Nehru Vs. Advani

 

It had become clear that Advani’s dream to lead India will of course remain a dream. The octogenarian having failed twice before Sonia’s inexplicable charisma was being asked to step down from his claim to the throne and facilitate somebody still better to wage the next parliamentary battle. Political pundits might very well analyse it as a symbol of the democratic prospects in the BJP.

Nearly all political parties in India bear the same foul-smelling tricks and strategies in their secret books. However, in one democratic aspect the BJP scores over the Congress. We can call it intra-party democracy. The BJP can very well look above even those who literally shaped its rise. The Congress on the other hand is bound by its definition to only one particular legacy inherited by a specific family.

Let us start with their respective fortune turners in independent India—JL Nehru and LK Advani.

Nehru was a great statesman. Inevitably the legacy left behind by such impressive personalities cannot be expected to say a quiet bye to this world as soon as the holy flames kiss the body. It lingers on for a long period of time. In third world countries where the masses stay almost in animal state due to poverty and illiteracy such memories are carried over generations. After all they need a guiding light to their deprived selves; simply, because the masses have accepted to be the good followers of the God-ordained authority at the higher levels! There is paucity of charismatic and dynamic new leaders who can help the masses forget the past and move on with the times. So nothing wrong if the legacy escaping from the pyre of Nehru decides to stay back to serve his progenies!

Consolidation of the Nehruvian grasp over the very meaning of the Congress (and the consequent credit for winning the freedom for the country) was a natural corollary to the fact that much-obliged and jubilant masses as well as the second-tier leaders within the Congress clapped inapprehensively while the lighthouse of the Nehruvian legacy was slowly built up in the excitingly languid waters of free India during the initial decades. It overshadowed many a capable Congress leaders.

If we analyse Advani's efforts in taking a party having just two seats in the Parliament to the apostle of power within two decades, we can say that it somehow matched or even surpassed Nehruvian endeavour to turn Congress literally a family institution. But within the BJP the patriarch has been struggling to maintain his position amongst a fantastic crop of career-oriented politicians. The man who almost single-handedly took it to power has not been allowed to set it up as a sort of family institution. On this account, the BJP appears as a far more democratic set-up given the freedom of choice of leadership among its ranks.

On the other hand, when highly capable and very senior Congressmen line up to pay homage and kiss the Yuvraj's hands (the heir apparent), it unfortunately smacks of the typical Indian medieval mentality of treating rulers as the symbols of divinity. If Congress is a democratic party and believes in its rituals then it is high time we see its great leaders taking the centre-stage irrespective of the family they are born in. If Indians still accept Rahul Gandhi (the young man whose calibre and skills can be matched by many of the young Congress leaders) as their natural leader, it just tells that we are very God-abiding people and just would go behind anybody lucky to be born in the first political family of the country.