Advani went to a Catholic school and a RSS `Shakha`, but practices
only what he learnt in the RSS

John Dayal’s micro review of “My Country. My life”, the autobiography
by Lal Krishan Advani, the man aspiring to be the next Prime Minister
of India

Just about every class and group has panned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh- Bharatiya Janata Party’s Prime ministerial aspirant, Mr. LalKrishan Advani’s book “My country, my life” for its shallow, and error-filled, documentation of contemporary Indian history.

He may have gone to a Catholic School in his hometown Karachi, now in Pakistan, before joining a `Shakha’ or branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the hyper nationalistic Hindu volunteer corps. Those of us who have followed the last forty of Mr. Advani’s sixty years in political life in India, know he remembers only what he leant in the saffron brotherhood of the RSS.

Mr. Advani’s commentary on Dalit issues and Christian persecution amply proves that though he desperately wants to come across as a cosmopolitan and pan-national leader on the pattern of Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, he firmly retains the chauvinistic and communal mindset of the Sangh Parivar

Mr. Advani follows Hindutva’s efforts to appropriate Dr. Ambedkar. He quotes the author of `Riddles of Hinduism’ to say Dr. Ambedkar didn’t convert to Islam or Christianity because it “meant going away from the cultural soil of India.” But he fails to mention that Ambedkar, who chaired the framing of the Indian Constitution, also famously said “I was born I Hindu, but I will not die as one”, as he converted, with hundreds of thousands of other Dalits, to neo Buddhism.

Mr. Advani finishes his discourse on the Christian situation in India in just about 1,000 words in the 986-page tome, trying very hard todistance himself and his party from the anti Christian violence, which he attributes entirely to `conversions.’

The All India Christian Council, the All India Catholic Union, and the
Christian Lawyers Association, among others, have been documenting an
average of at least 250 verified and authenticated incidents of anti
Christian violence. The violence peaked in 1998-99 Christmas season,
beginning with the destruction of three dozen village churches in the
Dangs forest district of Gujarat by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
Bajrang Dal. The gruesome finale was the brining alive in Orissa
forests of Australian mission worker Graham Stuart Staines and his
young sons Philip and Timothy in January 1999.

The man behind the Gujarat violence as one Swami Aseemanand, the local
head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who had set up a camp in the same
forest areas. In Orissa, a similar camp was set up by one Swami
Lakshmananda Saraswati, also of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Lakshmananda led anti Christian violence through the late 1980 and
1990s [so recorded by the Orissa police], and is the man behind the
Christmas violence in the Kandhamal district where in three short
days, over 100 churches were destroyed, scores of shops, and other
Christian establishments and hundreds of homes burnt, with at least
5,000 men, women and children displaced and living in ill-equipped
government refugee camps.

Advani refuses to acknowledge any of it. He cannot of course ignore
the murders of the Staines family which brought the world Media to
India and which former President K R Narayanan described as a blot on
Indian civilization. But Advani distances the Sangh from the murders.
He notes that the killer Dara Singh is serving a life term for the
murder. He pillories his pet targets, liberals and intellectuals, for
pointing to a Sangh hand in the Christian persecution.” I was
therefore constrained to affirm in parliament that I know these
organisations [RSS] and there are no criminals.’ Advani feigns anguish
noting that his statement was used across the world to make it seem
“I defended the killers of Staines,’ and says neither the Central
Bureau of Investigation nor Supreme Court Judge D P Wadhva mentioned a
link between Dara Singh and the Sangh. That was the entire point of
the massive critique of the Wadhwa report, now known for its rhetoric
against conversions as much as for giving Dara Sigh a clean political
chit though confirming his hand in the murders. Three charred bodies
in a burnt out jeep was all too clinching evidence.

But even then, Advani does not fail to apportion blame to Staines,
almost making it seem the Australian invited his own death by
maligning Hinduism.

Advani also affirms, as did Savarkar and `Guru’ Golwalkar before him,
that Christianity alienates the Tribals from their culture, which he
presumes to be Hindu culture. Mr. Advani perhaps has never been to
Kandhamal and the other regions where the people can hardly be
distinguished from each other, unless on were to see them for the hour
they spent on Sundays at church. Tribal and Dalits, for the most on
the verge of starvation, hardly have time for the polemics of the
Sangh Parivar, the few thugs that the likes of Lakshmananda can muster
for their murderous expeditions have to be first dosed with large
quantities of liquor, as we have found in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh and Orissa in various fact finding tours after incidents
of Christian persecution.

Advani repeatedly comes back to his concept of nation and religion,
even quoting Mohan Das Karam Chand Gandhi, the Father of the Nation,
whose killer Nathuram Godse was such a loyal member of the RSS just
at the time Mr. Advani was himself rapidly rising in the ranks of the
Sangh as a Pracharak, a teacher-activist. After a particularly sharp
jab at Christian evangelizing among tribals, Advani does not say “Nor
can Hindu organisations be blames for protesting against this gross
abuse of freedom of faith and demanding legislation against conversion
by fraud or inducement.”

Advani, like RSS chief Kuppahalli Sudershan, is looking for toadies in
the Christian church in the Sangh call for a `national’ or `Indian’
church, a trap in which many a sober Bishop has fallen in recent
years, specially in Kerala, and once in Andhra. Advani gleefully
quotes this man from Andhra, the late Archbishop Arulappa of the
Hyderabad Catholic Archdiocese. Advani says Arulappa told him once “I
totally endorse your concept of cultural nationalism. By birth I am an
Indian, by culture a Hindu and by faith, I am a Christian.” Advani
does not record that the same Arulappa also announced that no Dalit
was fit enough to adorn the chair of an Archbishop. This when the Pope
named M Joji to succeed Arulappa as the Archbishop of Hyderabad.
Arulappa ended his days in disgrace after global repugnance at his
statement.

After his visit to the Dangs after the violence of Christmas 1998, the
then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee controversially called for a
national debate on conversions. Mr. Advani does not even bother to
make a personal visit to see the Sangh violence.

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