LK Advani’s Blog

In the course of his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama had remarked that “working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve the Kashmir crisis in a serious way” would be among the critical tasks of his administration if he was elected. Talking to Joe Klein of Time magazine, Obama elaborated :

“Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation (that) is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this? To make the argument to the Pakistanis, look at India and what they are doing, why do you want to keep on being bogged down with this particular (issue) at a time when the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan border? I think there is moment when potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.”

New Delhi’s sudden announcement last week that India was willing to hold foreign Secretary level parleys with Pakistan has naturally made many political analysts in the country ask : is this the consequence of Obama’s above assertion being put into action?

The question people have been asking in a more straight forward manner is : After the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, India had been steadfastly refusing to resume talks with Click to Read More

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My hearty kudos to the State Government of Karnataka and its Chief Minister Shri Yediyurappa for organizing last week, the 500th Anniversary of the coronation of Samrat Krishna Deva Raya at Hampi in a really befitting manner.

Every year a three day utsav is celebrated at Hampi, a colorful procession organized through the city, but not many in the country outside this region are really familiar with the glorious history of this great kingdom, aptly known as Vijaynagar (the city of Victory). Last year I had occasion to visit Hampi for the first time, and participated in this procession.

The procession used to start from the main temple of the town – the Virupakasha temple. When my family visited the temple last year the Head Priest welcomed me and my family and informed us that for Hampi the coming year would be very significant. It would mark the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Shri Krishna Deva Raya, the greatest king of the Vijaya Nagar Empire. I promised to visit again in 2010, and so I did.

This year several lakhs of citizens from all parts of the State flocked to Hampi and participated in the celebrations with great gusto and joy. Pujya Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Head of the Art of Living Organisation also attended. He addressed the nearly one lakh strong gathering that had assembled at the concluding function where the pièce de résistance was a musical extravaganza depicting Krishna Deva Raya’s coronation. The music programme was Click to Read More

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Hearty greetings for the New Year to all friends and well-wishers who have kept in touch with the BJP through this website and the forum. I have been going through the many valuable suggestions you have been sending to us. Commencing with this year’s Republic Day I propose to resume blogging as I used to do in the first half of the year 2009.

The Constitution of India came into force from 26th January 1950. The Election Commission is to launch today, a day prior to Republic Day, its Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. I well recall how cynical many western observers were when India adopted parliamentary democracy after independence. How can a country with such a large population of totally illiterate citizens run a successful democracy? This used to be the main thrust of criticism.

While in most other developing countries which became liberated from colonial rule about the same time as India, and which at the outset adopted democracy as we did, their option did not survive for long. They became victims either of army rule, or some other form of authoritarianism. India can be legitimately proud that despite the many disadvantages with which we started we have functioned as a vibrant and vigorous democracy for all these six decades - the nineteen months Emergency (June 1975 to March 1977) being the only bad patch.

I remember discussing this issue once with late Benazir Bhutto and asking her as to why in the matter of democracy, our two countries - both of Click to Read More

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In most of my speeches during the current election campaign I have been referring to the BJP’s Information Technology Vision, and trying to explain to the people how this latest gift of man’s ingenuity in the field of science has presented our country with a unique opportunity to overcome the many daunting challenges in socio-economic development.

The BJP’s IT Vision, we have promised the people, will help India (a) overcome the current economic crisis; (b) create productive employment on a large scale; (c) accelerate human development through vastly improved and expanded education and healthcare services; (d) check corruption and (e) make India’s national security more robust.

This week when I addressed a massive meeting at India’s principal IT Centre Bangalore, I recalled how for ages now the biggest invention in the history of science has been supposed to be the WHEEL. I observed that based on what we have been witnessing and experiencing in the past two decades, it would have to be acknowledged that the COMPUTER CHIP has displaced the Wheel!

An extremely interesting book I have come across lately is one titled 1000 Years 1000 people. The book is not just a compilation of names of the thousand leading persons of the last millennium; it actually has done a meticulous ranking of the men and women who shaped the Click to Read More

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My website received a lot of appreciation for the creative manner in which our team presented the message of greetings on March 8, International Women’s Day. The usual masthead of the website was replaced with three alternating screens, the first saying “Naari Tum Shraddha Ho” (Woman, you are Devotion); the second saying, “Naari Tum Samskaar Ho” (Woman, you are Culture); and the third saying, “Naari Tum Shakti Ho” (Woman you are Strength). The idea was inspired by the famous lines by renowned Hindi poet Jayashankar Prasad:

Nari! Tum keval shraddha ho,
Vishwas-rajat-nag-pal-tal mein,
Piyush srot si baha karo,
Jeevan ki sundar samtal mein.

(Oh woman! you are devotion personified
Under the silver mountain of faith,
Flow you, like a river of ambrosia
On this beautiful earth.)

“Shraddha”, “samskaar” and “shakti” — these three words capture some of the greatest attributes of women in general, and Indian women in particular. Nevertheless, it pains my heart when I look at the statistics about the development status of women in India.

