roadies in reverse gear- advani's rathyatra to nowhere

8/3/2019 Roadies in Reverse Gear- Advani's Rathyatra to Nowhere

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L

K Adavani is a toughie. I know, I could

have added a ‘ji’ to his name, as the

mainstream media does, but I cannot.

The reason is simple. Whenever I think

of him, what comes to my mind is all those

trails of blood that his ‘yatras’ have left behind.

Actually, for the sake of political correctness

and my belief in engaging even the enemies in

a dialogue, once I tried referring to him like

that. The consequences were heart wrenching.

One, it made me queasy and second, I lost two

friends. That was a lesson to remember. Trying

to be politically correct maybe prudent, but not

when it comes to dealing with those whose

histories are written with blood, others’ blood

of course.

He is a toughie for daring to go for a rath

yatra, yet again, traversing the length and

breadth of the country. He is a toughie for dar-

ing to do that at an age when people would

probably not want to do even as much as going

to the grocery shop in the neighbourhood. He

is a toughie for having the courage to chase his

dream, still. Alas, the dreams that take him to

that coveted chair he lost last time by finding a

‘deputy’ prefixed to those magical words,

Prime Minister.

So, Advani is a toughie, but of a very

strange kind. He is one who gets scoffed at by

even that person who gets mocked by the

whole country for his powerlessness. Believe

me, a friend once told me that the single most

contribution of Dr Manmoham Singh to Indian

politics was calling Advani a Permanent Prime

Minister In Waiting! I did ask that friend about

his other contributions, like opening up of

Indian markets to the world and ushering in

the era of LPG, i.e. liberalization, privatization

and globalization. After all, one can disagree,

as I do or agree as few others, but then these

are his contribution, aren’t they?

My friend gave me a look that reeked of

condescension. Then came the reply. Yes, it is if

the nuts in a machine ‘contribute’ to the pro-

duction independent of the operator. Nuts, he

repeated with a smirk. Did not Advani’s

Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) follow the same

policies when they came to the power was the

other shot fired by him. Do you remember, with

the same condescension, that the BJP- led

National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ended up

opening a ministry for Disinvestment? I was

silent. Still thinking of the ‘nuts’, the ones in a

machine I mean.

So, the PM scoffs at him. A Chief Minister

from his own party, Narendra Modi, snubs him

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Advani’srath yatraleads to

nowhere

Roadies in reverse gear?

BY

SAMAR



and chooses to skip BJP’s National Executive

meeting. The reason he gives is insult added to

injury. He could not attend the meet for

Navaratras he said. Advani could not havechallenged the validity of the reason for sure.

Being someone who invoked Lord Rama for all

his personal quests did not leave any scope for

that. Did it?

Further, that could have infuriated the

matri-shakti, or the mother power, for even

Lord Rama worships Goddess Durga. Advani

did have an escape route though. He could

have used the excuse for rubbishing all those

‘pseudo-secular’ critiques that label his party

as a misogynist one. The maverick leader he is,

he could have used this as a decisive proof of

the feminist credentials of his party, even if

that of a subversive kind. I don’t know why he

did not.

Maybe he was scared of all the flak Sushma

Swaraj, another stalwart of her party, received

in 2004 after NDA’s shock defeat in 2004. Her

vow to live as a widow if Sonia Gandhi was

appointed the Prime Minister was condemnedfor being misogynist by the women (and of

course the men who have become a little civi-

lized unlike her fellows) left, right and center.

Advani, I am sure, must have drawn his con-

clusions then and there. If Sushma could not

get away with this I should never ever even try,

he must have thought. He must have reminded

himself that his specialization lays in playing

with fire. He has championed the art of stoking

it and running away, ahead to be more precise

as the fire always trailed the raths, or the char-

iots, he rode. For someone with a forte in play-

ing with fire must not dabble in the dangerousdomain of feminist discourse, he must have

told himself before backing off. Only a toughie

can take such tough decisions, isn’t it?

Interestingly, Modi’s snub was not the only

one he received, even if it was the most visible

one. There were many others, most of them

from his own protégés who were smirking at

his ambitions of becoming Prime Minister of

India one day, some day. They knew that it was

he and his rath yatras which has brought the

party to the power, but they were well aware of

the political realities of their country as well.

