IN more than one way, Lal Krishna Advani is certainly a changed man from the man he was in 2001, when for the first time I met him at Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s luncheon in Delhi in honour of General Pervez Musharraf, chief executive of his country, as he then styled himself, prior to the July Agra meetings.
I had one memorable exchange with Mr Vajpayee, a gentle soul. As he shook my hand, I asked “Kitney saal lartey rahengay?,” to which he sincerely responded, “Arrey bhai, abb to bahout hogia, bahout hogia.” Introduced earlier to Mr Advani by Cushrow Irani, editor of The Statesman, I politely suggested that he pay a return visit to the city of his birth. The remark was brusquely dealt with by Advani telling me he would do so in his own time, and at the right time. (This exchange was heard by a sad looking Manmohan Singh, standing silently nearby.)
Advani took his time, and chose exactly the right moment, and this man, known formerly to be a difficult man to deal with as far as Pakistan was concerned, a man hostile to the peace process, and apparently unforgiving, has charmed all he met during his six days in Pakistan. As deputy prime minister and home minister in the government of Mr Vajpayee, it was he who was considered to be the dominant figure. As leader of the opposition, as he has been since last year’s elections, and under India’s functioning parliamentary democracy, he remains one of the most prominent personalities of Indian politics.
I met him for the second time here in Karachi. The Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economics and Laws hosted ‘an evening with Mr L.K. Advani’ on June 5, which received no mention in the press as on that day he had lunched with the Sindh governor and other local illuminati, visited the site of his old house, toured Mohatta Palace, and been feted by the Hindu community.
This was his second visit to Karachi in six decades where he had spent the first 20 years of his life here. When he left in 1947, the population of Karachi was a mere 400,000 (he had a little dig at our statisticians who claim that the population of Karachi is now nine million whereas he and we know it is nearer 14 million).
He had much to say about his old school, St Patrick’s, which has so often cropped up in his talks and meetings with our leadership — with Musharraf, who is an old boy, with Shaukat Aziz, also an old boy. On a visit to the Philippines in 1974, he met another old Patrician, and in Tel Aviv, ran into one of the three Jewish boys who were with him in class at St Pat’s.
Having dispensed with his school days, he moved on the Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech. There was in Karachi, prior to partition, a man who holds a most reverential place in Advani’s life, Swami Ranganathanandaji (a mere 17-letter name when compared to the 28-letter Vitianandashivaramakrishnaji, as a late friend was named). After partition Swami left for India and on a visit to Kolkata many years ago, at Advani’s last meeting with Swami before he died, he was asked if he had read Jinnah’s speech, which was, as Swami put it ‘a classic exposition of a secular speech’, as it referred to religious freedom, tolerance, and to the absence of discrimination of any kind. Swami asked if he would send him a copy on his return to Delhi.
He then spoke of how his visit was partly political and partly cultural. He had travelled to Chakwal to lay the foundation stone of the uplift project of the Katas Raj Temple, one of the projects in which Pakistan and India were cooperating in the preservation and rehabilitation of historic and archaeological sites. This visit had triggered the August 11 speech in his mind — and he quoted : “If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.”
This has not so far happened (not that Advani said so) but he did hint that it is never too late to make a beginning.
To Advani’s mind he agreed with Jinnah that the biggest hindrance to India’s gaining independence was the religious factor, “the angularities of the majority and minority communities”, as Jinnah put it, from which there is a lesson to be learnt, and he again quoted, this time the most famous passage of that famous speech : “You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques, or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
The speech, said Advani, describes what is known in India as a secular state in which there is no place for any form of discrimination, intolerance or religious extremism. We must accord full marks to the man for his major political revision, and for standing firmly in the face of pretty virulent criticism from the BJP. He has infuriated his party by his remarks, in particular as being the first major Indian politician to visit Jinnah’s tomb and then to inscribe in the visitor’s book :
“......His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is really a classic and a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to follow his own religion. The state shall make no distinction between the citizens on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man.”
His party is also highly incensed by his statement made on ‘enemy’ territory on the destruction of the Babri Masjid which he described as the “saddest moment of my life.” But this is odd, as his official biography recounts that when he appeared before the Lieberham Commission, constituted in December 1992 by the Indian home ministry to report on the Ayodhya incident he had then claimed that the demolition was ‘the most agonizing moment of his life’. This is on record.
In Karachi, on June 5, he repeated his thoughts on partition, that it is an unalterable reality of history, but that its follies can be undone. It divided hearts and countries, but both can be reunited with us all remaining loyal citizens of our respective countries. We must seize the ‘historic moment’ (Musharraf’s ‘fleeting moment’), two brother nations cannot be held hostage to the resolution of four or five or six disputes, we must talk and talk and talk, we must ‘wage peace’. Peace must be won, as a war is won. But slowly, patiently, through dialogue so that mutually acceptable solutions may be found — to all issues and particularly to the Kashmir problem in which the Kashmiris must be involved.
This is all highly commendable, though somewhat surprising, coming from a man renowned formerly as a hardliner. He ended his speech on a most practical note, which we must hope will be heeded and taken up by the leadership of both countries. In Pakistan, said Advani, he could watch on cable TV news stations from around the world, but he could not tune into his own Indian channels to find out what was happening whilst he is away. Somewhat ridiculous, as is the fact that he can buy newspapers published in Europe, the US, China, Brazil and from countries all over the world when he is at home in India, but he cannot buy a copy of Dawn (he made specific mention of this newspaper).
Advani is secure enough to have resigned the chairmanship of his party in the face of the hostile remarks made by the perverted element of his party, and sufficiently confident of the power he wields to have allowed himself to be persuaded by these same bigots to withdraw his resignation.
The final sentence we heard him speak on the evening of June 5 : “We must do what is desirable and do it quickly.” There can be no arguing on that one.