HVK Archives: How Advani's yatra 'unflopped' finally
How Advani's yatra 'unflopped' finally - The Pioneer
Sudheendra Kulkarni
()
25 July 1997
Title: How Advani's yatra 'unflopped' finally
Author: Sudheendra Kulkarni
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 25, 1997
In a moving tribute to SP Singh of Aaj Tak, the editor of this newspaper
made an observation about the increasing strength of Hindi journalism
saying, "It is not uncommon these, days for English newspapers to follow up
on stories that first appeared in a Jansatta or a Dainik Jagran." Coming
from an editor from the English media, the remark stood out for its honesty.
I read it during the Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra in which I had the good
fortune of being Mr LK Advani's sahayatri from nag-off to touchdown. And I
could not help seeing the aptness of the observation in the stark contrast
between the coverage of the BJP president's marathon campaign in the
English and Hindi media. With the creditable exception of the Pioneer and
a couple of other English newspapers, the attitude of the rest of the
angrezi Press was, by and large, one of cynical indifference. One
well-known columnist pronounced the Swarna Jayanti Bath Yatra a flop. on
its second day itself. Being a columnist myself, I know that columns are
written at least a few days in advance. Hence my suspicion that he must
have penned it even before the Yatra began! Within a few days came another
edit-page blast in the same paper, this time from one of its senior
editors. In a clownish display of flippancy which has become the hallmark
of all BJP-bashers, he wrote that "every time Mr Advani feels bored, he
gets bitten by the travel bug and gets on to a Rath"!
And that redoubtable sovereign of the pseudo-secular brigade, Mr Mani
Shankar Aiyar, who, in spite of being a khadi-wearing Congressman, has no
compunction in absolving the Muslim League of the guilt of Partition,
adjudged in his column in a weekly that Mr Advani's latest Yatra was a
"super-flop". Predictably, Congressmen and communists mouthed the
mandatory line, repeated by many an editorial writer, that Mr Advani's
Yatra could "once again leave behind a trail of communal bloodshed". The
dominant trait of the English media's attitude towards this campaign to
celebrate the golden jubilee of India's Independence was either of
hostility or cynicism.
In complete contrast, Jansatta and Dainik Jagran-not to speak of the
vibrant local Press in whichever State or town the Yatra happened to
visit-had a different story to tell of what was happening in the remote
recesses of rural, semi-rural and even big-town (but non-metro) Bharat.
And what was happening was a mass contact and mass-education campaign on a
scale rarely seen in Independent India. Mr Advani's 59-day, 15,000 km
Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra was, by any reckoning, the longest, widest and
the largest mobilisational and motivational effort undertaken by any
political leader since 1947, enabling him to have a direct eye-contact with
nearly two crore Indians.
At a time when the Congress and the United Front were mired in
conspiratorial politics in New Delhi, and at a time when celebration of the
golden jubilee of India's Independence was light years away from the
concerns and priorities of the besieged Gujral Government, here was a
70-year-old leader who tirelessly travelled through the plains and plateaus
and hills and hundred different kinds of habitat of Indians, recalling
proud pages from the history of India's freedom struggle and presenting a
vision, however sketchy, of how we can yet become a great nation, free from
the bondage of bhookh, bhay and bhrashtachar. In meeting after meeting he
sought to portray the "big picture" of how India is well-endowed in terms
of human. natural as well as cultural resources, to claim the 21st century,
widely prophesied by futurologists to be the "Asian century", for herself,
and not let it remain only a century of China or Japan.
In these two months, Mr Advani visited places whose sacred association with
India's freedom struggle has long been erased by the ruling elite which has
desecrated every single ideal of that movement. Veerapandya Kattabomman of
Tamil Nadu, Kittur Rani Chennamma of Karnataka, Palasi Raja of Kerala,
Khudiram Bose of Bengal, Birsa Munda of Bihar, Ashfaqullah Khan and
Ramprasad Bismil of Uttar Pradesh, Huseiniwala in Punjab, Cellular Jail in
the Andaman Islands, Tankara, the birthplace of' Swami Dayanand in Gujarat.
But Mr Advani's was not merely a tour of history. In the more than 700
maidan and roadside meetings he addressed-and the mass response was
uniformly impressive in all the 19 states and union territories-he used
history as a mirror for the present and a guide to the future. Thus, martyr
Kattabomman, whose closest comrades were a Dalit and a Thevar, became an
exemplar of Dalit-Thevar amity at a time when the southern districts of
Tamil Nadu were rocked by externally instigated clashes between these two
castes.
Thus, martyr Khan Bahadur Khan, the Nawab of Bareli whose most trusted
aides were Diwan Shobha Ram and General Bakht Khan, became a role model for
Hindu-Muslim unity. In Orissa, people's traditional reverence for the
Jagannath Rath Yatra was used by the Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra to spread
the positive message of "Samajik Samarasata" (social harmony), brilliantly
captured by the popular aphorism: "Na jaat na paat/ Jagannath ka bhaat/jag
pasare haath" (The blessings of Lord Jagannath are available to the
extended hands of the entire humanity irrespective of caste and credal
differences.)
It is only when the lost memory of such stirring events is restored to the
nation's collective consciousness that today's generation can be credibly
told, as Mr Advani did in numerous hot afternoon or past-midnight meetings,
that "India's freedom didn't come cheap." During his "patriotic
pilgrimage", Mr Advani also advanced a preliminary perspective oil how to
live for the country through his three-point Swarna Jayanti pledge, which
he administered to tens of lakhs of people. What were these pledges? "In
this golden jubilee year, I shall neither take nor give bribes; I shall
work with honesty, dedication and discipline in the spirit of a new work
culture, I shall take all decisions in my life only on the basis of what is
good for the country and not on the considerations of caste or creed."
All this was a new experiment in Indian politics. Yet, much of the
metropolitan media took insufficient notice of it. The fact that the
president of the country's largest parliamentary party was making an
earnest appeal to the country's largest religious minority evoked little
informed debate in the English media. Why, the metropolitan media did not
find anything comment-worthy even in the fact that, during the past two
months, the BJP president glowingly mentioned Pandit Nehru (for his
"idealism and contribution to the freedom struggle and strengthening of
parliamentary democracy") at least 200 times more than his Congress
counterpart, who perhaps did not address a single Swarna Jayanti public
meeting in the same period.
All this speaks of a certain arrogance on the part of the elite media, as
well as its alienation from the heart-beat of real India. The only time
this section of the Delhi-based media chose to admit the grandness of the
Yatra was when the campaign concluded with a grand reception at its final
destination, Delhi itself. That is when the Yatra "unflopped"
spectacularly. It just goes to show why much of the "national Press"
reflects so little of the good happening in the nation, smug as it is in
its own incestuous obsession with the bad in the Capital.
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