My Country My Life

A must for every reader's political education

A must for every Indian's political education

‘My Country, My Life’ is the memoirs of one of contemporary India’s most senior, charismatic and controversial politicians who at eighty, is as active in political life as he was six decades ago when he began his career as a swayamsevak of the RSS, and who is well on course for a fitting culmination of his career as India’s next prime minister. 

Advani has been the chief ideologue of the right wing, BJP - the party which has grown from a mere two Parliamentary seats in 1984, to the single largest party in 1996, and to its crowing glory of leading the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre, which was India’s first non-Congress government to last its full term in power.  From its inception, Advani served as the home minister in this government and during the latter half, also officially took on the responsibility of the deputy prime minster.

The book spanning almost 1000 pages is immensely readable even for a political novice due to its intrinsic jargon-free nature. The clarity of thought and idea is impressive.  He discusses controversial issues and political opponents with a great degree of calmness and poise. This is particularly welcome in our times when politics seems to have become shrill and cacophonous and shouting down political opponents has almost become the norm, both in and outside Parliament so much so that even some of BJP’s own second-rung leaders have been guilty of such behavior, especially in the immediately aftermath of their defeat in the last general elections.

Although some critics have claimed that Advani’s book is an exercise in image makeover, there is nothing in the book to suggest this idea, as there is no deviation on fundamental issues from his publically-stated position. This is a much welcome work as it puts in black and white the position of the mainstream Hindu right.  In the absence of a written record of the official position, it has often been grossly misinterpreted – sometimes in plain ignorance by many western academicians, but mostly willfully by politically-motivated, Hindu-hating, leftist ideologues.

Formative years

Advani was born in a prosperous family in Karachi, Sindh, the land of the Sindhu (Indus) river, which gives the Indian nation its name. Advani fondly pens down the blissful memories of his childhood, which according to him, even the trauma of partition has not been able to erase. Sindh in those days was one of those rare regions of India which had actually developed a syncretistic ‘composite culture’.  The teachings of the Hindu religious leaders and the Sufi saints in Sindh had countered to a large extent the fundamentalist brand of Islam, which had caused large scale killings and conversations of the Hindus, and mass destruction of their temples. Hence, as Advani has pointed out, it was a nothing unusual to find young Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto eating at the community langar in the famous Hindu temple, Sadhbela, and then taking with him a small portion of the halwa served with the meal.

It was here in Sindh that Advani encountered the first stirrings of patriotic fervor, through his association with the RSS at the young age of 14. He specially mentions the question that one RSS member put to him and his fellow volunteers in the course of a talk: “You receive so much from society, but what are you giving back? Isn’t it your duty to do so? India is now under foreign rule. Isn’t it our responsibility to liberate our Motherland?” According to Advani, these words opened a new door within him and set him on a path of self-enquiry.

The growing patriotic fervor within him made him read ‘all the available literature on Indian history.’ He mentions that he once read five books at a stretch on Shivaji, the great Maratha ruler, who had successfully challenged the might of the bigoted Mughal ruler, Aurangzeb. His extensive reading gave him an insight into how India lost its freedom first to the marauding Islamic invaders and then eventually to the British

Another of his ‘life-transforming influences’, as Advani puts it, came during the last three years of his life in Karachi when he started listening to the Sunday evening discourses of Swami Ranganathananda, the then head of the Karachi centre of the Ramakrishna Mission. This brought him in contact with the life and teachings of arguably the greatest patriot-saint of India, Swami Vivekananda, whom he often quotes in this book.

As the clamour for a separate Muslim nation was reaching its crescendo, the situation in Sind was also getting gradually vitiated.  The fissiparous ideology of the Muslim League was slowly finding a foothold and  the people opposed to this idea were gradually being eliminated, like Allah Bux Soomro, one of Sindh’s finest leaders, who has shot dead in broad daylight in 1943.

The betrayal by the Congress

With the inevitability of the partition registering in the minds of the people, the disenchantment of Sind with the Congressing was growing. In fact the Congress had already displayed its short sightedness by aligning with the Muslim League to topple Soomro’s government in 1940 ^[1], just two days before the Muslim league formally adopted its Partition resolution. Meanwhile they kept holding out false assurances to the people. ‘Congress leaders has earlier pledged that they would, under no circumstance, allow India to be partitioned. As time passed, they affirmed that Sindh would not become a part of Pakistan. Still later, they held out the assurance that Hindus would be safe and secure even after partition.’ 

