LK Advani’s Blog

India has been independent for over six decades now. For the first three decades the Congress Party dominated the political scene like a colossus. It was in power in most of the States. In the Lok Sabha, none of the non-Congress parties could muster strength even to secure the status of the Official Opposition, with its leader named Leader of the Opposition.

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In the past three decades I have attended numerous book release functions. In my preamble to the comments I have been making on the book to be launched I have often remarked that during the nineteen months of the infamous Emergency (1975-77) which I spent mainly in the Bangalore Central Jail, and briefly in the Rohtak Jail, the one word that used to bring great cheer to all the political prisoners behind bars was the word ‘release’. So, since my own release on 18^th January, 1977 – arrest was on 26^th June 1975 – whenever I have been approached by an author with the request to ‘release’ his book, I have rarely disappointed him.

One of the most Click to Read More

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Last week I was invited by the Ramakrishna Mission, Belgaum, to come to Belgaum and formally inaugurate a large auditorium they had put up quite close to the place where Swami Vivekananda had stayed during his first tour of South India.

For this function, all trustees of the Ramakrishna Mission Trust from all over the country, including the Mission Head Quarters at Vellur Math, Calcutta, had come.

My visit to Belgaum was literally an interaction with history. Just visiting the place where Swami Vivekananda had stayed for nine Click to Read More

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On Republic Day every year, after witnessing the Parade at the Rajpath I have been having a mini flag-hoisting ritual at my residence also. The participants are mainly the security personnel on duty at my place. This year my daughter Pratibha had for them a screening of her one hour documentary “Vande Mataram”.

To the media persons present I said, Republic Day is a day when every Indian should feel a sense of pride that he belongs to a great country that is respected the world over.

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The year 2011 is a significant year for India.

Exactly one hundred years back, in 1911, King George V and Queen Mary, came to India and at a Darbar held in Delhi on December 12 announced that the Partition of Bengal was annulled, and that the capital of British India was being shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

This year also marks the 150^th anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s birth.

The week just gone by saw the nation observing its Republic Day festivities. But it is a shame that in Click to Read More

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The BJP’s Youth Wing has undertaken a Tiranga Yatra from Kolkatta to Srinagar to hoist the Tricolour at Lal Chowk, Srinagar, on Republic Day. The yatra started from Kolkatta on January 12, and after travelling through seven states passed through Delhi on January 20. 

At 5 .00 P.M. that evening at a function at the Vithal Bhai Patel Bhavan grounds, New Delhi  I formally handed over to Anurag Thakur, M.P., and President of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, a Tricolour Flag to be hoisted in Srinagar.

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By all evaluations the Man Mohan Singh Government is passing through the worst crisis of its six and a half year tenure. The spectrum scam, the Commonwealth games scam and the Defence land scam of Mumbai have come all together in a manner as to make the common man feel that many in the government today are not just making money on the sly, but they are brazenly looting the country.

More worrisome is the fact that this is a crisis not only for Government but also for the country. The present level of corruption and inflation undermines the nation’s collective self-confidence.

Such a situation always reminds me of the grave crisis that confronted Indian democracy in 1975-77. Then too the nation had lost all hope that the pre Click to Read More

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During India’s freedom struggle against British Rule, in the year 1930 two major events occurred. One was Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March; the other was the Chittagong Armoury raid.

Gandhiji commenced his Dandi March for the ‘Salt satyagraha’ on March 12 from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. Along with 78 Ashramites he walked a distance of 390 kms. to reach Dandi on the West Coast where on April 6 morning he defied the law to make salt from the sea. The British Government arrested him thereafter.

For us in the BJP, this date on which Gandhiji performed his salt satyagraha and courted arrest is very significant because exactly Click to Read More

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The 172-page book published by the Congress Party with the title “Congress and the Making of the Indian Nation” carries just two short paragraphs to tell the country what happened during the emergency of 1975-77. The two paragraphs are as follows:

“The period of the emergency saw the suspension of normal political procedures and fundamental rights, arrests of the leaders of the Grand Alliance, and enforcement of press censorship and strict discipline. Extreme communal and leftist organizations were banned.  More than one lakh people were arrested over the 19 months of the Emergency. Powers of the judiciary were reduced drastically.  Unlimited state and party power was concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister.

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