Write a book, Mr Advani

Time for BJP's leader to end his quest for PMship

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s octogenarian leader Lal Krishna Advani ought to have gracefully retired from public life in May 2009 when he led his party to ignominious defeat. In 2004 his party had not gone to the hustings seeking a mandate for Mr Advani as prime minister. That year it was Mr Vajpayee who was defeated at the polls.

Between 2004 and 2009 Mr Advani made it his business on an almost daily basis to try and unseat incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and, having failed, seek to defeat him in the elections of 2009. The stratagem of the ‘cash-for-votes’ sting that he personally authorised, as he himself has claimed, was yet another desperate bid to discredit Dr Singh and usurp power from him. His party’s stance against the India-US civil nuclear agreement was entirely shaped by his ambition to unseat the government by driving a wedge between the Congress Party and the Left Front, on the one hand, and between Sonia Gandhi’ss party and Manmohan Singh’s government, on the other. Mr Advani reportedly performed a havan to ensure the unseating of Dr Singh, but that may have yielded no result because Dr Singh’s official date of birth may not be his real date of birth! (A fact that Dr Singh told people with a chuckle!) In the event, Dr Singh not only lasted his full term but also returned to office for a second term.

In Indian politics deputy PMs have been seen as usurpers of power, not inheritors. Morarji Desai to Indira Gandhi, Charan Singh to Morarji Desai and Chandra Shekhar to Vishwanath Pratap Singh. If Mr Advani had challenged Mr Vajpayee openly he may have still acquired power as a right. Rather, he hoped to be promoted like a good joint secretary. Having failed at every step and repeatedly, Mr Advani ought to have called it a day in the summer of 2009. He may well have wanted to. He is an intelligent and well read man and would have known that he had come to the end of the road in his pursuit of the country’s highest office. Perhaps he was ill-advised. India’s Prime Ministers and political leaders have made some of their biggest mistakes succumbing to the implorations of their near and dear. Perhaps Mr Advani too fell a victim to his family’s ambitions more than to his own. If he did, he would find himself in good company in Indian politics!

Whatever the reasons, the outcome was an unfortunate one. An octogenarian refusing to give up. It took the khaki-shorts wearing leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) to finally make Mr Advani see reason and face reality. The 2014 election, or even an earlier one if there is one earlier, will be fought between the ‘next generation’ of the Congress and the BJP. Notice the impatience of Mr Pranab Mukherjee! He too knows that like Mr Advani he has to remain content being the Number Two and never becoming the Number One! (And in his case there is some doubt now within the party as to who the real Number Two is, he or Mr A K Antony!) The time has come for Mr Advani to retire and write another book, and continue to offer wise advice to his younger colleagues.