Choice before the electorate: Karma Yogi or Vansh Bhogi?

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D'Ocracy-D.E.M., beloved husband of T. Ruth, loving father of L.I. Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope, Justice, expired on 26th June

Does this make any sense to you? Does it have any bearing on the electoral battle that is about to comm.ence in India? Well, it was an innocuous if strange-sounding announcement in the 'Obituaries' section of the Bombay edition of The Times of India, in its edition on 27 June 1975. Of course, those who read it on that day and could decode its meaning knew that it was about the demise of Democracy, consequent upon the imposition of the Emergency by the then Congress government at the Centre.

Censorship had already been clamped. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had already sent stalwarts in the Opposition, including Jayaprakash Nararayan, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Chandrashekhar, into jail where many of them would spend the next nineteen months. Tens of thousands of trade union activists, lawyers, writers, journalists, civil liberty activists and political workers (the largest number of them from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was the previous avatar of the BJP) were subsequently imprisoned. Advani, one of the heroes of the struggle against the Emergency, writes in his 986-page autobiography My Country My Life that "a gutsy and imaginative democracy-lover had inserted the advertisement" in the newspaper as his own way of bemoaning and protesting the arrival of dictatorship in India.

The draconian Emergency rule may seem like a closed chapter now. Indeed, no government in present times dare trample upon India's democracy the way it was done thirty years ago. No government dare molest the Constitution, assault the judiciary or postpone parliamentary elections, as was done then. Even a mild, albeit thoroughly ill-conceived, attempt, post-26/11, by the UPA government to control the electronic media had to be hastily abandoned due to all-round opposition. However, let us remember that if India has had peaceful, free and fair elections in the past three decades, and is going to have one more in April-May, it is because many brave and principled men and women ― some well-known like JP, Vajpayee and Advani and most others ordinary foot-soldiers like the person whose protest was in the form of an 'obituary' ad in a newspaper ― struggled and sacrificed for the cause of democracy.

Now that the basic edifice of democratic rule has been secured in our country, we need to wage other struggles for the cause of democracy. After all, the right to vote once in five years can hardly be the summum bonum of democracy. There are many mountains to be scaled, much rocky terrain to be traversed and many fierce currents to crossed in the forward march of democracy in India. Where is economic democracy in our country? Where is social democracy in our country? Do we have gender justice?

Those who have ruled India for the longest period since Independence have many questions to answer. But the responsibility to answer them is not of the Congress alone. All political parties, including the BJP, have a duty to introspect as they go out to seek votes in the coming elections. What is democracy to the tribals in Thane district in Maharashtra, almost next door to the country's financial capital, where infants still die due to malnutrition? What is democracy to the debt-ridden farmers and handloom workers in Andhra Pradesh who are forced by circumstances to end their own lives? What is democracy if a quarter of our population is denied something as basic as access to safe drinking water, and nearly three quarters have no access to something equally basic like a proper toilet? And when we talk of lack of proper toilets, we are not talking about villages in Bihar or Jharkhand. We are talking about the rapidly proliferating slums in every Indian city. Who is, and what policies are, responsible for the alarming rich-poor divide in India? Can we continue with the current development model and hope that it will somehow deliver what we want it to deliver?

And what is democracy if the state cannot protect its people against cross-border terrorist attacks like the one that a horrified nation witnessed for three days in Mumbai last November? Like the ones that took place earlier in Guwahati, Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Ayodhya, Varanasi...? And what will happen to India if we cannot ensure communal peace and harmony, if globally fanned Islamist extremism takes advantage of widespread socio-economic backwardness among our Muslim brethren, and if extremism begins to infect Hindu society as well, as happened in Malegaon?

