Psst...we’ve finally lost it

Earlier this year when LK Advani released his memoirs, My Country My Life, his contribution to public life was hailed. Advani was credited with creating a ‘bipolarity’ in Indian politics, for creating, for the first time, an ideological and political alternative to the brute dominance of the Congress throughout the first decades of Independence. It was Advani, it was said, who changed the debate on ‘secularism’ and ‘pseudo- secularism’, and coined words such as ‘minorityism’ and ‘cultural nationalism’. Indeed, the BJP, during the NDA-rule years, did partially succeed in becoming a robust opposite number of the Congress, notwithstanding the lurking dangers of militant Hindutva. The BJP under Vikaas Purush Vajpayee was seen as pushing towards a modern stance, which was anti-family privilege, anti-dynasty, pro-market, pro-upward... [read full story]