The Hindu Business Line : Advani's resignation — Cathartic, yes; catastrophic, no!

THERE ARE some happenings of history which it has never been possible for perspicacious mind-readers to explain to anyone's full satisfaction. Even those behind the happenings perhaps found the mainsprings of their actions unfathomable like the rest of the humanity.

Till today it is a mystery why Hitler decided on the invasion of Russia which turned the hounds of war against him or Japan thought it necessary to launch an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour more than 5000 km away.

A third example — but a pleasant one — that terminated a nightmarish situation was the sudden decision of Indira Gandhi in March 1977 to revoke Emergency and order fresh election to Parliament.

Mr L. K. Advani's fulsome praise, while on a short visit to Pakistan, of Mohammed Ali Jinnah will assuredly rank as yet another of those intriguing puzzles.

First, there was no compelling need for Mr Advani to embark on an interpretation or annotation of Jinnah's role.

He was merely on a short visit, and not participating in an international colloquium on the contribution of Jinnah's greatness and his secularism or otherwise.

If at all he felt impelled to say something he could have borrowed the style from Jinnah's own tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on receipt of the news of his assassination as a great leader who led the Hindus in their fight for freedom.

Jabs of jousts

Or, cleverly hinting at Jinnah's needling of everybody with the demand for Pakistan, day in and day out, in season and out of season, for seven years following the Muslim League's Lahore resolution calling for the partition of India on a religious basis, Mr Advani could have said: "Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one who tirelessly persisted in standing up for what he considered right or his community's due."

No one in the present-day power structure in Pakistan or its perfervid religious ulema could have taken exception to this. Not only that, it would have served as a signal to Pakistan and to the political class in India that courage of conviction in the pursuit of a cause was no sin.

This kind of circumspection was imperative quite regardless of the consideration that Mr Advani was the President of the BJP, a party which has never reconciled itself to Partition and even today fantasises about Akhand Bharat. Even for those outside the BJP, belonging to no party, especially old timers who lived through those far-off times, the jabs of jousts of the Congress leaders with Jinnah make for unpleasant memories.

Till the end of his life, he lived up to what he had propounded in 1940. Here is an extract from his Presidential address at the Muslim League's convention at Lahore in March 1940: "...our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders. It is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits, and is the cause of the most of our troubles, and will lead India to destruction, if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different.

"It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and they have different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single State, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a State."

To call such a person secular, simply trusting to some stray rhetorical remarks of his made in the opening session of Pakistan Constituent Assembly, would have been outlandish for any person with a modicum of awareness of the currents and cross-currents of the history of the sub-continent.

For Mr Advani to do this is something that passes all comprehension, since there was no prospect of immediate political gains nor of hastening of the peace process (Pakistanis are much too hard-headed to go ga-ga over Mr Advani's encomium of a leader of the distant past, just we do not lose sleep over the daily insults to the Mahatma).

Battered and bruised BJP

There was one subtle and sophisticated stand that Mr Advani could have taken by way of explanation. And that is: Quoting Jinnah's Constituent Assembly rhetoric and extolling him as secular helps rub the nose on the ground of the contemporary Pakistanis who have unabashedly opted for an obscurantist theocratic State and challenges them to get back to the basics laid down by their own Quaid-e-Azam.

This would have sounded plausible and smoothened the ruffled feathers to some extent. Instead, Mr Advani is on a wild goose chase of establishing the validity of his opinion of Jinnah's secularism!

In the bargain, he has exposed his party, already battered and bruised by electoral setbacks, ideological confusion and internal generational conflicts, to further and needless turmoil. If he really felt his stand on Jinnah to be justified, he should have stuck it out as the party President and vanquished his critics, much as Indira Gandhi did in 1969.

To take the party into a hole of his own making and then leave it in the lurch and wash his hands off the adverse consequences do not bespeak well of the political savvy or even maturity that was associated with him.

This was also not the way for him to acquire the image of a moderate (as some commentators have suggested). The political stage for such an effort is within India and within his party, and is not to be exported from Pakistan.

Anyway, Mr Advani's standing as one who keeps his cool and his head has taken such a tumble thanks to the events of the past few days as to severely constrict his usefulness to the BJP as its President. In the circumstances, a change of leadership at the helm will not be a catastrophe.

This may well be an opportunity to entrust the direction of the party to fresh-thinking, younger generation. The experience of the US, the world's most powerful and affluent democracy, has proved that young blood has performed wonders whether it is a matter of imparting dynamism to political parties, or enabling corporate entities to scale new heights.

The BJP will not be the worse, but on the other hand, conceivably the better, for the catharsis it has undergone if it grasps the opportunity afforded by Mr Advani's offer to resign to reinvent itself.

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