From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. I have very pleasant, precious memories of working closely with Advanagi as well as Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They were truly great. I'm not saying this because I had the opportunity of working closely with them, but they were humble. Power sat lightly on their shoulders. Even when they were Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, they were as humble as they were in the opposition.
And for the most part of their lives they were in the opposition and a marginal opposition. That is one quality. The other quality is to listen to criticism, listen to other points of view. I have seen how advantage engaged, you know people from across the political spectrum, including communists. Not many people know that he genuinely admired communists for their simplicity, for their honesty, for the selflessness. He was a true Democrat. How many people know all these
facts about Advaniji? Do we see that culture today? That's Sudindra Kulkarni who worked closely with LK Advani when he was a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. On Sunday, the 31st of March, President Dropadi Murmur presented LK Advani with the Bharat Ratna with Prime Minister Narendra Modi present. The Prime Minister also worked with LK Advani during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which is credited with making the BJP A dominant political force in the
country. Advani was there when the BJP was founded and has represented the party in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for multiple terms. He headed several ministries, served as Deputy Prime Minister and was also the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
In today's episode, my colleague Alka Dukar and I spoke with Sudindra Kulkarni about LK Advani, a leader he worked closely with for over a decade, Kulkarni is an author and columnist and worked in the Prime Minister's office between 2000 and 2004. He explains the lessons from Elk Advani's political career for contemporary times and also decoded the big political controversy in Advani's
political career. In 2005, Alka started by asking him about the criticism from some quarters over the awarding of India's highest civilian award to Advani. Unlike many liberals and progressive people in India who criticize the choice of Lal Krishna Advani for Bharat Ratna, you have called him a truly Bharat Ratna. You have been talking about Advani's contribution to defense of democracy. Advantage is today 96, and of course he's not active in politics or public life.
But for over 7 decades he served the nation with exemplary dedication and commitment in multiple capacities. And I see the Bharat Ratna as a recognition for his service to the nation in these multiple capacities. I count 4 major contributions of Advantage to national life. The first one that he's along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he built an alternative poll in Indian polity. We all know that until the late 70s or mid 70s the Indian political establishment was completely dominated by the
Congress party. It was a one poll political system, Unipolar and Advantage had often talked about right from the 70s onwards that for democracy to become healthier and more mature and more accountable, more responsive, this unipolar system needs to be transformed into a bipolar system. There should be a strong stable alternative. And he was able, along with Vajpayeeji and all others in the party Janata Party to create the BJP as the second poll of Indian political system.
Of course, there are other polls in the form of regional parties, but two major national parties, the Congress on the one side, the BJP on the other other side. This is, I see as advantages, major contribution to transforming the political landscape. Sudinder Kulkarni says Advani's big contribution to India's politics was working to defend democracy at a time when political opponents of the Congress government were being thrown into prison.
He explains why Advani's conduct during the Emergency holds lessons for the present supporters of the BJP as well. In 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency. The Emergency between 1975 and 1977 is the darkest period in India's history. India's history as a democracy. So there was no democracy left. Elections were postponed. Elections were meant to be held in 76, but elections postponed. The judiciary was tamed and enslaved. There was absolutely no press freedom.
Total censorship. 10s of thousands of political activists and leaders were imprisoned and among the people who went to jail who were sent to jail was LK Advani who spent 19 months in jail. Along with of course many other veteran leaders like Jaya Prakash Narayan, Chandra Shekhar, Muraji Desai Bajpaiji himself, Madhu Dandavate, George Fernandez. But the point I am making is that this was the the most serious assault on democracy
that India has seen. And it was advantage along with others who fought against the Emergency. And after the Emergency was lifted, Indira Gandhi was forced to lift the Emergency and call for elections. She was ousted from power. The Janata Party came into office and as the minister in Muraji, Desai's government advantage played the leading role in dismantling the entire legal superstructure of authoritative missile.