Although Advani is too much of gentleman to make a below the belt attack on someone who can not defend himself now, he cannot help but question with a sense of anguish the need for Nehru  to agree with such alacrity to partition the country in such a short time frame. Advani quotes a question that an elderly lady had posed to Nehru: ‘Partitions take place in all families. Property changes hand, but it is arranged peacefully. Why this butchery, loot, and abductions? Could you not do it the sensible way families divide?’ This sums up the feeling of most Indians about the way the business of partition was handled. Nehru, in this entire lifetime, could never give a satisfactory answer to why he collaborated with Mountbatten, who arrived in India as late as March 1947, to have the partition done in just five months when the British Prime Minister himself had set a time frame of June 1948 for it.

Khan Adbul Ghaffar Khan, affectionately known as Frontier Gandhi, had complained in despair that the Congress had thrown the North-West Frontier Province to the wolves. ^[2] Similar was the sense of betrayal among many people in Sindh. ^[3]

After the madness

When on 12^th September, 1947 Advani arrived as a refugee in Delhi, he was barely twenty.  Before he had even time to reflect on his plight, he was summoned by the RSS leadership to a camp in Jodhpur. Advani writes that ‘most urgent task for the RSS at that time was to provide protection to Hindus and Sikhs in riot-torn areas and to mobilize relief work for the deluge of refugees from Punjab and other parts of newly created Pakistan.’ when the Government of India expressed its inability to protect the life of honour of every individual. Later Home Minister Sarder Patel himself issued a press statement praising the RSS  for its commendable work in coming to the assistance of the hapless refugees and hailed  the RSS workers as ‘patriots who love their country

One of the most distressing incidents which occurred just after independence was Gandhiji being shot by Nathuram Godse. Immediately, the RSS was banned and its leaders arrested even though Godse declared that he himself was responsible for Gandhi’s killing ^[4] Godse had severed connections with the RSS almost 15 years ago, and was evidently highly critical of its organization for not being able to propagate Hindu interests. Yet, quite unfairly some critics accuse Advani of sanitizing the RSS record against Gandhi by not referring to Golwalkar’s criticism of Gandhi.  If merely dissenting with Gandhi is proof of fanaticism then surely even Sri Aurobindo, B R Ambedkar or even Jinnah before his communalization, when the latter was declared the ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity by Sarojini Naidu were guilty of the same!

Advani has rightly accused the Muslim League and Jinnah for the partition of India.  As the eminent historian R C Majumdar reflects “Nobody can reasonably doubt that India would have surely attained independence, sooner or later, even without Gandhi but it is extremely doubtful whether there would have been a Pakistan without Jinnah” Some intellectuals and historians out of incompetence and ignorance blame the Hindu Mahasabha. Such flummery is self-evident for the Mahasabha was only a reaction to the Muslim League’s absolute communalism. Moreover, neither theoretically nor practically could the Hindu Mahasabha claim to represent the Hindus in the same sense in which the Muslim league represented the Muslims in 1938 and later. For the large majority of the politically minded Hindus belonged to the Congress which denounced alike the communal approach of the Muslim League and the Mahasabha ^[5]

 Advani’s early political influences

Three other men profoundly influenced Advani; Savarkar, Shyama Prasad and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. He met Savarkar only once at a very young age. Ironically, one of the key moments of confrontation during the NDA rule was the unveiling of V D Savarkar’s portrait in the parliament gallery. Savarkar to this day remains one of the most misread and misrepresented icons of India’s struggle for independence. Like the RSS, Savarkar was accused of Gandhi’s assassination due to Godse’s proximity to him. However, there was no case against him, and this was conveyed to his lawyer by none other than B R Ambedkar. ^[6] That the man who wrote the epoch making book on 1857 and was imprisoned for over 10 years at Kala Pani could be deprived of a place in India’s pantheon of heroes exposes the hypocrisy of a generation of pseudosecularists

Shyama Prasad Mookerji, the dynamic founder of the Jana Sangh was Advani’s next inspiration. He was the man who indicted Md. Suharawardy, Bengal’s Muslim finance minister for his callous negligence during the great Bengal famine of 1942-3 which killed more than 3 million. He demanded the complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir state to India, but died under mysterious circumstances while under detention by Sheikh Abdullah at Srinagar Jail.  It is shocking that a historian like Ramachandra Guha, known for his anti Bengali bias, and who draws an ugly caricature of Mookerji  in ‘India after Gandhi’ conceals the more than suspicious circumstances of Mookerjee’s death which was revealed by Advani.

