New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi Saturday announced his government’s decision to confer the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, on L.K. Advani, in an attempt to keep the Ram Temple momentum intact in an election year and also to mollify a section of the miffed RSS-BJP workers over the treatment meted to Advani, right up to Ram Lalla’s consecration ceremony.
PM Modi, or any top BJP functionary, didn’t refer to Advani’s contributions even once in their speeches before or after the consecration ceremony that took place on 22 January in Ayodhya.
While Advani, 96, stayed away citing ill health, there were already many speculations doing the rounds as none of the top BJP functionaries reached out to him to attend the consecration ceremony.
That was despite the controversy over the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) senior leader Champat Rai’s statement that it was due to Advani’s advanced age that he had been advised to not come to Ayodhya. However, following backlash from party cadres, senior members of the VHP and the RSS extended an invitation to the veteran leader to attend the event.
“The timing of giving the Bharat Ratna to Advani, just after temple inauguration, is a calculated strategy to keep momentum alive for crores of believers who felt that Advani was a pioneer of the temple movement and that he was not given his due,” a source in the BJP told ThePrint.
The sentiments of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, BJP’s parent organisation, have also played a part in this decision.
In an article for Open magazine in 2021, RSS leader Ram Madhav had written about the challenges the Sangh faces to hold on to its supremacy over the BJP.
“While sharing human resources with the Jana Sangh, Golwalkar had envisioned a relationship like that of the two rails of a railway track which never meet but never go apart either. The prospect of the socio-political overpowering the socio-cultural down the organisational hierarchy is not imaginary anymore and the RSS leadership is conscious of that critical challenge. Upholding the moral authority of the latter and ensuring that the political arm steadies itself in the storm of realpolitik is a task that requires humongous skill and acumen on the part of the Sangh leadership,” Madhav wrote.
“The Golwalkarite socio-cultural agenda having been largely achieved and having established itself in India’s mainstream, the RSS has to now move to the next level that involves systemic reform,” he wrote.
Advani did not participate in temple Prana Pratishtha programme with his family citing bad weather as reason for his non participation but many in VHP-Sangh cadre said that it was prime minister show and that is why Advani skipped the programme
It was Advani’s Rath Yatra which laid the foundation of the BJP resurgence in the 1990s against former prime minister V.P. Singh’s Mandal politics as well as also paved the path of the BJP’s rise from two Lok Sabha seats to the largest party now. Beginning from Gujarat’s Somnath, Advani’s yatra was the part of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that firmly established the BJP in the Hindi heartland.
In a post shared on social media platform X, the prime minister wrote that he felt privileged to have interacted with and learnt from Advani. The conferring of the Bharat Ratna on him is an “emotional moment”, he added.
I am very happy to share that Shri LK Advani Ji will be conferred the Bharat Ratna. I also spoke to him and congratulated him on being conferred this honour. One of the most respected statesmen of our times, his contribution to the development of India is monumental. His is a… pic.twitter.com/Ya78qjJbPK
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 3, 2024
Not just Advani, even Murli Manohar Joshi had been missing from the list of invitees to who were invited to Ayodhya, As a controversy stormed over their absence, several RSS and VHP leaders met Advani and Joshi to invite them to the ceremony but both leaders declined the invites .
“Advani and Joshi not participating in the event did not send the right message despite a huge successful Pran Pratishtha programme and their families citing bad weather for them skipping the ceremony. Across the country, the Hindutva followers cite Advani’s pioneer role in the Ram temple agitation, which was taken over by the PM. He now has set the house in order by giving the Bharat Ratna and ended criticism that Modi did not recognise Advani’s contribution,” a BJP insider said.
Differed with Vajpayee on Modi
After coming from Rajasthan during Jana Sangh years in 1950, Advani and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee worked together for five decades that saw them firmly entrenched the BJP in the country’s political consciousness. In the process, he earned the sobriquet of the ‘Loh Purush’ or Iron Man of the BJP.
In his autobiography ‘My Country My Life’, Advani mentions he had only two disagreements with Vajpyee. One was the Ram mandir agitation and another was on the 2002 Godhra riots. While Vajpayee wanted the resignation of then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, it was Advani who came to his rescue. In 2014, the BJP’s veteran leader proposed the name of Modi for the prime minister post.
RSS veteran Seshadri Cheri recalled how Advani laid a life of example throughout his decades of public life.
“He always used to say BJP is a party with difference but I used to say Advani was a leader with difference… a leader with idealism and with belief that power can be achieved through principled route. I recount an incident that as Organiser editor, after Babri demolition, I had gone to Advani ji to record an interview. He said that at disputed structure, we wanted a temple to be constructed but we don’t want demolition in any way. He was very sad that day,” he said.
“After Advani made the (‘secular’) remark on Jinnah in Pakistan in 2005, there was pressure from RSS to resign and the Sangh asked him to issue clarification. We reached his residence and suggested that he issue a clarification saying that his statement was misquoted. But he refused to do so. ‘I can’t change my statement. It is against my principled life,’ he said,” Chari recalled.
The entire credit of Ram Janmabhoomi agitation goes to Advani, Vijay Katiyar, one of the pioneer leaders of the Ram temple agitation, told The Print.
“Not only did he galvanise the entire Hindu samaj, he saw the potential of the temple agitation very early and worked to get the temple at the site where Ram was born. His contribution in building the BJP is huge and it’s good that government has awarded the Bharat Ratna to him,” he said.
Former Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Punj, who has written a book on the Ayodhya temple agitation, recently told ThePrint that it’s not Advani but the Bharat Ratna which will feel “gracious of coming to Advaniji”.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari also lauded the decision and mentioned how he had learnt from the veteran. “Atal Bihari Vajpayee and he played an important role in the expansion of the BJP…I was fortunate to get guidance from Advani ji when I became the party president in 2009. His life is an open book of probity in public life.”
Social historian and cultural anthropologist Badri Narayan said that the timing of the conferring of Bharat Ratna is very important.
“Soon after the Ram Temple inauguration and conferring of Bharat Ratna to Karpoori Thakur who was considered an icon of social justice politics, the conferring of Bharat Ratna to Advani who led temple agitation and regarded as icon of Hindutva politics is a BJP’s balancing strategy and inclusive strategy to not only accommodate social inclusive politics but reward key sympathisers of Hindutva constituency,” he told ThePrint.
The Congress, on the other hand, went only in one direction instead of balancing both constituencies, he added.
A BJP insider close to Advani told ThePrint that it was a sign of PM Modi correcting “his anomalies”. “Modi after becoming the prime minister, did not push for the president post for Advani which he deserved. Conferring Bharat Ratna shows he is correcting anomalies and cementing his position to show gratitude among cadres and people,” the insider said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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