JYOTI PUNWANI on why it is a good thing the Advani era is over.
The BJP drama that took over the media -or, was it the media that imposed the BJP's internal politics down everyone's throats as the only news worth following? - had one positive outcome. L.K. Advani is no longer the nation's elder statesman. Reports of his resignation fiasco, the views expressed on TV panels by seasoned journalists as well as corporate types like Sunil Alagh, and opinion pieces by the likes of BJP supporter Swapan Dasgupta, showed him to be a pitiful figure, a lonely, ambitious old man left behind by his younger colleagues over whom he lorded not too long ago.
The Telegraph's political editor Radhika Ramaseshan in a prescient piece in April this year, described how BJP workers were growing increasingly irritated over Advani's public speeches always beginning with "mujhe simaran hai" ("I remember"). Incidentally, had he used the words "mujhe yaad hai", they wouldn't have needed translation. But catch the original Hindutva hardliner choosing normal spoken Hindustani with its Urdu words, over Sanskritised Hindi. That's the essence of L.K. Advani, uncompromising in asserting his Hindutva identity at every point of his public life, and that's why it's such a good thing the Advani Era is over.
The point of the above digression was to say that this columnist too, wanted to start off by saying "I remember". I remember the tumultuous days of the 80s and 90s when Advani challenged the holy cow of secularism which intellectuals and the Congress swore by, by naming it "pseudo-secularism", and set the agenda for the country's politics. His strident pronouncements dominated the press (TV was still in the hands of the Congress government at the Centre). Secularists took a long time recovering from his blows; they seemed feeble and outnumbered. The same old voices used to be quoted to counter Advani's loud assertions.
Indira Gandhi in the years before her assassination hadn't been quite the true-blue secularist, but there was still a Lakshman rekha in public discourse. One just didn't question the fact that Muslims were a disadvantaged minority. But Advani made Muslim-bashing popular. "Appeasement of Muslims" became the accepted abuse for the Congress. To be honest, it's thanks to Advani that now we can dare to publicly differentiate between genuine concern for Muslims and the many instances of the 'secular' parties' appeasement of the community's most backward and hidebound leaders - pseudo-secularism in other words.
It's also thanks to Advani that the mood in the country turned vicious. The RSS had always been spewing poison, but the English press had ignored them. The Shah Bano affair gave them a boost; but had it not been for Advani, their vision of India as a Hindu Rashtra, with minorities as second class citizens, wouldn't have got such wide acceptance. The B N Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry Report into the 92-93 Mumbai riots too, held his rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya responsible for vitiating the atmosphere in the country. And in this, the press contributed.
But could the press have ignored the major political event of those days - the Ayodhya controversy? Advani, as the face of the movement to destroy the Babri Masjid and build a Ram temple in its place, made headlines. His rathyatra, with its inflammatory speeches and the riots left in its wake, got phenomenal coverage. Could the press have underplayed the yatra? To what extent? The reportage of the yatra exposed the hate that lay at the basis of the BJP's politics, at the same time as it carried the hate to readers across the country. But surely, the press could have countered his arguments as powerfully as he made them?
Advani was the architect of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. That event was a turning point for the country, as much as the Emergency was. Indira Gandhi came back after her fall in 1977, brought about by the Emergency. But never could she shake off that stain from her persona. But Advani? When he became Home Minister in 1998, he was an accused in the Babri Masjid case. But the press never questioned him on this.
The man entrusted with dealing with the security of the country and its citizens, was the man because of whom thousands of Indians had been killed and rendered homeless. His crime had been played out in full view of the country. Why then did the press treat him with kid gloves at that time, and has done so since, right till yesterday? Atal Bihari Vajpayee was always the press' favourite because of his charm, wit and obvious distaste for hardline politics. Advani never had those qualities. How did the press end up giving him the 'elder statesman' halo? To top this travesty, the man whom the BJP's allies could not accept in 1997, is today the man who makes the BJP acceptable!
That is why it is so startling and gratifying, to see Advani being shorn of his aura now. His isolation and his reluctance to acknowledge his own irrelevance - all this is being openly discussed by the same newspapers that gushed over him. The problem is - we have to thank the not so discreet charm of Mr Narendra Modi for this.
Modi has won three successive elections in his state not because of the media. Nor did the media make the supposedly politically aware students of Delhi University give him a euphoric welcome. His appeal hasn't been manufactured by the media. But there's no doubt that the media is doing its best to make him larger than life.
One thing is for sure: 2002 Gujarat will never cease to make news and haunt Modi, thanks to the untiring activists out to make him pay for his crimes and the hawk eye of the Supreme Court that is monitoring many of the 2002 cases. It must be conceded also, that the media has unfailingly reported Modi's unabashed anti-Muslim acts.
But more and more, Modi seems to be more than 2002, and in giving him this new avatar of good governance, the media must take credit.
In a recent lecture at IIT- Bombay, Amartya Sen exposed the hollowness of Modi's claims about economic growth, pointing out that Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Bihar have had a higher growth. In social indicators, such as median per capita income, percentage of population below poverty line, and infant mortality rate, Gujarat stood below Himachal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Congress should be shouting out these statistics. But then the party is not known for its brilliance in countering the BJP, supposedly its main enemy. But can't the media puncture Mr Modi's claims? TV channels devote discussion after discussion to him; but never in these slanging matches have these claims been made as forcefully as those for him. Nor have newspapers thought fit to highlight these statistics, the way they highlight his successes.
One reason for this of course is that social indicators such as poverty and infant deaths don't make front page news. Good roads and capital investment do. If some IIT students fall ill due to food poisoning, it's front page news. But Prof Sen's talk at IIT-B's much-publicised Tech-Fest - which reportedly made quite an impact on the students - is reported in two paras.
However, for the last year at least, the media has projected Modi as a contender for the PM's post, based specifically on his administrative virtues. 31.6 % of your population living below the poverty line, and 60.9 children under five dying out of every 1000, are serious flaws in administration, even the English press would agree. Thanks to the media, all of us know now the wonders of a Modi-ruled Gujarat. How about telling us its despair too?
Narendra Modi's dazzle has put Advani in the shade within his own party which he resurrected with is politics of hatred. The media has not only portrayed this, it seems to have fallen in line too. If only Advani's fall from grace had been brought about by a conviction for his original crime!