Assessment of Nehru

Advani reminds us that the unconstitutional article 370 and virtually ceding J&K’s full autonomy to his friend Sheikh Abdullah by Nehru was a national disaster.  But he does not mention the even greater blunder by Nehru of conceding a permanent position in the Security Council to communist China in lieu of his own country and even today India is paying the price in not being able to secure a similar position. ^[7] Similarly, there is no mention of the sordid Soviet Mania due to which Nehru could not even condemn the soviets when they launched their invasion of Hungary. However, Advani has no hesitation in laying the blame for the Sino Indian war on Nehru since it was he who in his flight of fancy and throwing all cautions to the wind despite Patel’s warning in 1950 ^[8] indulged in Panscheel, sacrifice of Tibet and demodernization of India’s armed forces. Advani opines that adversity had brought out the worst of Nehru. In a nationwide address he declared “the invading Chinese army have captured Assam….my heart goes out to the people” No wonder, Advani  feels that the Assamese people felt the government had abandoned them at the time of crisis which in turn left a deep psychological scar, which never heeled and was comprehensively exploited by separatist elements. [Page 669-70]

Some myths busted

Advani makes an insightful gesture as to why India could sustain a democratic parliamentary system.  To quote “We, in India were fortunate that unlike many of our neighboring countries and elsewhere, we did not have to wage a separate battle for democracy after India gained independence from British rule…Democracy came to India as naturally as secularism did, and the natural adoption of both these ideals was principally on account of India’s Hindu philosophy.”  [Page 202] Contrary to the propaganda of marxist secularists, it was not because of Nehru but India’s ancient democratic cultural roots which allowed modern parliamentary democracy to flower and flourish. ^[9]

Some political scholars often accuse the BJP of promoting “one nation, one language, one religion in the form of Hindu, Hindi, and Hindustan.” This has been used as a successful ruse in the past to threaten South Indian states with the spectre of a Hindi belt party ruling over them. Advani allays all those apprehensions. The Indian constitution granted Hindi as the official language of the Union, but it also allowed English to continue for another 15 years. In 1965, the Shastri ministry wished to purge English of its official language of the union status due to expiry of the provisional 15 year term but due to strong protests by the Southern states, especially Tamil Nadu extended the provision for English indefinitely.  But the very next year, Sikh agitators started demanding a separate Punjabi speaking state which Advani alleges was misinterpreted by the Congress party as demands for a sikh majority state. In the face of Hindu-Sikh communal polarization, it was the RSS leader, Golwalkar who implored the Hindus of Punjab to register Punjabi as their first language in order to diffuse the simmering tensions. Finally, Punjab was divided into a Punjabi speaking region and the Hindi speaking Haryana in 1966 based on the report of the Shah Commission

Assesment of Indira Gandhi's dictatorship

Indira Gandhi steamrolled the syndicate to assume virtual dictatorial powers within the congress. The year 1971 witnessed the birth of a new nation in Bangladesh. Despite a decisive victory, and with 93,000 pakistani prisoners of war to bargain with; Indira Gandhi betrayed the nation by not securing a permanent settlement with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. She consented to send back all POWs, returned the entire 9000 km area under the possession of the Indian army, and pardoned all war criminals including those who were responsible for the Hindu holocaust in Bangladesh with over 2 million Hindu casualties. ^[10] And in return, Pakistan’s commitments were minor and intangible. [Page 172] Advani bitterly remarks that Indira Gandhi wasted a golden opportunity for a mass of verbiage

In 1972, Advani assumed the presidency of the Jan Sangh for the first time. It was also the phase when India Gandhi won a 2/3^rd majority which gave her absolute power.  Scathingly summing up the dynasty raj of the Congress Advani writes;

