Opinion - News Analysis   

No change in the Advani persona

Neena Vyas

Within a week, if not earlier, Mr. Advani can be expected to loudly proclaim his swayamsevak credentials.

THE POSTURING by Bharatiya Janata Party chief L.K. Advani during his Pakistan "yatra" in early June and the crisis that has overtaken the BJP since then have led some to believe that Mr. Advani is now a changed man, that he is ready to jettison the RSS ideology of Akhand Bharat and Hindu Rashtra and shed the mandir wahin banayenge mindset. This may be far removed from reality. Within a week, if not earlier, Mr. Advani can be expected to loudly proclaim his swayamsevak credentials.

If Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah's views on "secularism" cannot be gauged from a single speech made in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, surely Mr. Advani's communal politics of 50 to 60 years cannot be overlooked because in Pakistan he chose to describe the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, as the "saddest day" in his life.

The fact is that Mr. Advani has been at pains to emphasise to RSS leaders that his statements in Pakistan on Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not constitute any deviation from the Sangh ideology, that he had wanted to sharpen the "debate" on communalism, secularism, and "pseudo-secularism", that he was only serving the cause of the Sangh when he said what he did about Jinnah.

Senior BJP leaders are quite certain that at next week's national executive committee meeting of the party in Chennai, if not earlier, Mr. Advani will clearly and loudly deliver the message that he remains a true swayamsevak.

For, if he does not, the very leaders who rallied around him to help him keep his job — after the RSS made it plain that it would like him to exit and make room for a younger (and ideologically committed) leader — could turn against him and ease him out of his dual position as party president and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

BJP-RSS discussions

Already, intense discussions on ideology between senior BJP leaders and the RSS have begun. Uma Bharti went to Nagpur to meet RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan; Sushma Swaraj and Pramod Mahajan went to Jhandewalan on Thursday evening; Sanjay Joshi, the RSS pointman in the BJP occupying the position of general secretary (organisation), had a lengthy meeting on Friday with RSS functionary Suresh Soni, who is in-charge of BJP affairs.

Others are expected to go in ones and twos to give a commitment to the RSS top brass that there will be no wavering on ideological issues.

A point that is being made with emphasis by those in the RSS and close to it is that "the entire party" was "solidly" with the RSS on ideological issues. The differences were limited to the need for a change of leadership in the BJP, or rather only limited to the "timing" and "manner" of the change.

In private conversations, party leaders have sometimes boasted that the BJP is now a mass-based party and does not depend on RSS cadre to win elections. But again and again this has been proven to be wrong. Whether in the last Delhi Assembly elections or the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election, when the RSS cadre has not come out to support the BJP whole-heartedly, the results for the BJP have been disastrous.

Wrong perception?

The general perception that Mr. Advani has won two rounds in the battle against the Sangh — one on June 10 when a party statement allowed him to wriggle out and withdraw his resignation, and the second time on July 11 when he successfully resisted RSS suggestion that he quit — may prove to be wrong.

For, although for the moment Mr. Advani has kept his job, he has become vulnerable and will have to be very careful before he says anything on any issue on which the Sangh is sensitive. He will have to publicly assert his Sangh credentials and demonstrate that he has not forgotten the lessons he learnt at the feet of (`guru') M.S. Golwalkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

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