NEW DELHI, 14 July 2003 — Weighing political pragmatism against right-winged saffron brigade’s communal agenda, Bharatiya Janata Party’s and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani admitted that his party’s anti-Muslim image was damaging its political interests.
Propagating BJP’s “secular” credentials, he said, that “a narrow appeal of Hindutva” was not acceptable to this party, adding that “Hindutva” (Hindu way of life) would not be its campaign plank in a general election next year. He said yesterday that the anti-Muslim image was hurting the government’s ability to rule the country.
“Nobody should look at us as their enemies. Our image as anti-Muslim hurts our ability and capability to rule this country,” Advani was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.
Advani’s comments came a day after a member of the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Corps), said the government had agreed to consider its demand for legislation to hand over a controversial piece of land for the construction of a temple.
The explosive dispute is over a site in the northern town of Ayodhya, where thousands of Hindu zealots in December 1992 razed a 16th-century mosque, believing it had been built over the ruins of a Hindu temple that marked the birthplace of warrior god Ram. The demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya set off nationwide riots between Hindus and Muslims that left at least 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
The RSS and another hard-line Hindu group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) are exerting pressure on the government to handover the Ayodhya land to the Hindus to build the temple. When Advani was BJP president in the early 1990s, the party used the temple movement to increase its number of seats in parliament from two in 1984 to 119 in 1991.
Yesterday, Advani said groups like the VHP were unable to comprehend “that a large area of governance had nothing to do with ideology.’
“People are concerned about roads, poverty and agriculture,” he said. “If today China has become a force to contend with, one reason is its ability and ingenuity to blend its commitment to ideology with pragmatism demanded by changing circumstances.”
Though the party had not “abandoned” its Hindutva agenda, Advani said the BJP would contest national elections due next year mainly on the performance of five years of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government which is headed by the BJP.
“We will be seeking a renewed mandate on the plank that we completed the task entrusted to us,” he said.
In the same vein, justifying the revival of Ayodhya-issue, Advani said the Muslims too were keen on finding a solution to it and were in constant touch with him.
