In great Greek tragedies, heroes often suffer from a tragicflaw of character leading to their eventual downfall. This could be a lack of self-knowledge, lackof judgment, and even hubris. The fatalflaw in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the crippling indecisiveness of its hero, oneof the most fascinating characters in the world literature and the most popularone created by the Bard.
To be, or not to be–that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrowsof outrageous fortune
Or to take armsagainst a sea of troubles
Lal Krishna Advani reminds me these days of those tragicheroes with a fatal flaw. The patriarch,who co-founded the BJP along with Atal Behari Vajpayee and others and isconsidered the sole architect of the party’s metamorphosis from a 2-memberoutfit into India’s party of governance, must be ruing his fatal error of judgmentand the day he took a little-known RSS pracharak from Gujarat, under his wingsas his protégé.
Not only did Advani groom and mentor Narendra Modi foryears, it was he who rescued him when in the aftermath of the horrific 2002pogrom that claimed around 3,000 lives, Prime Minister Vajpayee, under pressurefrom allies, wanted to sack him as the Gujarat chief minister.
Modi survived 2002 with the blessings of Advani and ruledGujarat for 12 years, acquiring popularity with the party rank and file andamong Hindus with his hardline image. In 2014, he went on to win the BJPnomination as the prime ministerial candidate, elbowing out rivals like SushmaSwaraj, Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitely, and his own mentor, the 92-year oldAdvani.
After decades of waiting in the wings under the shadow of amore charismatic Vajpayee, Advani finally had a shot at the top job after theformer prime minister retired. However, first the Congress-led UPA and then hisown protégé from Gujarat stole the opportunity from right under his nose.
Today, after a lifetime of hard work in the trenches of theParivar and building the BJP from a scratch, including generations of leaderslike Modi, Advani has not only been unceremoniously dumped by the party as aparliamentary candidate, he has had to face the ultimate indignity of beingintimated about the decision through a junior functionary.
Both the high-flying Prime Minister and the man he importedfrom Gujarat as the BJP president, Amit Shah, have been too busy to spare sometime for the grand old man. (After somenegative media coverage, Shah has since called on the patriarch ostensibly topresent him with a copy of the new manifesto!)
In a way, as in those great tragedies, our hero plotted hisown fall by resolutely throwing his weight behind the then Gujarat chiefminister. Vajpayee rightly blamed Modi for not upholding his ‘Raj Dharma’ andthe 2002 carnage of Muslims for the stunning defeat of the BJP in 2004 afterthe self-congratulatory ‘India Shining’ campaign.
It is almost tempting to sympathise with Advani over hisstunning fall from grace and the ultimate humiliation in the party that hefounded and built and at the hands of men and women he personally groomed andmentored during long career as one of India’s top politicians.
But considering the singular role Advani has played — alongwith Vajpayee and other leading lights of the orange brigade — in introducingthe poison of hate and religious discord in Indian politics and unmaking ofIndian democracy, any twinge of regret over his fate would be misplaced.
If the BJP has grown from an obscure ring-wing outfit on themargins of Indian politics into the largest political party in the world withunprecedented financial resources at its disposal, the credit goes to Advaniand his infamous Somnath to Ayodhya rath yatra in 1990.
Given the emotional role faith has always played in thelives of incredibly devout Indians, the call to build a temple at the site ofBabri Masjid and the ostensible birthplace of Lord Ram was indeed amasterstroke to counter Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s gambit of granting quota tomultiple backward Hindu communities.
The Ayodhya yatra left behind a trail of death and destructionacross the country. It eventually led tothe destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992 and catastrophic anti-Muslim riotsacross the country killing around 3,000 people.
However, it helped unite the upper caste Hindus behind theBJP, instantaneously swelling its ranks like never before, and catapulting theparty to the centre-stage of Indian politics.
Today, the BJP not just rules from Delhi with a brutestrength in Parliament, it also has governments in 16 states in the length andbreadth of the country. It was riding on the success of Advani and his Ayodhyacampaign that the BJP under Modi swept to power in 2014 and may very well bevoted back in elections beginning on April 11.
As Ruchir Joshi puts it in the Hindu, “they (BJP) sensedthat a disaffected, jobless mass of male youth, at least in central and northIndia, was a tinder keg that could be ignited with the touchpaper ofcommunalism and the targeting of the minority communities as the ‘enemy’.Long-honed instincts told them their pseudo-Hinduism had a strong chance ofdefeating the Congress’s pseudo-secularism, at least in the so-called cow belt.These men knew fully well that their ‘rath-yatras’ and their carting of’consecrated’ bricks to Ayodhya would lead to a bloodbath. Not only did theyknow it — the very success of their gamble depended on violence ensuing, onlarge parts of the country tearing along communal lines. After the demolitionof the Babri Masjid this is exactly what happened.”
Many of Indians today, born after December 6, 1992 and themadness of those deeply divisive and unsettling years, would not know what itwas like to live in those days of strife and hate and perpetual VHP-Bajrang Dalyatras, shilaniyas and religious riots.
Thousands of innocents died and a whole generation grew upwith the scars of that toxic conflict. The BJP and its politics of hate forever demonising Muslims as the hatedOther have changed the very nature and character of Indian politics, nay, theIndian society, forever.
This is the proud legacy of Advani, Vajpayee, Joshi and allthe great men who led the BJP for decades and plotted the unmaking of India allthe while paying obeisance to the fine secular and democratic Constitution ofIndia that promises inclusive polity and equality of opportunity to allcommunities and groups.
The denial of a mere party ticket is no retribution for whatAdvani and company visited on India, wreaking havoc with its political anddemocratic institutions and saffronising virtually every sphere of activity.
There is little consolation either over the fact that Advanihas been upstaged by a protégé who is certainly turning out to be moremendacious and crafty than his mentor in every way possible.
This is perhaps what you may call the ultimate poeticjustice. But it’s little gratifyingconsidering Indian courts are yet to deliver justice in the man’s case, knownto constantly rub his hands, as if trying to clear the bloodstains on hishands. A la Lady Macbeth: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” in the great Shakespeareantragedy!