GROWING PAINS:

India party erupts over praise for a Muslim (Amelia Gentleman, JUNE 8, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, faced ideological disarray Tuesday evening after its leader resigned amid growing tension with the hard-line wing of the party.

The direct trigger for Lal Krishna Advani's departure was a controversy caused by his decision last week to praise the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as a "secular" leader and to pay homage to Jinnah as a "rare individual" who wanted Hindus and Muslims to live in peace.

His comments, made during a visit to Pakistan, provoked fury among the hard-line fringe of the party, who would rather see their leader articulating the party's Hindu-nationalist message of "Hindutva" - or Hindu-ness.

Hindu groups responded with fury that Jinnah was a Muslim fundamentalist responsible for the partition of the subcontinent and demanded that Advani retract his comments.

The uproar has rekindled the dormant forces of extremist Hindu nationalism, bringing the voices of these groups once again to the forefront of Indian politics.

The leadership struggle now unleashed will determine whether these hard-liners can once again occupy a powerful position on the Indian political stage or whether moderate forces will prevail.

The crisis within the BJP comes as the party leadership was beginning to reinvent itself as a more mainstream force, particularly with regard to India's relations with Pakistan, with the peace process making significant advances.

Part of growing into its role as a great nation will be marginalizing nationalists.

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When an Indian hawk turns dove (Siddharth Srivastava, 6/09/05, Asia Times)

The visit by Advani to Pakistan...has been marked by significant turnarounds - after a meeting with Musharraf, Advani said the general could be "trusted". He said that he regretted the demolition of the Babri masjid, calling the day the saddest in his life; he agreed that the Indo-Pak peace process must be made irreversible, discounted talk that he was a "hardliner", "hawk", or wore "horns".

Advani welcomed the visit of separatist leaders of Indian-administered Kashmir to Pakistan and informed Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz that lasting peace was contingent on a solution in Kashmir, and supported any talk with terrorists, provided that they gave up their arms. What is more, he described Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, as a "rare individual" who created history and espoused the cause of a secular Pakistan. Advani laid a wreath at Jinnah's mausoleum, which no Indian leader has done before. It was an extremely loaded gesture, aimed at delivering the message of a secular messiah, even if he never has been.

Showering praise on Jinnah, though, goes completely against the thought of the BJP and its affiliate parties, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the RSS, who together form the Sangh Parivar. These parties consider Jinnah to be the leader of a virulent anti-Hindu campaign in cahoots with the British that ultimately led to the partitioning of Muslim-majority Pakistan in 1947. Even the Congress Party, which the Muslims have traditionally backed, has desisted from praising Jinnah, due to his espousal of the "two-nation" theory based on religious majorities.

Advani himself is referred to as the Hindu Jinnah for his virulent pushing of pro-Hindu politics. Predictably, the VHP and the RSS, which was recently included in a list of terrorist organizations by a US think-tank, called for Advani's removal as head of the BJP.

The question, however, is whether Advani's statements and resignation provide a deeper insight into the direction the Indian polity is likely to take. Does the Advani visit represent a change of heart of the leader, or is it a charade? Given his political acumen, there has to be doubt.

The good news emerging from the Advani visit is that there is unanimity among the political parties, including the ruling Congress, that the peace process has to be persisted with. The BJP can always have a stake in it for having initiated the process when former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Musharraf last January.

The issue of the politics of the region taking an about-turn is more complex. Some observers have gone to the extent of saying that Advani has written his political epitaph in Pakistan. Other say the change is only skin deep and that Advani has gotten carried away by the emotion of his trip, as he was born in Karachi. He will soon be back to his old "hawkish" self, they say.

However, there is more to the resignation. Advani's utterances do address an existential question that has been plaguing his political career for long. Having led the Hindutva campaign and been directly responsible for the emergence of the BJP as a political force in the 1990s, he saw the mantle being passed on to Vajpayee, the moderate face acceptable to regional partners in government formation, as well as the people of India. Vajpayee, during his tenure, practically tossed aside his Hindutva roots and modeled himself on India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a secular ideal. To keep the RSS happy, Vajpayee uttered a few pro-Hindutva statements every few months, in a way leaving the dirty work to such people as Modi to Advani.

Advani knows that any chance of being prime minister of India rests on a complete make-over, from a hardliner to a moderate, irrespective of his beliefs. The Pakistan visit provided the right forum for such expression.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 7, 2005 10:19 PM