And what kind of democracy do we have where MPs can be traded like horses, as indeed happened in the "Cash for Votes" scandal that the UPA government enacted to save itself in July 2008? Where institutions of governance can be devalued and misused for self-protection, as was evident in the way the UPA government assisted Ottavio Quattrocchi, the prime accused in the Bofors scam, to go scot-free? A young man posted a question recently on Advani's portal (www.lkadvani.in), worded in typical Hinglish, about the pathetic state of criminal justice system in India ― "If you are a chhota criminal, you may languish in jail even in a petty case. But if you are a bada criminal, netas will help you become gul without a trace!"

Hence, today the struggle needed is not for protecting the basic right to vote, the freedom of speech, press freedom, independence of judiciary or for safeguarding the basic structure of the Constitution. These struggles have been waged and won. What is needed is struggle for deepening and broadening the promise of democracy so that it delivers GOOD GOVERNANCE, DEVELOPMENT and SECURITY, which are the three main planks of the BJP's election campaign.

In this struggle, we in the BJP are proud to be led by a lifelong Yoddha (warrior) like Advani. He is not a vansh bhogi. He is a karma yogi. His ateet ki neenv is not dynasty, nor is projecting the latest member of the dynasty as India's future leader the BJP's concept of bhavishya ka nirmaan. (For the benefit of those who may not yet have seen the Congress campaign, I am referring here to hoardings that carry images of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and a dull-looking Dr. Manmohan Singh, with a slogan that says: "Ateet ki neenv par bhavishya ka nirmaan" -- Building the future on the foundations of the past.)

Advani entered public life before India became independent and his dedicated service to the nation has continued uninterrupted till now. He has seen, and often participated in, every important political development in the history of independent India. For example, he was one of the architects of the Janata Party, formed after democracy's triumph in 1977. Along with Vajpayee, he built the only party, BJP, which has emerged as a stable national alternative to the Congress. He served by Vajpayee's side in the only non-Congress government that not only delivered on its promise of stability but also made India proud with several landmark achievements. In spite of being a national leader, his loyalty to his party to Vajpayee was so total that the BJP never witnessed the tremors of any power-struggle, which has been the bane of so many other parties. His integrity, as even his worst critics would admit, is unimpeachable. When the Congress government under P.V. Narasimha Rao slapped the false and motivated Hawala charge on him in 1996, he not only immediately resigned from Parliament but vowed not to contest an election until he was exonerated by courts. And acquitted he indeed was, with his honour further burnished and stature grown taller. Many of his critics call him "communal" because of the spirited leadership he gave to the Ayodhya movement. But none has explained the true context or purpose of this biggest mass movement in India's post-1947 history more persuasively than Advani has in his autobiography.

A leader is to be judged by which seminal ideas he injects into the life of a nation. Advani has initiated a nationwide debate on two inter-related and critically important ideas: the true meaning of secularism and the true basis of India's national identity. He has called the latter Hindutva or Cultural Nationalism. Interpreted wrongly and narrowly, it can cause a lot of harm to our national fabric. However, if it is understood in a broad and enlightened sense, the sense in which Advani has explicated in his book, it is indeed the guarantor of India's survival.

And, last but not the least, Advani is a man of principle, in an era that has so few principled political leaders. He stood his ground after the baseless Jinnah controversy following his 2005 visit to Pakistan, which almost ended his political career. But just as the BJP rose like a phoenix after the 1984 election debacle, when it could win only 2 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, he quickly rose to the top of the BJP and the NDA, becoming their unanimously chosen prime ministerial candidate for the 2009 parliamentary elections.

Age? Yes, he is 81. But judge him by his energy, day-long activity, constant travels around the country, enthusiasm, intellectual alertness, articulation, knowledge and experience, all of which are a product of his disciplined way of life, a life anchored in idealism. He has on several occasions suggested that there should be live nationally televised debates between contending prime ministerial candidates. Is anyone ready from the Congress?

It is perhaps apt to sign off with another post from a visitor to Advani's portal: "It needs wisdom and experience to run a country of 1.13 billion people, and people are not born with wisdom and experience."