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Friday, June 10, 2005
LK Advani backs down
LK Advani has withdrawn his resignation as president of the BJP, but it isn't on his terms. The party, instead of supporting his statements on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, has gone the other way. Its statement reads:
And so the question forms itself: what would have been the right issue to rake up, on which a sizable chunk of the BJP would have supported Advani, but not the RSS and the VHP, thus precipitating a split, or at least a fundamental shift in alignment?
The BJP reiterates that whatever may have been Jinnah's vision of Pakistan, the state that he founded is theocratic and nonsecular, the very idea of Hindus and Muslims being two separate nations is repugnant to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has always condemned the division of India on communal lines and continues to steadfastly reject the two nation theory championed by Jinnah and endorsed by the British Colonists. There can be no revisiting the reality that Jinnah led a communal agitation to achieve his goal of Pakistan, which devoured thousands of innocent people in its wake and dispossessed millions of their homes and livelihoods. [Source: Rediff.]So Advani's bluff got called, and that's where the attempt to forge a more centrist, moderate face of the BJP – if indeed that is what it was – has ended. Pity. If this was a planned exercise, Advani clearly chose the wrong issue on which to shift the base of the BJP and create distance from the rest of the Sangh Parivar.
And so the question forms itself: what would have been the right issue to rake up, on which a sizable chunk of the BJP would have supported Advani, but not the RSS and the VHP, thus precipitating a split, or at least a fundamental shift in alignment?
