Happy ending?

L.K. Advani unfortunately is no Jassi when it comes to makeovers. It is only at a tremendous political cost that Advani has realized that politics in India cannot be left to script-writers.

Advani?s stature in the party has taken a hard knock. From being ?Kodanda Ram? (Ram with his arrow to the bow-string atop a chariot) of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he has had to suffer the ignominy of being called ?Lal Mohammad Advani? (courtesy Praveen Togadia) and settle for a lame-duck presidency.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, K.S. Sudarshan, has not stopped abusing him. Even before Advani had put his resignation letter back in his pocket, Sudarshan mocked politics and politicians at a rally in Sikar in Rajasthan saying, ?Just as a veshya (prostitute) changes her clothes and appearance, a politician changes his stand.? Advani?s troubles with the RSS are clearly likely to escalate.

Those who see in Advani the possibility of secularizing the BJP do not recognize that Advani?s political career itself seems to be veering towards an end. Advani has lost the ideological battle with the RSS.

Advani cannot stay on as party president for long because his ideological credentials are in doubt. The party cadre does not know which Advani to trust ? the one in Karachi or the one who has desperately clung on to his party post after fudging his statement on Jinnah. Advani?s presidency may not even last till December this year.

Whether he can continue as the leader of the opposition in parliament after that remains to be seen. If Advani is unsuitable to lead the party ideologically then he cannot also lead it in parliament. Kalyan Singh made this point at the first meeting of the party?s parliamentary board during the crisis and then Yashwant Sinha repeated it publicly.

The most vocal opposition to Advani?s comments in Pakistan came from his home constituents in Gandhinagar where Narendra Modi had to arrest people for burning effigies. If there had been right to recall, the BJP voters of Gandhinagar would have had him for breakfast by now. He may find it difficult to even visit his constituency in the near future.

It speaks volumes of Advani?s political miscalculation that he thought the party would look to him and not to the RSS for ideological guidance. The net result was that the entire second-generation leadership of the party rallied behind the mother organization. This required no prompting from the RSS.

The myth of Advani commanding personal loyalty in the party was shattered in no time at all. Not one BJP leader of any consequence defended Advani either in public or in private ? not his prot?g?, Venkaiah Naidu, not Sushma Swaraj and not even the redoubtable Arun Jaitley.

The entire Advani-Jinnah episode has resulted in three significant outcomes: the RSS has emerged stronger than before; a clear signal has gone to the BJP?s cadre about the party?s ideological moorings in Hindutva; and the emotional and political bonds between the RSS and the BJP have been reinforced.

The RSS has been able to re-assert itself as the focal point of BJP?s ideology. The efficacy of the ideological training of the RSS can be gauged from the fact that it was a lowly functionary of the party who instinctively judged that Advani had erred in Karachi. On his own he refused to put Advani?s written comments at Jinnah?s mausoleum and his speech at the Karachi council on foreign relations, economic affairs and law on the party?s website or to distribute it to beat correspondents. He refused to budge despite repeated phone calls from Karachi.

He took the statements to the party general secretaries and they unanimously agreed not to give the party?s official approval to Advani?s comments. It was a plucky Sushma Swaraj who called up Advani in Karachi to tell him that going out on a limb on Jinnah was a risky way of conducting politics. The RSS leadership was pleasantly surprised that all this happened spontaneously.

This unanimity in distancing the party from Advani?s attempt at a secular makeover sent a signal to the party functionaries across the country that the BJP had not abandoned its Hindutva core. If the cadre thought that the party had softened ideologically because of its participation in coalition politics, they now took sustenance from the fact that no such thing has happened. In fact, the BJP pointedly refused to engage with the leaders of the National Democratic Alliance like George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar who came to Advani?s defence.

Not since the Ram rathyatra of Advani have the BJP and the sangh parivar shown the rare emotional unity as they did over the Jinnah episode. Even those who did not come into the BJP from the RSS ? like Yashwant Sinha ? showed no hesitation in condemning Advani.

The three political leaders who supported Advani against the RSS were Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. They understood that Advani?s statements on Jinnah had the potential of making the party more acceptable to coalition partners as well as of putting the Congress on the defensive if a debate started on the role of the various political actors in Partition.

The RSS has been upset with Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh at different points of time ? Sudarshan had commented adversely on Vajpayee?s age and personally prevented Jaswant?s appointment as finance minister in the first Vajpayee government in 1996. Neither wanted the RSS to get an upper hand in the BJP and probably shuddered at the prospect of a lack-lustre Venkaiah at the helm after Advani?s removal. Nor did they want to take on the RSS by themselves at a future date. Shekhawat?s coming to Advani?s rescue perhaps had to do with the emotional bonds between the two ? Advani had been an RSS pracharak in Rajasthan ? and Shekhawat perhaps did not want Advani?s career to end in disgrace.

In the end, if Advani was saved, it was because of his low cunning. When the BJP office-bearers requested him to continue as party president, it was for form?s sake. Advani took that opportunity to reconsider his resignation because there was no way he was going to take political sanyas over Jinnah. He converted the meeting into a debate over the language of the resolution that the party wanted to adopt on his Pakistan visit. The resignation game was over and the party was forced to go on to the back foot.

The pathetic display of people bursting crackers at Advani?s house and at the party office after he retracted his resignation, only underlines how his politics is still captive to script-writers. This was for the benefit of television. No one asked who these people were and what they were celebrating. Who had won and who had lost? Was the party celebrating victory or was Advani doing so? If these were genuine BJP workers, then where were they during the previous three days when not one of them turned up at the Advani residence?