi has been ruthless in his pursuit of
power. In 2014 ,he came from behind to trip his mentor in the final lap to
emerge as the prime ministerial face of the party. Once crowned, the ruling duo
set up a ‘margdarshak mandal’ as a top notch policy formulating body with
Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi as its members. In all the five years ,the mandal
never met formally and in hindsight proved nothing more than a parking place
for discarded , elderly egos. To add salt to sore wounds, Advani was totally
absent from the campaigning scene during the critically important 2017 Gujarat Vidhan Sabha elections. After
Modi came to power in Delhi, Advani’s visits to Gujarat have been comparatively
infrequent while that of the prime minister much more commonplace.
Advani has old links with Gujarat. In
the wake of partition, the family had migrated from Sindh to Adipur in Kutch
and therefrom on to Delhi. As he came of
age in politics, he was elected for four consecutive terms to the Rajya Sabha
from 1970 to 1989. It was only in 1989 that he was for the first time elected
to the Lok Sabha from Delhi.
He, however opted for Gandhinagar in the tenth lok
sabha in 1991. He had quit in 1996 after the Jain hawala diary scandal and did
not contest the 1996 elections. He however returned after being cleared in the
case to win Gandhinagar in 1998 and continued
to represent the constituency in the Lok Sabha till he was run out by his own protégé at 91 !
The ancient theory of Karma enunciates that what goes around,comes around.It may be curtains for Advani but the Modi saga is still unfolding .
ReplyDeleteNice! you are sharing such helpful and easy to understandable blog in decoration. i have no words for say i just say thanks because it is helpful for me.
Septic contractors in Debary