ADAVANI, INNOCENCE AT LARGE ?

No, not at all. Mr L.K. Advani, former Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the last Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) Government, and the only Outstanding Opposition Leader of India in the Lok Sabha, as honoured by the then President of India, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is a very shrewd politician. By keeping eagle-eyed and unyielding king makers of the party on his right side, he has left many a party political competitor far behind. Today the BJP has projected him as their next Prime Ministerial candidate. Yet his life story is replete with unfortunate faux pas. You can say that he is dogged with bad luck at every step. However, when he started his political excursion in public he extensively used Mr Dale Carnegie's advice from his book entitled How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the tip was : keep smiling.
Genuflexion at Mr M.A. Jinnah's mausoleum in Pakistan was not the only point of public criticism. Some say he insulted the word "secular" twice : once in Pakistan, and then on return to India. Mr Jinnah never called himself secular. He said he was Mussalman; and so was his country. Others are not sure if there was such a hurry for him to rush to Pakistan at that juncture of history.
Sometime in the late '60s or early '70s, he organized a Rath Yatra (chariot pilgrimage) of the country. The chariot in this case was a limousine dressed up with the cardboard as a chariot. The program was to criss-cross the country touching the localities of BJP supporters. It was a marvelous public relations and publicity exercise. But as ill luck would have it, a communal riot flared up in its wake and Mr Advani was blamed for it.
A journalist par excellence, (he added many gems to English vocabulary, e.g., pseudo-secular) but instead of earning fame as a writer, his name cropped up in seized diaries of a hawala operator (illegal foreign exchange dealer). A court case was launched against him. But before he could exonerate himself, the High Court intervened and released him. That also lent his name to public criticism.
During the Babari Masjid-Ram temple imbroglio, the newspapers flashed a beaming Mr Advani, with Ms Uma Bharti hugging him, both all smiles, photo on their front pages. Nothing wrong with that. Only a demolished structure was behind them. That became another point for public criticism.
Many years later, Mr Advani, as BJP president, had to expel Ms Bharti from the party as a disciplinary action. But what he gained ? Public criticism, naturally. This time the public thought Mr Advani was ungrateful to a lady who stood by him through thick and thin.
As the Home Minister of India, Mr Advani was very bold and outspoken. Perhaps he was the first Home Minister who would rush to console the Hindu families of massacred cross-border terrorist targets, who were generally civilians. Once he rudely snubbed President Bush for his inappropriate remarks. Mr Advani said : "Hindus are not sacrificial goats." Everybody in India cheered him.
An international black spot on his post was the burning alive of a missionary and his two children in Orissa in January, 1999. Missionary Graham Stewart Stains and his two sons, Philip and Timothy, were sleeping in a station wagon for the night when a mob shouting slogans poured petrol and set the wagon on fire. The Australia-born missionary was the secretary-cum-treasurer of Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj, Orissa.
It is true that a country's Home Minister cannot be held responsible for every crime committed in every State, as each State is independently responsible for its law and order maintenance. But the overall responsibility lies at the door of a country's Home Minister, especially when there were rumours that the Home Ministry had prior warning about the impending attack.
Another area in the public opinion where Mr Advani did not take personal interest was the import of typical police personnel to Delhi. One police officer would sit outside the American Center in New Delhi in a police vehicle and follow the visitors to the US library. Then he would sit at the same table as the visitor and would try to provoke a quarrel by either extending his legs to the shin of the visitor, or shaking the table with his feet.
US observed diplomatic silence then, despite CCTV.
But the cake is taken by a newspaper photograph of a Delhi Police Commissioner, who was shown trying forcibly to control his laughter. There is nothing wrong in controlling one's laughter in a polite society. Only the gentleman was standing near a burning pyre of a murder victim.
There were also reports that private vigilantes (?), with their tufts waving in the air, were harassing visitors to Muslim-dominated Jama Masjid area. Apart from the mosque's historic significance, the area is famous for middle-class hotels serving Mughal cuisine. They are patronized by foreign tourists and Hindus alike.

During Mr Advani's Deputy Prime Ministership, his friends declared him Loh Purush (iron man) and expected him to win the Parliamentary elections for them. The then Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, was away out of the country then. On his return, Mr Vajpayee, Mr Advani's original mentor, did not take kindly to these manoeuvres. The party worked out a patch up for the elections. But the BJP lost the elections and power. And again Mr Advani was blamed for the fiasco
After that a lot of rumours floated in the country about their differences. But it is a recorded fact that Mr Vajpayee called Mr Advani on his face a fib spinner (Katha Vachak) in a TV channel program, watched by many. Later Mr Advani said Mr Vajpayee will not support him in his quest for the Prime Minister's chair. But Mr Vajpayee said he will support him.
The other bad omen for Mr Advani was a Gujarat Member of Parliament, who was booked in a human trafficking case. Mr Advani's detractors allege that he chose all the Gujarat Members of Parliament for his party, as Mr Advani is a Gujarat resident and has a lot of say in that State's BJP unit.

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