Advani: It was the ‘yatra man’ who had prepared the pitch on which Modi is batting today

New Delhi, March 22: Thursday, March 21, marked a significant day in the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in particular and Indian politics in general. The saffron party came out with their first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election and party patriarch Lal Krishna Advani was conspicuous by his absence in the list. BJP president and Rajya Sabha MP Amit Shah got the ticket to contest from Gandhinagar, Gujarat, from where Advani had been contesting since 1991 (except in 1996 when he did not contest).

The death of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in August last year and now, the exclusion from Advani, 91, from the BJP's electoral scheme of things marked the conclusion of an era in the BJP. It was these two towering men who had guided and grown the BJP in Indian politics and took it to power in less than 20 years since its birth in 1980.

The departure of the two leaders now means the BJP is in the hands of its second-generation leaders even though Advani's presence had reduced to a mere formality over the last five years.

It will be a tad difficult for today's generations to gauge the significance of Advani in the history of the BJP's rise. The saffron party has now ruled India for more than a decade (1996, 1996-98, 1999-2004, 2014 till date) and is well-established as a ruling regime. It has now made its share of contribution to the country's political and economic life and there are scopes to judge its good and bad in comparison with other parties' governments.

The shrewd politician in Advani saw BJP's seats going up from 2 in 1984 to 120 in 1991

When Advani and Vajpayee were working in the early 1980s, nothing of that sort existed. In the 1984 election, the BJP won just two seats in the Lok Sabha. But it was Advani who had studied the situation then and made full use of the loopholes that existed in the more established secular brand of politics then.

Former prime minister Indira Gandhi and then her son Rajiv Gandhi who replaced her after her assassination had understood the significance of Hindutva and tried to make a profit out of it although the legacy of Nehruvian secularism had stopped them from going overboard.

The shrewd politician in Advani never missed the opportunity and launched his hardline Hindutva politics to expose the Congress's 'politics of appeasement' and mobile the majoritarian sentiments. It was the execution of this political mission that saw Advani undertaking yatras - one after another - in various parts of northern India in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The mission was a massive success and catapulted the BJP to a high with 120 MPs in the 1991 election. The BJP also stormed to power in Uttar Pradesh and next year, the Babri Masjid demolition followed. Advani's electoral mission by mobilising the Hindu votes even at the expense of endangering the country's socio-religious fabric was tremendously successful. The BJP was then just five years away from tasting power at the Centre.

Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a pitch more tailor-made for him to bat and score runs, especially when the Opposition is in shambles. He doesn't need to undertake yatras to test the electoral depths and can call shots from the saddle of power through welfare mechanisms. But Advani initially did not have the privilege and it was only his hard work on the ground (and of course, there were his loyalists like Modi) that had created a strong foundation for the BJP to flourish in later years.

Advani's major goof-up came in 2005 when he praised Jinnah

Advani's major error was though when he tried to don the mantle of a moderate Vajpayee in the mid-2000s after the latter retired from active politics. Advani certainly had the ambition to become the prime minister which he thought would be successful only if tried to transform his image into a moderate leader.

He subsequently eulogised Mohammad Ali Jinnah during a trip to Pakistan in 2005 and it did not take long to rattle the hardcore saffronists. That was a point of fall for Advani and though he was the party's face in the 2009 Lok Sabha election which the BJP lost, his position was not the same again.

The BJP needed to rediscover itself before the 2014 Lok Sabha election and it would not have been possible with an ageing Advani. The party itself was also in the next phase of its take-off and needed to present its face friendly for governance and development.

Modi, who had a decade of experience as the chief minister of a developed state Gujarat, had fitted the narrative best and the party's machinery was also ready to give him a push. Advani had his few loyalists who did not like the idea of promoting Modi but eventually had to surrender as the mood was with the latter.

Advani, sent to the Margdarshak Mandal which is nothing but a glorious retirement, had his quietest stint in the Lok Sabha in the last five years. Time has definitely won the race against the nonagenarian but even on the day when his political journey concluded of sort, it is necessary to take a vow not to forget his significance in Indian politics. He had indeed changed it forever.