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BJP : Advani in Yatra mode

	April 10, 2006

The twin Bharat Suraksha yatras of the BJP got underway on April 6 with former party president L.K. Advani sticking to his Ram Temple theme. His Bharat Suraksha yatra kicked off from Rajkot invoking Lord Ram and calling for construction of a Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid once stood. Advani appealed to Muslims to help build the temple, irrespective of the pending court case.



Advani lambasted what he called the Congress brand of minorityism, which he said, is harming the nation. He said the Governemnt should make a law to allow construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.



Criticising the Government on issues ranging from the nuclear deal to the Volcker report, Advani said : “The nuclear deal is bound to affect India’s nuclear programme, but the Government is going ahead with it.”



Party president Rajnath Singh, on his part, visited the Jagannath Temple in Puri before boarding his rath. In Bhubaneshwar, where the yatra began, he addressed a rally with Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda and party leaders Sushil Modi and Venkaiah Naidu by his side. Rajnath Singh criticised the government’s “minority appeasement” policies, touching on the Muslim head-count, job reservation for Muslims and increase in terrorist activities after the abrogation of POTA.



Observers say that while Advani hammered the Ram Temple theme, the Sangh Parivar came out in support of Rajnath Singh. The RSS pracharak pramukh of Orissa Ajit Mohapatra said that all RSS cadres had been called out for the yatra of the BJP chief. Welcome arches, hoardings and banners lined the route of Rajnath Singh’s yatra. In sharp contrast, the Sangh stayed away from the Advani yatra. The launch was purely a BJP affair with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundra Raje, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and senior leader Jaswant Singh turning up in Rajkot. On the subsequent days of the yatra, it was a Narendra Modi show, observers said.





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Advani calls for BJP image change



In an interview ahead of the Yatra, Advani admitted that the Sangh Parivar units like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were not enthusiastic about him, but claimed that it did not hurt him. Advani said there is a wide dissonance between the party’s reality and its image.



To a question as to what the party should do to change its image, he said: “Nothing except to be true to our concept of cultural nationalism. We don’t have to fight shy of being proud Hindus and to its [party’s] commitment to one billion people of the country, and the guarantee, there shall be justice for all and appeasement of none.”



Asked whether the UPA Government would complete its term in the light of serious differences between the Communists and those in the Government, he said “it is difficult to say. Even those in Government cannot be sure. It is an arrangement of convenience.”



On whether he foresaw a realignment of political forces after the Assembly elections and the revival of the third front, he said: “I don’t think so because results can be easily anticipated... I don’t see this bi-polar polity being changed for quite some time. It (third front) has always been there. There are all others who are supposed to be belonging to the third front.”



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Earlier last week, Advani said that the BJP can work with the Congress if it shed its policy of “minority appeasement.” Speaking in New Delhi on April 4, he tried to project the Left as the “common enemy” of both the BJP and the Congress. He supported Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s criticism of the Left parties for what she called trying to communalise India’s foreign policy. Advani said that no Indian can disagree with this view, and added that the BJP and the Congress can do good for the country. The only hurdle, Advani said, is the Congress policy of minority appeasement.



Reacting to Advani’s remarks, the Congress said the two parties are poles apart and the Congress has nothing in common with the BJP in terms of politics, vision or ideology. Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan charged the BJP with being communal and corrupt. She said, “The BJP practises communal and divisive politics leading to violence, for its narrow political and electoral gains. They are the principal culprits in dividing and communalizing our society and domestic politics and damaging our secular fabric.”



A day before the Yatras began, both L.K. Advani and Rajnath Singh sought former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s blessings in New Delhi on April 5.



In another development, Sanjay Joshi, who had quit as BJP general secretary (Organisation) after being shown in a sleaze CD, rejoined the post after being cleared. The police said that the CD was fake.



Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, however, said that the police had not given any clean chit in the case. He said the forensic report only said the investigations could not conclusively ascertain if the images were of Joshi or not. He said this is far from a clean chit.