• Female life expectancy: 64.6 years.
• Infant mortality: 57 per 1000 Click to Read More

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I have been traveling constantly these days. Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh; 15 February), Madanapally (Andhra Pradesh; 27 February) and Bidar (Karnataka; 28 February) were, respectively, the places where I addressed my 31th, 32st and 33rd Vijay Sankalp Rallies. My party asked me to tour the entire country as a part of its mass contact programme, prior to the formal election campaign, and organized my first Vijay Sankalp Rally in Jabalpur in February 2008. These rallies have taken me to practically every part of the country, from Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh to Calicut (Kozhikode) in Kerala, and from Dumka in Jharkhand to Vashim in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

In the last week alone, I have traveled to Gandhinagar in Gujarat, which is my own Lok Sabha constituency; to Mumbai, where my party workers donated to me a purse of Rs. 11.11 crore, collected from nearly 50,000 donors, towards the election fund; to Bangalore, where I addressed an anti-terrorism rally of over one lakh students, and to Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh where I participated in a large rally organized by the Scheduled Castes Morcha of the BJP.

Although every event gave me deep satisfaction, there was one that brought alive many precious and deeply cherished memories associated with a defining period not only in my personal life but also in the life of India. It was when I was invited by the Government of Karnataka to inaugurate the Freedom Park in Bangalore on 27th February. This is where Click to Read More

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The current controversy surrounding Election Commissioner Shri Navin Chawla reminds me of a conversation I had had with Benazir Bhutto when she visited Delhi during the NDA regime. She had lunch with me that day and she shared with me a delicious dish of Sindhi curry, which my wife Kamala prepares excellently.

In the post lunch chat we had that day, I posed a question to Benazir: “How is it” I asked her, “that though both India’s as well as Pakistan’s political leadership had imbibed a similar political culture under British rule, India had managed its democracy with remarkable success but in Pakistan democracy had been a total failure.” Benazir’s reply was succinct: “I attribute your country’s success to two factors: firstly, your Army is apolitical; and secondly, your Election Commission is constitutionally independent of the Executive.”

Benazir had rightly identified the two guarantees for Indian democracy. For the first of these ― the Indian Army never nurturing political ambitions of any kind ― the credit goes entirely to our armed forces and those who have led it since independence, while credit for the Election Commission’s independence must be given to the Constituent Assembly.

There were, however, eminent participants in the Constituent Assembly debate on Art. 324, who wanted the Election Commission to be invested with even greater independence than given to it. These members did not approve of the fact that the Click to Read More

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I was elected to Parliament in 1970. My first trip abroad was as part of a parliamentary delegation to Czechoslovakia in 1972. The Lok Sabha Speaker Shri Gurdial Singh Dhillon was the leader of the delegation.

Those days Czechoslovakia had been very much in the news. In 1965, following assumption of leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party by Alexander Dubcek, the Party contemplated drastic changes in domestic policy – restoration of the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and imposition of severe restrictions on the secret police. This plan of action described as the ‘Socialist Democratic Revolution’ by the Czechs deeply upset Moscow.

In 1968, an angry U.S.S.R. decided to crush these ‘Democratic’ proclivities. Czechoslovakia was invaded with 600,000 troops. An armed purge of all liberals in the Communist Party was carried out, Dubcek was thrown out, and a new government installed. The country was once again reduced to its earlier status of being Moscow’s vassal state.

When I agreed to go to Czechoslovakia with the parliamentary delegation, I thought to myself why not visit U.S.S.R. also on the way? So I planned my trip to Prague via Moscow. The Secretary General of the Lok Sabha Shri S.L. Shakdhar, who later became the country’s Chief Election Commissioner, tried hard to dissuade me. ‘You belong to the Jana Sangh. Your party’s critical opinions about Communism and about Moscow’s invasion of Click to Read More

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Makar Sankranti (January 14) goes by different names in different parts of our country. In Tamil Nadu, it is celebrated as Pongal. In Assam, it brings song, dance and joy in the name of Bihu. In Punjab and in several other parts of north India, it comes, a day or two in advance, as Lohri. People gather around ceremonial log-fire to warm themselves up on a cold night, singing Lohri songs and exchanging popcorn, peanuts, crystal sugar and sweets made out of til (sesame seeds). Every year my family has Lohri celebration at home, sharing our joy with friends, office colleagues and security personnel.

Makar Sankranti reminds me of the kite festival in Gujarat, the state which I represent in Parliament. On this day, the deep blue sky in Ahmedabad and other cities and towns of the state becomes a canvas for a vibrant splash of colours as tens of thousands of people climb their rooftops to celebrate the kite festival. Indeed, the International Kite Festival in Gujarat has become a major tourist attraction.

Since 2003, the word ‘Vibrant’ has become associated with Gujarat in yet another manner, enhancing the national and international reputation of the state. Consider the fact that even in the current year of economic slowdown, Click to Read More

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A very valuable addition to my personal library this week has been a beautiful Coffee Table Book from Amit Mehra titled India : A Timeless Celebration. I congratulate the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs for publishing this important book.

Amit Mehra is an outstanding photographer who has been contributing to several renowned magazines like Time, India Today, Der Speigel, Fortune, Vogue etc. Amit Dasgupta’s Introdution and Jaya Ramanathan’s textual explanation of the context of Mehra’s photographs are highly readable.

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a Coffee Table Book is “a large expensive book that usually has a lot of pictures in it and is meant to be looked at rather than read”.

Without doubt, the pictures with which Amit Mehra has embellished this book are a treat to scan. But to me, of even greater interest has been the Foreword written by Mark Tully, who was BBC’s celebrated correspondent in India and South Asia for twenty-five years. Mark Tully, whom I have known and admired for a long time, Click to Read More

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