They knew that the toughie was not smart-

ed by that soft-spoken leader from the cow-

belt. They were doubly assured that it was the

toughie who has trumped himself. The preten-

sions of being tough, more so on a particular

community, could be anything but a wise polit-

ical move in a country like ours. Aren’t we a

country defined more by the fault lines that run

beneath the slogan of unity in diversity? The

road to power in this country has always gone

through bridging the gaps and not by building

up barricades. The toughie has committed that

blunder.

In the era where images mean more than

the real person behind them, Advani has

carved a divisive and unfriendly one for him-

self. He had established himself as the fire-

brand leader and the blue eyed boy of the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS), the foun-

tain head of sectarian hatred in the country. As

an aside, let me say, though, that Advani has

always stood true to his RSS roots, more than

anyone else in his party. Who else could for

those who sow shakhas, or the branches,

instead of trees! His acrimonious speeches,

his rallies and his campaigns will polarize the

society, flare up communal tensions and would

bring votes to BJP. They would also mark him

as a sectarian leader. He would never have a

moral authority that would make smaller par-

ties support him in this coalition era.

Alas, the lure of that elusive post would

finally compel him to rub himself clean of that

bloodthirsty image. He would also distance

himself from the RSS as well, and he would do

that in style. He went to Muhammad Ali

Jinnah’s Mazar (grave) and called him secular.

He had rubbished all that gabbling RSS passes

off as its ideology, in a moment. RSS was infu-

riated for that. Ironically, it was perhaps the

first time in their history that an RSS cadre has

got historical facts right. RSS has never been

much fond of history though, has it?

The toughie has committed another blun-


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der. The second rung leadership has sniffed

blood. They knew that this street smart chap

can hold his grounds but is doomed. They

knew that the post has been declared vacant.

It was going to be beginning of a race, a rat

race instead of the rath yatra. BJP might not

have had the requisite numbers in the parlia-

ment, but it was going to have enough con-

tenders to keep the post occupied till the dawn

of next century. Bizarre are the ways of politics,

aren’t they?

But then, Advani is a toughie and toughies

do not quit. They do exact opposite of that as

that idiom symbolizing the wisdom of our eld-

ers says. When the going gets tough, the tough

get going! What better place Advani could

have found to go than roaming around the

country announcing in the process that he is

still in the fray. And what better vehicle to ride

than a rath? He was quite experienced in riding

one also. History, however, has its own ways. It

does not repeat itself. And if it ever does, it

does so first as a tragedy and then as a farce.

India of 2011 is not the one of 1992. And then,

while speaking on corruption, Advani seems

quite out of place unlike the old venomous

Advani who made those fiery speeches on

Ram Mandir.

Those were the good old days for him,

when he was one of the two undisputed lead-

ers of the BJP. Those were the days when BJP

was yet to come to power and was, therefore,

almost immune from the charges of graft. Not

now, when the yatra was to pass through

Karnataka, among other places, the erstwhile

fiefdom of B S Yeddyurappa the tainted.

Advani has got it all wrong this time. The

media made spectacle of Anna Hazare might

have given him some hope, but one expects a

little sanity from a shrewd leader like him. If the

spectacles on television could do much,

Chandrababu Naidu might have been in power

even today and BJP would have made India

shine even more than the sun. It’s a different

world now. The days when politics unfolded on

the streets like a carnival are long gone. It now

operates inside the most unlikely spaces. It

shapes up inside those makeshift houses

where people go hungry and in those shelter

camps which came into existence because of an earlier yatra of his. He was once trumped by

that soft-spoken north Indian for his accept-

ability. Now he is trumped by that Gujarati pro-

tégé of his who has proved himself far more

superior in administering misery on the hap-

less minorities of his state. Going with the best

is the human tendency, even for regressive

ends.

This is why this yatra saw him getting

booed. People black flagged him at many a

places including in Punjab where his party is in

government as a junior partner. This was a

yatra which might have given him those well-deserved reliefs every day. No black flagging

today means the day is better than yesterday

when my rath was pelted with rotten toma-

toes, he must have told himself. Addressing an

almost empty rally is better than addressing

an empty rally, he must have thought the next

day. My heart weeps for Jaiprakash Narain

though, whose native place Advani audacious-

ly used for kickstarting this failure called a

yatra.

I cannot even sympathise with him, for I

don’t want to feel nauseated again. I don’t

want to lose any more friends either. All I feel

bad for is the country, for all his rath yatras

would merely reinforce that old and racist

image of India as a land of magic, maharajas

and the snake charmers.UTS’

roadies in reverse gear- advani's rathyatra to nowhere

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