INDIRA Gandhi’s 19-month-long emergency rule saw many Indian politicians and journalists dispatched to prison. Some of them were bright, others ordinary, but they all became heroes and continue to believe they still are.

BJP leader Lal Kishan Advani’s 986-page autobiography My Country My Life, released last week, leaves us in some doubt about which of the two categories he belongs to.

At one level the book is about his journey from anti-colonial activism in pre-partition Sindh to the current pass where he is an aspirant for the prime minister’s job. But the thread of his core narrative is rooted in a vision of India that he shares with the Hindu revivalist RSS, of which he remains a proud member.

Last week I also met a bunch of former Kashmiri prisoners at the national day reception hosted by the Pakistan high commissioner in Delhi. They too were mostly ordinary or possibly mediocre men but with aspirations to do something worthwhile for a higher cause as they perceived it. They had recently got bail after ten or more years of incarceration, and there were signs of torture too. Yet it is no gainsaying that not all of the Kashmiri men or women jailed by the Indian government were innocent dreamers of freedom.

At least one of the men at the reception, I quickly found out, was implicated in the murder of innocent Kashmiri pundits around 1991. That people like him were set free for want of witnesses was as much a travesty of justice as was the fact that many times more Kashmiris, both Muslim and Hindus, were paying dearly for taking opposite sides on the question of their proximity to India. The thought inevitably crossed my mind, since I had been reading Mr Advani’s book, whether 19 months of imprisonment and suspension of fundamental rights was any worse than dispatching an entire generation of Kashmiris and goodness knows who else in India to jails without even a charge being laid.

Since so much speculation is on currently about the fate of the Kashmir dispute, particularly in the context of comments ascribed to Pakistan’s new political shepherds, it would do no harm to probe what Mr Advani’s approach might be on the issue if he were to fulfil his dream of becoming prime minister next year. He has given some clues in the book, mostly in the form of archival material from his party and parliamentary debates.

The veteran politician also recounts in some detail his own strategy vis-à-vis Hurriyat leaders among other Kashmiri interlocutors during his tenure as home minister. The strategy of course was rooted in the BJP’s 1966 resolution in its avatar as the Jana Sangh, when Mr Advani was its president.

“Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India,” goes a familiar quote from the Jana Sangh resolution. “Pakistan has aggressively occupied one-third part of the state since 1947. To get that aggression vacated and secure the liberation of [the] Pak-occupied part of the state is the duty of the government of India.” Mr Advani makes an important comment here when he says: “As I read these lines, I am amazed at their relevance even today, after forty-two years.”

Mr Advani’s lament over the continued presence of Article 370 in the Indian constitution sounds unconvincing if also duplicitous. His own party had dropped the demand for its deletion in 1998 in preference to leading a ragtag coalition government for six years. While he may have done nothing about it as the all-powerful home minister, Mr Advani still complains: “Even in 2007, this temporary and transitional provision remains enshrined in the Indian constitution.”

He then resorts to his favourite blame game. “How does it reflect on the Congress? The Congress and Communist parties think that its repeal would be an anti-Muslim act. In short, they are concerned about appeasing one section of society rather than thinking of national interest. My party, which has been demanding its repeal, is called ‘communal’ and ‘divisive’ for doing so. A more pernicious manifestation of pseudo-secularism is, indeed, difficult to imagine.”

The claim is so contrary to the facts that it would be unfair to let it pass unquestioned. I had asked several Kashmiri separatist leaders in Srinagar, after Mr Advani’s followers razed the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992, if they shared the grief of Indian Muslims over the tragedy. The reply was more or less uniform. “What have the Indian Muslims done for us that we should sympathise with them? Do they share our demand for Azadi? No.”

This was the Kashmiri view at the height of the rebellion there. And what were the Muslim prayer leaders in Delhi saying about the turmoil in Kashmir? Mr Advani will not be able to name a single worthwhile imam from those days (not that these folks’ otherwise mediaeval interpretations of Islam are anything to go by) that had even obliquely supported the anti-Indian mood in the Valley.

Mr Advani also slams poor Farooq Abdullah, the nominally pro-India Kashmiri leader of secular credentials, for pressing the Vajpayee government to accept a resolution for Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy passed by the state’s assembly under his tenure as chief minister. “The nation was shocked on June 26, 2000, during the Vajpayee government’s rule in New Delhi, when [the] Jammu & Kashmir assembly adopted a report of the State Autonomy Committee (SAC) and asked the Centre to immediately implement it.

The SAC recommended [the] return of the constitutional situation in J&K to its pre-1953 status, by restoring to the state all subjects for governance except defence, foreign affairs, currency and communication,” observes Mr Advani.

The Vajpayee cabinet rejected the demand on July 4 and Mr Farooq Abdullah was told “to decide whether to continue in the NDA at the Centre following the Union Cabinet’s rejection of the state assembly’s autonomy resolution. To his credit, Dr Abdullah allowed the issue to lapse.” As a consequence to this potentially embarrassing revelation, Mr Abdullah was last heard denying vociferously that he had chosen power over principles.

Mr Advani also takes credit for starting talks with the Hurriyat members led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. As with other issues in the Vajpayee administration, such as the Kandahar hijack fiasco, there was confusion on the Kashmir issue too. Mr Advani confesses he had differences with Mr Vajpayee’s National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and Mr A.S. Dulat, a former RAW chief who was the Kashmir point

man in the prime minister’s office, over the government’s Kashmir policy.

“I learnt that Dulat, who was in regular contact with the leaders of various groups in Kashmir, had given some Hurriyat leaders the impression that the government was prepared to look at solutions to the Kashmir issue outside the ambit of the Indian Constitution. I was very upset at this and, in my very first meeting with the APHC delegation, I made it clear that there was no question of the government entertaining any proposal outside the Indian Constitution.”

This said, Mr Advani then goes on to give another embarrassing bear hug, this time to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. He quotes a TV interview in which “the young Kashmiri separatist leader said that actually it was Advani who started dialogue with Hurriyat two years ago when he was in government. Farooq said that Pakistanis have discovered his soft face recently, but Kashmiris discovered his soft face two years ago.”

The book is a treasure trove for anyone looking for a peep into India’s riveting and amusing political backstage. But they have to be mindful of the occasional yawning gap between facts and opinions. That Mrs Gandhi’s emergency rule subverted democracy in India is a sad fact. That it was the worst thing to happen to Indian democracy can be described as Mr Advani’s opinion.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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