Addressing the BJP national council for the first time after being anointed the party’s prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani outlined his vision and strategy while subtly reminding the audience that it was he who steered the saffron party’s ride to power.Advani made an effort to acknowledge and praise BJP president Rajnath Singh, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, senior leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and Bangaru Laxman. He described Modi as the “truly secular leader”, took potshots at “some parties in India. guided by foreign-born ideologies and foreign-born leadership”, termed UPA “failed and worthless”, and declared “NDA can indeed win a majority”.“I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the party for entrusting me with the responsibility of leading the BJP in the next parliamentary elections,” said Advani, but did not forget to add between the lines that it was a well-deserved responsibility. He recalled that his first Rath Yatra altered the secular-communal debate in the country. He also reminded the gathering that he had invited Samata Party leaders to the party national council in 1995, which was the first tangible move towards the formation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).“I am more than 80 years old and have spent six decades as an active politician,” said Advani, recalling his struggles and successes, most significantly the jail term during the Emergency. He said from its position of winning two seats in 1984, the BJP has consistently grown and has been central to the process of an evolving bipolar coalition system. “After the 1984 results, a close friend asked me why run this party at all. But we stayed our course,” he said.Advani’s concluding remarks at the two-day conclave of the party titled “Good Governance, Development, Security” had a substantial component of conventional Hindutva repackaged in contemporary idioms. “Today’s Congress party can be manipulated to such an extent that it can even be made to agree to something as dangerous as communal census in India’s armed forces, religion-based reservations and permitting mass-scale conversions by defaming Hinduism,” he said. He demanded to know why Afzal Guru, a convict in the Parliament attack case, was not being hanged.Interestingly, while his old slogan of “Swadeshi” finds a defensive mention towards the final paragraphs of the printed speech, Advani left it out in the speech he delivered. “Just because Swadeshi does not explicitly figure today along with good governance development and security, let nobody get an impression that we now consider it to be unimportant,” says the printed version.Advani said during his Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra, he had stressed on Suraj, or good governance, and the NDA government that came to power subsequently implemented it. He said as Home Minister, he conducted regular review of the security scenario, leading to destruction of many terrorist modules in the country. He said the BJP-led NDA Government had performed but lost the 2004 elections because allies did not perform as expected in their respective states. “The 2004 election was an aggregate of several state elections, not guided by a national agenda,” he said.Training his guns on the ruling alliance for its all-round failure, Advani singled out the Left for some serious attack. He accused the Left of “having let down the country on several occasions,” and made a distinction in Congress-Left relations during Indira Gandhi’s times and present. “Indira Gandhi used the Left, while the current Congress is being blackmailed by the Left,” he said.Advani said the BJP’s aim is not to merely win the next elections but also to make India a strong and prosperous country. He is set to address 13 “Sankalp rallies” in the next two months in different parts of the country.
