LK Advani’s fall from “Hindutva” grace began years ago. The man who was its chief proponent once, who almost single-handedly led the destruction of Emperor Babur’s historic mosque in Ayodha, fell out of favour with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) the moment he went to Karachi - where he was born - and paid his respects at Jinnah’s mausoleum.
He praised Jinnah for being secular and made overtures of peace towards a country and a population he had previously been at odds with, a conciliatory gesture which was appreciated widely and carried great promise.
Yet for his troubles he was made to step down as the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2005, a party which takes its inspiration, and often its orders, from the RSS, the right-wing Hindu outfit responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He was clearly no longer radical enough to lead a party known for its Hindu-centric, secularism-sceptic positions.
Advani and the RSS eventually made up, but his failure to lead the BJP to victory in 2009 saw his ousted as leader of the opposition in favour of younger options.
Narendra Modi’s appointment as the BJP’s horse in India’s next electoral race has all but ended Advani’s prime ministerial aspirations and has now led to his resignation from all posts within the party. He has effectively quit politics altogether, but instead of being given the honourable discharge that his illustrious career entitles him to, he is leaving bitter, and the BJP will have plenty of damage control to do in his wake.
Advani has made it a point to try and discredit the current BJP leadership, saying that it has strayed drastically away from the party’s ideological leanings and the direction that was intended for it by its founders.
He may actually be quite wrong about that. Advani’s rise within the BJP coincided with his success in being able to lure large chunks of Hindu voters away from the Congress party because of his staunchly “Hindutva” orientation. The BJP is, after all, a party that exists to promote Hindu nationalism, implicitly at least.
Narendra Modi’s credentials as a Hindu nationalist were established during the 2002 Godhra incident and its subsequent communal riots, and he is also a card carrying member of the RSS. Choosing him to lead the BJP is perfectly in line with the party’s ideological leanings and is potentially a worrying development for India’s non-Hindu population.