What Advani said, and what they heard

The context was the Indo-Pak dialogue and the reconstruction of a set of temples near Lahore by a Muslim organisation. The progress of the dialogue in recent days has been phenomenal but then Advani had to remind the global audience that the NDA Government, of which BJP was the leader, started the dialogue. His critics have accused him of accepting Pakistan as a reality. Do they expect that we should go to war and destroy Pakistan? Only the foolhardy would think so.

The general impression that it was he who instigated the demolition of the Babri structure has been assiduously propagated — mainly by the Left and people like Laloo Prasad Yadav, with the Congress repeating the charge. That is despite his statement only a week after the demolition that he considered December 6, 1992, ‘‘the saddest day in my life’’. The Pakistani audience might not have heard him decry the demolition. But now he had an opportunity to reiterate it and correct his and the party’s image to our closest neighbour. He did achieve several goals by this.

First, his Pakistani audience can no longer be misled by that country’s own rabble rousers that the whole business of BJP and the ‘‘Hindutva’’ people is to destroy Pakistan. By stating the obvious, that ‘‘India and Pakistan are historic realities’’, Advani has knocked aside the stories that the hardliners in Pakistan wanted to perpetuate to get public support for their pursuit of terror and jehadi politics.

But that is not the only outcome. Advani utilised the occasion to recall also that Jinnah himself viewed Pakistan as a secular country. And now what has Pakistan become? Is the conversion of Pakistan into a theocracy antithetical to the vision of its founder? The argument was aimed at the deep-rooted Pakistani establishment on the one hand; it also was a subtle support to the rising tide of moderate middle-class opinion in Pakistan. That Advani was able to expose this contrast without appearing to interfere into the host country’s internal affairs is a tribute to his diplomatic finesse.

It is unfortunate that some on this side of the border failed to grasp this important achievement. Perhaps it is the first time in the last one decade that someone has held the Jinnah mirror to their face, and the Pakistanis appreciated what they perceived — the implied criticism. For the liberal minority there, all this must have come as a great hope. He never said that Jinnah was secular but only that he gave a secular vision for his people. It was upto them to evaluate how far they have progressed in that vision.

It was the domestic critics that set the cat among the pigeons and created this entire storm. They accused him of ignoring the basic ideology of the party. It is not that they had no point. The very name of Jinnah invokes deep memories of the lakhs of people massacred in the riots leading to Partition, and afterwards too. There could be no doubt that had it not been for the stature that Jinnah lent to the Partition demand, the Muslim League by itself would not have got a separate nation. That Jinnah had time and again stated that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations cannot be ignored. How could such an ardent protagonist of the two-nation theory be secular?

Nor is it for the first time that Jinnah’s speech advocating equal treatment to all citizens of Pakistan, irrespective of their religion, had come to public notice. In several books on Partition, this apparent change of stand of the founder of Pakistan and protagonist of the two-nation theory to a ‘‘secular’’ mould for the nation he created has been analysed. Yuvraj Krishan, who went through all the relevant documents, says in his book, Understanding Partition that ‘‘Jinnah’s statement was very puzzling, it is a political conundrum which scholars have been debating to unravel.’’ He even doubts the sincerity behind it.

It is in this context that a disconnect was witnessed between the BJP president and the core constituency of the party. And rightly, Advani decided to quit to end this disconnect. However, that decision has had its cascading reaction within BJP. This is a type of catharsis that nations and movements go through at critical junctures. But those who have a phalanx of wise and mature leadership come out of it reburnished; those who have a short-sighted and immature conclaves go off the runway and get their party stuck. The BJP’s three days of self-introspection should do it enormous good. The outcome has revealed a capability for mature leadership, not knee-jerk reactions.

The reaction in the Congress party could be understood. If it had hoped for the BJP to split or reel in disarray, it has been disappointed. By declaring that it is against Jinnah, the Congress might have sought to capitalise on Advani’s sound byte on TV. That too has not succeeded. The Left too tried to appear as critics of Jinnah — but everyone knows that it was the undivided CPI that had in the ’30s and ’40s supported the two-nation theory. In fact, it had its own theory about India being a confederation of nations till recently. The CPI’s full support to the demand for Pakistan before and after Partition is well documented.

The anti-BJP camp has been upset that the BJP leader has taken Pakistan by storm. This was certainly not expected, though it was known that he would be projecting the peace moves in the subcontinent as a bipartisan policy. But that Pakistan should fete and applaud someone whom they had been describing in India as a ‘‘communal hardliner’’ and one who led the ‘‘demolition’’ of Babri structure, must have unnerved them. The demonising of Advani (and the BJP in turn) as being against Muslims could no longer be sustained.

If the sole purpose of the Congress and Left coming together despite their radical differences on economic policies is simply to keep BJP out of power, that purpose is now called into question. Others who have more reason to see the demon in Advani have refused to implicate him. Vote-bank politics on which they have thrived have been dented. They will now have to re-invent the demon to keep their vote-bank intact.

The writer, a Rajya Sabha member and convener of BJP’s think tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com.