Ramachandra Guha: The most divisive politician in the history of independent India

by Guest Sun Dec 03, 2017 1:40 am

Two politicians contributed significantly to the deepening of the Hindu-Muslim divide in the 1980s and beyond. The first was Rajiv Gandhi, who as prime minister, first appeased the Muslim fundamentalists by overturning the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case, and then appeased the Hindu fundamentalists by opening the locks of the small Ram shrine in Ayodhya. The second was LK Advani, who, as the leader of the BJP (then in opposition) conceived, organised and led the Rath Yatra which galvanised Hindutva sentiment across northern and western India. Thousands of young men flocked to Advani’s call, forming the bedrock of the army which sought to demolish the Masjid unsuccessfully in October 1990, before achieving ‘success’ two years later...

However, of the many tours undertaken by politicians before and since Independence, Advani’s yatra of 1990 remains in a class of its own. Hindu-Muslim relations were already more fragile than they had been for many decades. In late 1989, Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists organised brick worship ceremonies for their proposed Ram temple, provoking riots in many places. In Bhagalpur, more than a thousand Indians, mostly Muslims, perished as a result.

I visited Bhagalpur in the wake of the 1989 riots, to see villages burnt, looms destroyed, and thousands of my fellow citizens, now without homes and livelihoods, living in refugee camps open to the sky. I do not know if LK Advani visited Bhagalpur himself. But he surely knew of what had happened there. And yet, a few months later, he led this provocative and divisive rath yatra. The symbols of Advani’s march, wrote one observer, were ‘religious, allusive, militant, masculine, and anti-Muslim’. The rath yatra provoked further rioting. The yatra was a major contributory factor to the horrific communal violence of the 1990s and beyond. As Khushwant Singh bluntly told Advani to his face, ‘you have sowed the seeds of communal disharmony in the country and we are paying the price for it’.

To be sure, the Republic had witnessed major riots both before and after L K Advani’s rath yatra. They included the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984, and the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002. A great deal has been written of the complicity of the top political leadership in both. Rajiv Gandhi, as prime minister of India in 1984, and Narendra Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002, have both been criticised for , first, not doing enough to stop the rioting; and second, with using the riots to polarise majority voters in their favour, riding to electoral victory on the backs of dead bodies.

Both these criticisms are fair. Rajiv Gandhi, in 1984, and Narendra Modi, in 2002, could and should have done more to stem the rioting, and much more to provide succour and relief to those who suffered. However, neither Rajiv Gandhi, in 1984, nor Narendra Modi, in 2002, actually initiated the riots that occurred under their watch. By this token, LK Advani is far more culpable. For, with hate and violence already in the air, he set out to capitalise on it. To quote Khushwant Singh on Advani once more: ‘He, more than anyone else, sensed that Islamophobia was deeply ingrained in the minds of millions of Hindus; it needed a spark to set it ablaze’.

When faced with growing animosity between Hindus and Muslims, Mahatma Gandhi went on long walks and undertook long fasts to promote tolerance and harmony. On the other hand, when confronted with a similar situation, LK Advani seemed to have worked to intensify rather than contain religious conflict. And, as the recent attacks on minorities across northern India show, the politics that Advani promoted is still exacting its price. LK Advani has been,in my opinion, the most divisive politician in the history of independent India.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/advani-s-bitter-legacy-25-years-after-the-demolition-of-the-babri-masjid/story-Ufi7S7i2YShR63A2BaGZHN.html

by Guest Sun Dec 03, 2017 1:41 am

IT will be 25 years this Wednesday (December 6) when India changed. And changed for the worse. On that day, a successful assault was made on the Babri Masjid. Brick by brick, stone by stone, the medieval mosque was brought down, vandalised and desecrated.

That was the day managers of the Indian State failed its citizens and defaulted on their oath to uphold the Constitution of India. Chicanery, cynicism and timidity dictated Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s strategy of profound inertia. The last of the Nehruvian elite was tested for its commitment to the ideals of secularism — and, was found wanting.

A Chief Justice of India (M. Venkatachaliah) found himself two-timed by a muffasil Chief Minister (Kalyan Singh). The judiciary lost its lustre and respect. More than its image, the judiciary lost its institutional reputation as the protector of fundamental rights of all citizens. It fell to a brave judge, Justice JS Verma, to retrieve the judiciary's lost prestige a few years later, and to firewall the apex court from the scheming politicians.

December 6, 1992, was the culmination of LK Advani’s misconceived political mischief. His so-called Rath Yatra, from Somnath to Ayodhya, had been designed to excite and incite the Hindu masses and mobilise them in the service of the BJP’s narrow power games.
This Advani-led journey to the December 6 demolition uncorked a process. New rougher forces and tougher politicians got an entree into the political arena and they have since refused to leave the ring. For a while, they needed the respectability of an Atal Bihari Vajpayee, behind whom they could hide their claws; but there was no rolling back of what December 6, 1992 had rolled out. The 2002 Gujarat was the next natural pit-stop.

Politics is not without its capacity for meting poetic justice, even if in rough proportions. LK Advani finds himself reduced to a dispensable family elder. The people he promoted and protected in Gujarat had no qualms in unsentimentally shafting him.

There is a certain naturalness to the progression from 1992 to 2002 to 2014. And, the battle is far from over.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/sunday-special/columns/25-years-ago-india-was-challenged-changed/507236.html

Ramachandra Guha: The most divisive politician in the history of independent India

Ramachandra Guha: The most divisive politician in the history of independent India

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