"She consciously placed her own personal interests above those of the organization. The process of undermining democratic consultation and decision making within the Congress had begun with Nehru himself. He often defied the party’s  decisions, it was also Nehru who had planted the seeds of dynasticism in the party by consciously grooming his daughter as his successor . She triumphed in her battle against her adversaries, but, in the process, she wrote the epitaph of democracy inside the Congress Party. Thereafter, dissent within the party, which is the spirit of democracy, was not welcome. And the position and authority of the party’ supreme leader would not be challenged by anybody. Sycophancy and the cult of personality generally seen in dictatorial regimes, had infested the Congress organization."

On 12^th June 1975, the congress suffered a great setback when it was trounced in the Gujarat assembly polls. On the same day, the Allahabad High Court declared Indira Gandhi’s election from the Lok Sabha to be void and furthermore disqualified her for a period of six years on grounds of electoral corruption. Indira immediately swung into action. On the 25h of June, she had secured the necessary signature of the President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (who was nothing more than a Congress stooge) for imposing emergency on grounds of internal disturbance. The fundamental rights under Article 14, 21 and 22 were suspended. Advani writes “the decision to throttle democracy proved how contemptuous of constitutional provisions the PM and her coterie of advisors were” Even the Cabinet was conveyed of the decision only the next day.  The need to impose emergency in Indira Gandhi’s address to the nation was since the country had developed a disease; it had to be cured by the application of bitter pills

The bitter pills involved arrest of political leaders and lodging them with ordinary criminals. Advani, along with Atal Behari Vajpayee and Madhu Dandavate were put behind bars for a period of 19 months using the draconian law MISA. The heinous nature of the emergency and the diabolical nature of its perpetrators can be gauged from the fact that Rama Jois, the counsel for Advani who was fighting his forced detention was arrested under MISA. Advani makes an enlightening comparison that even the racist British raj had not stooped so low as to incarcerate a lawyer for defending a criminal, even if he was waging war against the government. [Page 275]

Advani utilized his period in jail in writing pro democracy essays which was smuggled through underground channels. He was much pained by the spineless Indian media which with few exceptions [like the Statesman, the Hindustan Times) had overnight turned into unofficial government mouthpieces (especially the Hindu and the Times of India)

Overall, Advani's ringside view of emergency is an academic masterpiece in contrast to that by those like Bipin Chandra (see, India since independence) whose dogmatic defense of Indira and emergency renders him susceptible to the charge whether he is a Congress party activist masquerading as a historian.

Advani sequentially highlights the Congress role in the growth of Punjab militancy. Bhindranwale was used to prop up congress poll prospects in the state at the expense of the Akali Dal. Bhindranwale was even excused of repeated murder charges including that of Baba Gurcharan Singh, the leader of the Nirankari sect and Lala Jagat Narain, founder of Hind Samachar group of newspapers.

First stint as minister

The Indian democracy was vindicated when in the elections of 1977, the congress was routed in the polls.. The Janata Party cobbled together by JP, won handsomely . However, it was populated with rank opportunists, each of whom was vying to become the Prime Minister. It is to the Jana Sangh’s credit that despite being one of the largest factions, it was content with only 3 ministries in order to accommodate others. Advani was one of the ministers of the Jan Sangh. As the information and broadcasting minister he had a series of successes to his credit most of which involved reversing the pernicious agenda of the emergency. His integrity can be assessed from the fact that he disencumbered both AIR and Doordarshan from government propaganda activities even though the temptation to play tit for tat was great. He issued directives to their editors and producers that they were free to function without any interference from the government. All national and state level parties were allowed to broadcast their election appeals through them. Advani specifically asked AIR and Doordarshan not to project him as the minister in news bulletins.

Indira Gandhi’s assassination and being reduced to two seats

Rajiv Gandhi and the congressmen were guilty of the Anti Sikh pogrom in Delhi and outskirts in which more than 3000 sikhs were massacred. Even Khuswant Singh, otherwise a bitter critic of the BJP admitted the credit due to the BJP and the RSS at the times of mayhem. The cynical exploitation of the tragedy caused the congress to garner more than 400 seats in the elections of 1984, while the BJP was reduced to only two seats!