It goes to show that he was not just a political fighter for democracy, he was an intellectual fighter for democracy. This point is especially significant because we are once again seeing a major threat to democracy even though Emergency is not declared officially. Therefore, it is necessary for all of us, those who are in the BJP and those who are outside the BJP, to look back to our own history and take proper lessons from how people of that
generation ought for democracy. Advanagi was one of them. LK Advani's contribution to the Ram Mandir, which was inaugurated in January this year, is massive. He held the rathyatra and was in Ayodhya in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished on the disputed side. Sudinder Kulkarni says Al Khadwani's challenges to what the leader termed as pseudo secularism is a major contribution to politics in India.
He says another major contribution was Al Khadwani's many attempts to repair ties with Pakistan. He challenged what he called pseudo secularism. That is secularism that was practiced as appeasement of of a certain kind, only to get votes for the Congress party and other so-called secular parties. And this issue came up when he led the Ram Janmabhoomi movement between 8989 and 19.
He took out the Rath Yatra to mobilize support for Ram temple at Ram Janmukumi in Ayodhya. And we all know that this received enormous support even though it must be pointed out that he was not the first to raise the demand for Ram temple nor the Vishwahindu Parishad or the Sun Pariva.
The demand for Ram temple preceded at Vaniji and many of those people whose who raise this demand were Congress leaders such as Uljarila Nanda who became India's Prime Minister on 2 occasions as interim Prime Minister. There were many other Congress leaders, Rajiv Gandhi himself when he was Prime Minister. He made a significant contribution. But the point I'm making is that this is, I regard as advantages, third most important
contribution. And lastly, even though he was president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, even though he was Deputy Prime Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he along with Vajpayee Ji made honest, consistent effort to normalize relations with Pakistan. He truly believed that Partition was a tragedy. Partition cannot be undone, but at least the negative effects of Partition can be undone and must
be undone. And therefore he took a very bold, uncharacteristic decision of going to Pakistan in 2005 when he was the president of the BJP. I'm saying this because if we want to remove all the divisions and prejudices and bitterness that we see between Hindus and Muslims in India, one thing that we should do is normalize relations for Pakistan. The extent to which India, Pakistan relations become better become harmonious. Peace, cooperation, good neighborliness.
To that extent, even communal harmony in India will be enhanced. And he made sincere efforts towards this. I am underscoring this last contribution because a lot of people see advantage as a as a polarizing figure. But here is a person who amongst you see the you see the history of the last 75 years among the few Indian leaders who have made sincere, consistent efforts to normalize relations with Pakistan. Advani is one of them. How can you call him a
polarizing politician? As we know in the media, Advani visited Pakistan and his remarks about Jina caused a permanent strain in his relations with the RSS from which he could never recover. So what happened exactly? You are absolutely right. You know what actually happened in Pakistan. As someone who accompanied him and was an eyewitness, I can share with you that whatever advantage is said about Jinnah at Jinnah's mausoleum in Karachi
is absolutely irrefutable. In the visitor's book, he wrote a few lines. Every single word that he wrote with his own hand was carefully chosen. And in that, he said that Sarojini Naidu described him as an ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity. This cannot be questioned. It's there.
Then he said that Jinnah's speech on August 11, 1947 at the beginning of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the first speech that he delivered, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, he made a historic speech in which he said that now that Pakistan has been created, this should be a nation for all. No community, no religion should dominate this nation.
So Advantages said that that speech is a classic example of secularism and anyone who reads Jinnah's speech on that day will will find nothing objectionable in that speech. But back at home, some people in the BJP and the Sangh Parivar and of course media they started say oh Advani Ji calls Jina secular and that became a big controversy. It was also believed that he was advised to do that and the
advisers were blamed. See, Advaniji is one of the most cerebral politicians India has produced. So long as he was active in public life and politics, he was a lover of books. And I don't think there are many politicians who have read as many books and who could speak as authoritatively and authentically on a variety of subjects. So to say that he was wrongly advised, he is actually a disservice to advantages
intellectual acumen. Now, in his autobiography he has said that whatever he had said with Karachi, he had faithfully reproduced and he has not expressed any regret for what he said. He did not retract his words. So what does it say? What does it show? It shows that these were his own thoughts. But the point is that there is a need for looking at our history
with all its complexity. It is indeed a fact that for a long period of time Jinnah was a he was in, he was in the Congress party and even when he was in the Congress party in the initial years, he was also in the Muslim League and he tried to bring about harmony between Hindus and Muslims there. In the in the 30s onwards, he was a different man and he is one of the villains of the partition. But we should not see history in just black and white terms.
