NEW DELHI: Erstwhile mascot of right-wing Hindu nationalism Lal Kishan Advani had secretly organised the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit in Agra that he is widely said to have wrecked, Indian journalist Karan Thapar has claimed in a new book. Excerpts were made available on Monday.

“Pakistani high commissioner in India, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, was a dear friend of mine and determined to make a serious effort to alter the fraught relationship between our two countries,” Thapar says in Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story, thus called after a popular TV programme he ran.

Eager to establish a personal rapport with the Vajpayee-led National Demo­cratic Alliance (NDA) government, Qazi asked the author’s help who introduced him to Defence Minister George Fernandes.

Qazi soon realised Mr Fernandez would not be able to deliver. It was then that Advani’s name cropped up as he was the all powerful home minister in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s coalition government.

‘I’d like to meet Mr Advani,’ Qazi announced one day in early 2000. Fernandes, “who recognised and accep­ted the need, arranged the meeting and I was asked to drive Ashraf to Advani’s Pandara Park residence. It was fixed for 10pm. No one else was informed.”

Over the next 18 months, there were perhaps twenty or thirty such clandestine meetings.

“The vast majority took place at night. I would be the chauffeur and the guards at Pandara Park were only given my name. The whole thing felt like a cloak-and-dagger game in a B-grade Bollywood film.”

Late in May 2001, India announced that it had invited General Pervez Musharraf for a summit in Agra. At 6:30 the next morning Advani rang.

“I’m sorry for calling so early but I want you to tell our common friend that he shares the credit for this development. Our meetings were a big help.”

The book makes the first serious assertion that Advani was not only supportive but also a key organiser of the Agra summit.

The fact that the meeting failed — though this is not mentioned in the book — had partly to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s fear that any drastic rapprochement with Pakistan could impact adversely on the party’s chances in the Uttar Pradesh elections due in February 2002.

The BJP eventually lost the polls and its angry cadre who were gathered in Uttar Pradesh were embroiled in the fateful journey of the Godhra train that arrived there from Ayodhya with the defeated volunteers.

The ensuing communal flare-up in Gujarat ensured that another Uttar Pradesh would not be repeated in the Modi-ruled state.

Coming back to the book, the last Qazi-Advani meeting took place during the Musharraf visit.

“It happened after the Rashtrapati Bhavan banquet, close to 11 pm. Ashraf rapidly changed from his achkan into casual clothes so that no one would recognise him.

“Advani still had on the grey trousers of his bandgala suit. The Agra summit was due the next morning. There was hope in the air.”

Though the summit failed, “the bond [Qazi and Advani] formed did not snap. It lasted through the difficult months of the attack on Parliament in December 2001 and the Kaluchak terror attack in 2002, which led to Ashraf being asked to leave.”

The seven days given to him ticked by. “I got a call from Mrs Advani asking if I would bring Ashraf and his wife, Abidah, for tea on their penultimate evening.

The Advanis wanted to meet the Qazis and personally bid farewell. This was an amazing gesture by the deputy prime minister of a government that had just chosen to declare Ashraf persona non grata.”

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2018