Ayodhya : Free India’s greatest mass movement

The Ayodhya movement represented the watershed epoch for the BJP where it gained momentum in its quest for becoming a viable alternative to the Congress Party. The primary standpoint was the ancient Hindu site of Ayodhya where Hindus believed Lord Rama had taken birth and the site was marked by a majestic temple dedicated to him. The Shia General Mir Baqi belonging to the Islamic invader Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India in all probability desecrated the temple and erected a temple in its place. However, a team of Muslim and Marxist obscurantist scholars started denying that such an episode occurred.  A team of historians led by the Irfan Habib even had the audacity to make the big lie that their was no archaeological evidence and that the pre-existing temple theory was a Hindu concoction when all evidence as Koenraad Elst, the Belgian historian points out is to the contrary. ^[11]

The fact of the matter remains that it was Rajiv Gandhi who in 1986 ordered the locks on the Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid in Ayodhya removed. Until then, a priest had been permitted to perform puja once a year for the idols installed there in 1949. Now, all Hindus were given access to the birthplace of Rama.  It was again virtually his government under Chandrashekhar, which initiated the evidence based debate whose naturally corollary could only have been the construction of the temple at the disputed site. But under pressure from Islamic fundamedalists and marxist historians, the government began to vacillate on the next course of action.  Meanwhile, 50 peacefully protesting kar sevaks  were shot dead by Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP. Thus, The BJP intervention in the Ayodhya issue according to Advani came only when it remained no longer limited to the construction of the temple. Rather, it became the symbol of a struggle between genuine secularism and pseudosecularism. It also provided for the context for a sharply polarized debate between two opposite conceptions….the unifying concept of cultural nationalism and the dividing concept of anti-Hindu nationalism. It was in this context that the BJP decided to support the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. [Page 367] 

But Advani is still defensive for what transpired on 6th Dec; 1992. Instead of attacking the Congress and its pseudosecular stalinist cronies for inciting the Muslim fundamentalists against the kar sevaks and denying a peaceful resolution of the crisis, the BJP was unable to take a consistent stand on the issue probably because it did not want to antagonzie the Muslim vote or be seen as communal. Advani may not agree but all in all, without exaggeration, the BJP’s Ayodhya campaign was the single biggest public relations disaster in world history (Elst)

The corridors of power

As home minister, Advani can be said to have been one of the most authoritative in the recent era. Over 2500 terrorists were terminated during his tenure. A brilliant military partnership with Bhutan uprooted all the ULFA camps from the latter’ soil; the ULFA had to find a refuge in Bangladesh. Cross border infiltrations reached their minimum levels. The Naga ceasefire, the resolution of the Bodo conflict was also creditable achievements. Border fencing operations were activated in sensitive states. Police reforms and modernization was one of the key reforms in Advani’s agenda. 271 terrorist modules / sleeping cells operating within our borders were busted in contrast to a mere 28 in the preceding years.

But the proof of POTA’s success can be gauged from the fact that almost all the terror activities which transpired during the NDA rule witnessed desperate fidayeen suicide squads in operation. In stark contrast, is the current UPA regime where civilian soft targets at Delhi, Mumbai, Malgaon, Hyderabad and Jaipur were bombed using local Muslim, probably illegal Bangladeshi intermediaries.

Two unsavoury episodes marred Advani’s tenure as home minister. These were the Kandahar hijack episode of the IC-814 and the attack on Parliament.  Advani is candid in revealing that he was not personally in favour of release of militants, but the exceptional circumstances left the government with no other choice. Advani defends the government decision to release the militants on the fundamental reasoning that it could not afford the blood of 300 innocent Indians in its hands.  Is not the congress being queerly querulous in condemning the government release of militants, when it itself incited relatives to remonstrate against the government in front of the media. Why did it not publicly object then against the government decision? And could a terrorist appeasing Congress government have had the balls to act otherwise? We find the recent objection of the Congress to Jaswant Singh accompanying the terrorists as inexplicable since he was presumably risking both his life and honour in the process.

As for the attack on parliament, which was the handiwork of another fiyadeen group; the govt. acted swiftly to round up the suspects. Afzal Guru was sentenced to death. S A R Ge