We should have a nuanced understanding of history. Let me point out one more thing. When he praised Jinnah for his speech on August 11, 1947, when he recalled the fact that he was an ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity, he was actually sending a message to the people of Pakistan that you have departed and deviated from what your own founder had said. Jinnah did not want an Islamic Pakistan, but Pakistan became Islamized Pakistan marginalized Hindus and Sikhs.
So many instances of extremism and terrorism that targeted the minorities. So Advani was actually telling the Pakistanis that you have not remained true to what your founder had wanted you to. So instead of blaming advantage, people in India should have, should have praised him that this is a contribution to bring India and Pakistan closer and it's also an A contribution to harmonize relations between Hindus and Muslims. Then why the relations trend
between Advani and RSS? If Advani wanted an harmonious relationship with Pakistan, was that a problem for RSS? RSS is not a monolith. Not everyone in the RSS thinks the same way. And there are also political considerations at different points in time that determine how the RSS and how some people in the BJP react. After all, when Vajpaiji undertook the bus yatra to Pakistan in 1999 and I was working in the Prime Minister's Office as an aide to Vajpaiji, I accompanied him On that visit to
Pakistan, The RSS praised him. RSS encouraged him to go to Pakistan because there are people in the RSS at various top levels. Even today they believe in good relations with Pakistan. But unfortunately in 2005, you see, we had lost the election in 2004 and there were voices within the BJP and the Sangh Pariwar that Vajpayji and Advani Ji had had left Hinduism. And that was the political context in which hardliners took advantage and sidelined
advantage. I mean the relations and how Advani was deserted from the leadership of BJP in today's time. In your opinion, what led to this situation? See, you know in politics, when you win you are a hero. When you lose, all the blame comes on you. In 2004, the BJP lost the election in 199619981999. The BJP was on an upward curve and everybody praised Advantage and Atalji for taking the BJP to the center stage. It was a marginal party.
In 1984, we all know that the BJP had won only two seats in the Lok Sabha. Watch PG himself lost the election. This was after Indira Gandhi's assassination. But from two seats, watch PG, Advani G along with others, they made the BJP, as I mentioned, the second poll of Indian political establishment. So he became a hero. But 2004, we lost the election. By that time Watch PG was was not very active. After 2004 defeat, you're not active in politics. So all the blame came on advantage.
Once again, we lost the election in 2009. It's not only with the with the BJP in every party, if you take the party to power, you are a hero. If you lose elections, you are a weak leader. That is what has happened to advantage. But I'm sure. That those in the BJP, those in the Sangh Parivar and also those who are outside the Sangh Parivar, when they look back at India's post independence history and when they take a holistic view, they will certainly have a high regard for Advani.
And I can tell you here in this context that in the opposition party, those who are outside the BJP, they had great regard for him. Those who are criticizing the advantage, they should make the efforts to know history better the. Allegation is our current Prime Minister is not respecting advantage in the current politics. We have seen many visuals from different political party rallies to other events. See, I don't want to. I don't want to comment on that.
People are intelligent enough to come to their own conclusions, but I would like to make one point very emphatically in this podcast and that is that today, when democracy in India is under serious stress, there is a need to go back to our own history to know how the BJP defended democracy. Sudhinder Kulkarni says the book written by LK Advani titled A Prisoner Scrapbook, offers a good lesson on how people should
view democracy. He read out one paragraph from the book on what LK Advani said about how one can preserve democracy. He said Indira Gandhi has described the Emergency as a shock treatment, an objective totally alien to the purpose of Emergency, conceived by our Constitution makers, but a shock it has no doubt been. It has shocked even skeptics into realizing the truth of Jayaprakash Narayan's prognostication. More sadly, however, it has shaken the faith of many in the
future of Indian democracy. Then he says, and this is especially important, restoration of this faith in Indian democracy is the task to which every thinking Indian needs to address himself. How to do this is a matter which each of us has to decide for himself, ourselves. But all of us can do one thing in common, shed fear and speak the truth as we see it. This in itself will be no mean contribution to the cause of democracy.
