Lal Krishn Advani, the leader of India’s main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, has built his career on being a hard-liner. Thus his praise of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, while on a six-day visit there, is something of a political thunderbolt. Many in India, certainly many in the BJP, still bristle at the mention of Jinnah’s name, blaming him for the partition of India. Remarkable too was Advani’s claim that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was the saddest day of his life — this from a man who could still face prosecution over the mosque’s destruction.
Whether or not one agrees with Advani’s view that Jinnah espoused “a secular state in which every citizen would be free to practice his own religion,” it is impossible to believe that Advani said what he did on the spur of the moment or without thinking through the implications. His decision to go to Pakistan, to go to Jinnah’s mausoleum and lay a wreath there were all planned; and so too, we must assume, was the praise for Jinnah. Advani is no fool; he would have known full well the effect of his words back home, especially within the BJP. He did not speak off the cuff, out of courtesy to his Pakistani hosts; this was a carefully choreographed piece of political maneuvering for consumption primarily in India rather than Pakistan. This is a clear attempt to ditch his own hawkish image and rebrand the BJP as the party of moderation, the party that supports a secular state where everyone is free to practice his or her own religion — the very words he used when praising Jinnah’s dream. That was the message.
Advani knew it would create a furor back home among hard-liners linked to the BJP — in the RSS and VHP; but that too has to be seen as part of the choreography. Antagonizing them, breaking with them, is a conscious part of repositioning the BJP. Otherwise, no one is going to believe the party has changed.
The question is whether anyone believes that Advani has genuinely changed his views and become a pragmatist or is simply being devious and dishonest. There will be many in India who take the latter view. Many, too, will argue that if he wants to reposition himself and the party, Pakistan is not the wisest place to do it; it is in India that the message needs to be proclaimed.
But there is a logic to using Pakistan as the location. The BJP is in the political wilderness. It has no direction and, apart from Hindu nationalism which so spectacularly ran to ground at the election last year, no distinctive policies to which the public can connect. The exception is Pakistan. The BJP started the peace process. Here at least is something they can perhaps build on.
Advani has quit the party post over the furor, But there is every reason to see that, too, as part of his game. He is calling the hard-liners’ bluff. He reckons that with unashamedly hard-line Modi out of the picture — many in the BJP blame him and his sectarian policies in Gujarat for losing them the election — he is the only person capable of turning the party’s fortunes around. The question is whether the BJP agrees.
