Bharat Ratna to L K Advani acknowledges key role in BJP's rise, country's politics

New Delhi: Lal Krishna Advani not only deeply influenced the politics of his time but was key to putting it on a course which has marked an unstoppable decline of its once dominant 'secular' ideology, derided by him as 'pseudo secular', and political parties representing it while the BJP soared.

The Bharat Ratna for him comes nine years after the honour was bestowed on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The two leaders together spearheaded the journey of the Jana Sangh and then the BJP for over five decades.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement Saturday of the country's highest civilian honour for the 96-year-old leader has come in the year of the consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The 'Pran Pratishtha' at the temple marks a triumphant closure for the BJP of a deeply emotive issue which was thrust into popular consciousness by Advani through his 'Ram Rath Yatra' in 1990, opening the path for the Hindutva party's steady rise through the decade.

It is so fitting that a key architect of the temple movement has been given the honour by the Modi government in this year, a BJP leader said.

While Hindutva groups, including Vishwa Hindu Parishad, had been agitating for a temple before the BJP took it up, it is his yatra which is credited for making it a mass movement.

Modi himself was a key organiser of the yatra.

Advani may or may not have coined phrases like 'pseudo secularism' and 'appeasement politics' but it is he who transformed them into popular idiom of Hindutva politics.

Admired by his contemporaries as a political strategist and organisation-builder, it was under his presidency that the BJP decided to lend its whole-hearted support to the Ramjanmabhoomi movement by adopting a resolution in its Palampur convention in 1989 in support of building a temple at what devotees believe to be the birthplace of Lord Ram.

The BJP's decidedly turn to the right drew all-round condemnation from political sphere but fired its cadres going adrift after its disastrous performance in the 1984 Lok Sabha polls when it could only win two seats and cited 'Gandhian socialism' as one of its foundational principals.

His Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 drew frenzied support and communal riots happened at different places but its popular appeal brought the BJP to power for the first time on its own in a big state like Uttar Pradesh and entrenched the party as a key force in a host of other states.

The demolition of Babri mosque at the site in Ayodhya by a mob in 1992 was described by Advani as the 'saddest' day of his life, as the party feared political isolation and legal troubles with the Congress government at the Centre dismissing all its four state governments.

An early 'Hindu Hriday Samrat', the RSS volunteer whose organisational abilities and ideological clarity made a perfect foil with the softer and more popular Vajpayee has been admired by party colleagues and even critics for his emphasis on probity in public life.

He resigned as an MP after his name was mentioned in the infamous Hawala diary and some of his colleagues, including then Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa, were nudged by him to quit after facing serious allegations.

His decision in 1995 to name Vajpayee as the BJP's prime ministerial face when the party was fully behind him was truly an act of 'putting party before self', a leader said.

The BJP's rise to power with Vajpayee as its face connecting with the masses and bringing new allies as well showed Advani's political acumen.

Ironically the man who was instrumental in bringing Hindutva politics from the fringes into mainstream grew himself suspect of its political return and tried to take on a more moderate and secular avtar after it appeared that the party had hit a plateau following its surprise loss to the Congress in the 2004 polls.

During his visit to Pakistan in 2005, he showered its founder M A Jinnah with high praise at his mausoleum in Karachi, suggesting that the proponent of the two-nation theory was secular and an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Incidentally, Karachi is also Advani's birthplace.

The fierce blowback his comments triggered massively dented his Hindutva image and, many believe, permanently dented his ties with the RSS.

At times, he was also critical of the Hindutva organisation of its interventions in BJP's politics.

It is a credit to his standing within the party where he groomed a generation of leaders, including backing Modi to continue as Gujarat chief minister after the 2002 riots, that Advani remained its tallest leader even in a diminished version of himself for several more years.

He was the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in the 2009 polls but popular support was missing, and the party with an active role by the RSS finally decided to ease him out and elevate Modi as its national face ahead of the 2014 polls.

Advani's outbursts to Modi's rise and gamesmanship further dented him within the party as its cadres rallied around the Gujarat leader whose deft use of development and Hindutva politics has taken the BJP to a high the veteran leader might have thought improbable.

The Bharat Ratna honour, however, underscores the acknowledgment within the ruling party of the seminal role he played in its and the country's politics.