This is what he wrote when he was in jail for 19 months between 75 and 77. They are important even now, because we know what is happening to our democracy. 150 members of Parliament summarily suspended. Has it ever happened before? Look at the way governors are being misused. When Advanagi and Atalgi were in the opposition, they strongly condemned misuse of the office of governor. Under Congress regimes, what is
happening today? Governors have become governor generals after the emergency was lifted, Advanagi told journalists. Because during the emergency, a lot of journalists and many editors and especially media owners, they completely surrendered to the emergency regime. So to them, Advanagi said, and these are his famous words, You were only asked to bend, but you chose to crawl. You were only asked to bend, but
you chose to crawl. Aash kya hora hai, aash to Emergency declared there is no official censorship yet. People are not just crawling, they're prostrating. So that's why I'm saying that those in the BJP and those who are critics of the BJP should recall, make an effort to study advantages, contribution to defense of democracy. I'll go to the beginning of our discussion where you spoke about advantage, wanted to bring other ideologies or polls to the
Indian politics. Now we are discussing Congress, Mukta Bharat Ek, Bharat Ek party, everything Ek on the political agenda. The politics aspired by Advani. Where has it reached in your opinion? I mentioned to you that right from the 70s onwards, Advani was saying that Indian political establishment needs to be transformed from a unipolar system to a bipolar system and the domination, the monopoly control of the Congress party.
Because any party that begins to have monopoly control, it moves in the direction of dictatorship. It's no longer accountable to the people, it's no longer responsive. And that's why they said India should have a two party system or A2 poll system, Not two party, but two poll. Now after 2014, India is now again moving towards a unipolar. But that one poll, that single poll is not the Congress but the BJP. And there are people in the BJP today who says we should have a
Congress? Mukta Bharat. Not just Congress, Mukta Bharat, Opposition Mukta Bharat. We want a democracy. But in a democracy there should be no other party, only one party.
Now this is a very dangerous trend and the thinking people of India, democracy loving people of India, people who love the fact that we are a land of diversity, a land of freedom of thought, freedom of expression, Not just because of the Constitution, but for 5000 years, Indian civilization has zealously protected this quality of freedom, freedom of thought,
freedom of expression. There has never been the persecution of people in India because of what they professed, the faith that they espoused or the ideas that they had. Everyone is free and everyone is free today, also because of the Constitution and therefore this freedom, this democracy, our democracy is, is full of loopholes, full of shortcomings. And all these shortcomings need to be reformed. Change and our democracy needs to be reformed.
But one core quality of our democracy, that is freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of association. This must be defended. On the one hand, we are saying that India is the mother of democracy, but on the other hand, what's happening? So let's defend democracy. You spoke a lot about LK Advani's life and his times and his politics. Even a lot of that is not just reversed. It is celebrated. That reversal is celebrated itself.
Like you spoke about his views on Pakistan, many would say that it shows that it wasn't sort of outdated politics, or maybe it was a politics of that time, but it didn't have the legs to last on. What would you say to that? I think pendulum has moved to some extreme today. But I am absolutely confident that this pendulum will again come back to the center. What Agawan Buddha has said
Matyam mark the middle path. India has always progressed when it has moved on the middle path, not this extreme or that extreme. Of course, even the past 10 years, a lot of good things have happened. I'm not in the BJP now, but I can say that India has actually progressed a lot in many respects in the last 10 years and the government deserves credit for this. Prime Minister Modi deserves credit for this.
At the same time, there are some shortcomings, and we should not shy away from talking about these shortcomings. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us. We are available on TOI, Spotify, Apple, Google, Podcast, and all other platforms of your choice. For any news tips, e-mail us at TOI Podcast at Timesinternet dot in.