Bharat Ratna to Advani proves yet again that PM Modi is the master of political timing

The decision to confer Bharat Ratna on party patriarch Lal Krishna Advani proves once again that Narendra Modi is the master of political timing. Even as one peels the different layers of Saturday’s announcement made by the prime minister, it becomes evident that every move taken by this government is backed by meticulous planning and clear-headed thinking. First, just ahead of the general elections, this decision is expected to fire up that section of the party’s (and the larger right-wing) base that had felt shortchanged at the treatment meted out to the pioneer of the Ram Mandir movement, under whose aegis BJP rose from two seats in 1984 to 120 in 1991. BJP’s rise under Advani, the perennial organisational man, institution-builder, and mentor to an entire generation of talented young leaders, coincided with the concomitant collapse of the Congress party’s vote base from which the grand old party never recovered. It has been a pet peeve of many within the larger ‘Hindu nationalist’ fold who credit the veteran leader for shifting India’s political landscape and ushering in an era of cultural resurgence that Advani never got his due from the current dispensation. It wasn’t just the way Advani and his peers were superannuated into the ‘Margdarshak mandal’, the sense of injury emanating from the idea that the ‘OG’ Ram Mandir stalwart has been ‘disrespected’ refused to dissipate despite Advani getting the Padma Vibhushan award in 2015. It intensified, for instance, at the recent fiasco that ensued over inviting him to the Pran Pratishtha ceremony. One of the party’s tallest leaders, the nonagenarian was initially denied invitation owing to his “advanced age” and later requested to attend, but the 96-year-old eventually gave the consecration ceremony a miss. With the conferring of the state’s highest civilian honour on him, that feeling of affront may finally be addressed and a message sent to the rank and file that there might be internal differences, but the party remains united, respects and recognises senior leaders even when the sun has set on their political careers. Second, the decision, announced just a few days of the consecration ceremony, carries forward the tempo of the Ram Mandir movement via state recognition of the senior ideologue who is responsible for transforming Indian politics through his Rath Yatra that shifted the Overton window and mainstreamed Hindutva as a political ideology. It was Advani’s yatra, launched from Somnath Temple in Gujarat on 25 September, 1990, that mobilised the masses around the idea of Ram, reinforced Hindutva’s centrality in Indian politics and paved BJP’s way to power at the Centre. During the yatra, Advani travelled nearly 300 kms per day and held several roadside rallies before then chief minister Lalu Yadav arrested him in Bihar a month later. Advani’s chariot didn’t get to enter Ayodhya where he had vowed to do ‘kar seva’. By then, however, Advani had left an indelible mark and laid the foundation for BJP’s stunning rise. His clarion call of ‘ Mandir wahin banayenge’ (the temple will be built on the site of Ram Janmabhoomi) fired up the imagination of a generation of Ram bhakts and triggered a movement that finally culminated in the Pran Pratishtha ceremony on 22 January, 2024. But for the Ram Mandir movement, the BJP wouldn’t have scored a clear ideological victory over the Opposition and dictated the course of Indian politics. The wellspring of mass support and positivity generated by the return of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya, that has galvanized the Hindu society and has perhaps given the BJP an edge over the Opposition in the upcoming elections, may now find another expression through the recognition bestowed on the man whom the prime minister acknowledged as having “made unparalleled efforts towards furthering national unity and cultural resurgence.” Third, the decision is also an astute political move since it addresses two key constituencies that are of interest to the BJP — social justice and Hindutva. Saturday’s announcement must be seen in conjunction with the recent move to confer Bharat Ratna posthumously on socialist leader and former chief minister of Bihar Karpoori Thakur. Still considered as a ‘jan nayak’ in Bihar, two-time chief minister Thakur’s legacy remains strong, and his role to uplift the poor and marginalised, enable equitable representation for backward classes, inspired a generation of young leaders in Bihar such as Lalu and incumbent chief minister Nitish Kumar who has since abandoned the INDI Alliance fold and returned to the NDA. The Bharat Ratna to Advani, similarly, acknowledges the contribution of Advani to the cause of Hindutva. Fourth, the move is also an example of the fact that the BJP walks its talk of putting party above self-interests. The personality clash between Prime Minister Modi and his former mentor is not a secret. Despite their much-discussed differences, the fact that Modi heaped fulsome praise on the veteran leader, acknowledged his contribution to the party, nation and the cause of probity in public life, exemplified him as a leader who had “unwavering commitment to transparency and integrity”, matters to the karyakartas and the larger electorate sympathetic to the BJP. As author Vinay Sitapati writes in Indian Express, the contrast with Congress that has tried its utmost to bury the legacy of non-Gandhi leaders. He writes, “Modi’s gesture to honour Advani despite their differences is very much part of this Hindutva Fevicol. It shows that Modi – like Advani – has internalised the importance of a public show of party unity. Others can learn from this gesture.” Fifth, this is the least the BJP could have done to honour the ideologue who busted the myth that suppression of Hindu pride and civilisational heritage is a necessary condition for nation-building and set the course for Independent India’s biggest ideological triumph. Call it cultural resurgence or Hindutva, Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya — where Advani vowed to build a glorious Ram Mandir at a time when it was politically suicidal and was met with ferocious hostility by the elite power centres in Delhi — was a signifier for Bharat’s nationhood that struggled to find expression under the yoke of pseudo-secularism. While the Ram Mandir movement established the BJP in the Hindi heartland, in reality, Advani achieved much, much more. He injected new belief among the Hindus, urged them to come out of somnambulism defeatism through his battle cry of “garv se kahon hum Hindu hai” (announce proudly that you are a Hindu) and instilled the lost realization that Hindus are a repository of a great civilisation and Sanatan Dharma, a faith that is pluralistic, inclusive and sees unity in diversity. In overcoming that psyche of shame and silence — that one must practice faith in the inner recesses of privacy and curb all outward expressions or risk antagonizing the Nehruvian ‘Idea of India’ — Advani laid the groundwork for a cultural resurgence. If Hindus have recovered a semblance of their lost pride, if they have been able to reclaim a fraction of their buried, rewritten history and reconnected with their civilsational identity, then Lal Krishna Advani must get the lion’s share of the credit. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. 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