L.K.Advani -- One Man, Many Masks

In the early nineties when the Maratha Supremo Sharad Pawar had tried to challenge the authority of PV Narsimaha Rao, R K Laxman had an interesting take on the front pages of Times. Much on the lines of the famous quote by Shakespeare describing Ceasar’s conquests ’He Came, He Saw and He Conquered’, he had shown a tough Pawar challenging PVN in the first picture like a warrior and in the last picture showed him procrastinating before him with a caption ’He Came, He Saw and He Concurred.

The Iron Man II s short lived ’rebellion’ against his own ’family’ had similar Pawarian rings about them. Declaring his own ’battlecry’ at the Mausoleum of Jinnah, he had returned like a man who was on the verge of making history. But it was not to be. Initially he showed lot of resistance but within no time he realised that ground was slipping from below his feet and decided to surrender. Looking back it is clear that he had developed a few misgivings about the basic norm in the ’family’ about the division of labour. Now it must be clear to him that the work of thinking and lording over all its subjects is done by the great patriarch or the coterie surrounding him, others are supposed just to follow or act.

How will history evaluate Lal Kishenchand Advani? How will posterity think about the Iron Man II who metamorphosed into a straw man when the stakes were found to be high? Apart from the many ifs and buts he would be remembered for his illusory strength. For all his talk of re-enacting Sardar Patel and eulgoising his era, he proved a quintessential Swayamsevak who turns turtle when confronted with any challenge.

A look at the Sangh history tells us vividly what it means to be a Swayamsevak. And the behaviour of its leaders down the years demonstrates the compromising nature vividly. Ofcourse the not so glorious history starting from Hedgewars and Golwalkars reaching upto the recent Deorases or Sudarshan need not be recanted here in detail. It tellus us about the undertakings given by the stalwarts of the Hindutva brigade before the then powers that be and instructing their followers to remain aloof from political struggle of any kind and concentrating on ’cultural work’.

Right from the independence struggle to the historic struggle of the Indian people against emergency all these fire spitting leaders of the Hindutva United Family have shown similar spinelessness. It would be difficult for many to believe that Balasaheb Deoras had sung paens to Indira Gandhi when the mother organisation was banned during emergency. He had even instructed its activists to give written undertakings to come out of jail. Resistance to authority has never been a culture.

Definitely it would have helped Mr Advani a lot to look at the hazards of thinking independently in the Sangh. He could have looked at the plight of the Maulichandra Sharmas or for that matter Balraj Madhoks who also happened to be presidents of the political formation floated by the same parent body. If Maulichandra Sharma happened to be President of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 50s , Mr Madhok led the party in late sixties and early seventies. Both of them faced a similar fate. They faced unceremonious exit from the party for the very ‘misdemeanour’ for which Mr L K Advani was dethroned from his position. Even Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the first President of the Jan Sangh also had to learn the hard way what it meant to question the authority of Golwalkar

None of the people from the BJP fraternity dared to formally request Mr. Advani to reconsider his decision. Many of them were his own ’proteges’. But everybody was silent. No murmur, no protest, maximum thing was wet eyes. And what about the Sushmas, the Umas or the Mahajans or for that matter Rajnath Singhs or the poet ex PM Vajpayee ? All their eloquence, all their articulation remained frozen in their throats. All of them by their silence showed that they are with the ’family’. The declared ‘heretic’ had to go for inviting the wrath of the supremo.

Ofcourse it was a moment of poetic justice for Mr Advani who in the late seventies had preferred to lead his pack of people from the fledgling combination of Janata Party on the issue of RSS, preferring the umbilical cord of the nascent BJP with the RSS. The man who today clamoured for a symbiotic relationship of the RSS with the BJP or cried hoarse about the undue intervention of the Sangh in the day to day affairs of the party was then all for the same intervention.

The only concession which the Sangh bosses gave Mr Advani was that he was allowed to air his views when he would announce his resignation. And as an expert in packaging he also projected his surrender as a temporary retreat by a warrior. Mr Advani tried to sugarcoat the whole surrender drama by sermonising the patriarchs sitting in Nagpur and/or Jhandewalan that it is time that they stop poking their nose on each and every affair of the party.

Interestingly the process of ’deadvanisation’ of the Party has been so swift that despite the fact that the Bihar elections were being fought under his 'presidentship’ the posters would not bear his photograph.

We have seen before our own eyes the unfolding of the fake independence or fake autonomy of a political party. Till date the relationship between the political formation and the ’cultural organisation’ appeared more nuanced. But the task of bringing back the core agenda of the formation which the Sangh has taken up with much gusto has brought back focus on the dangers inherent in this umbilical relationship. It is the same ’cultural formation’ which has received lot of flak for its majoritarian agenda and actions.

Apart from the fact that it has been castigated umpteen times for its partisan role in communal riots, it has been found to be engaged in activities which can never be called conducive to full flowering of democracy. It is the same formation which has celebrated the ’successful Gujarat experiment’. One need not elaborate on its insistence on accepting Manusmriti as the constitution of free India instead of the gigantic efforts which were taken up to provide a constitution which was in tune with modern times.

Perhaps regarding the question of women’s rights, dalit rights or for that matter the rights of the different minorities, its attempt have always been to bulldoze their aspirations for a better life.