Good guys finish last. Ask LK Advani

Political obituary writers are having a field day writing about the political demise of LK Advani. And they will all attribute it to the emergence of Narendra Modi. But that would be a wrong inference. LK Advani’s political demise began on that fateful day in 1995 in Bombay when he nominated Atal Behari Vajpayee as the BJP’s standard-bearer. Advani was the rising star then, and the party was clamouring for his leadership, like they ostensibly are now for Narendra Modi.

Advani’s innate decency made him defer to Vajpayee, his political senior. At that time many told him that this was possibly his only shot at the top job and that he will not get it again. For whatever it was worth I told him that good guys never finish first. I even predicted that Vajpayee’s treatment of him would be less deferential when he gets sworn in as the PM.

After Vajpayee’s first innings ended after 13 days, I told him that history has opened up another window of opportunity, but a bit slimmer this time, as Vajpayee was already an ex-PM.

Advani never entertained the thought. Not that he didn’t want to become the PM, but because he played the game by its unwritten rules where seniority, friendships, fairplay and doing the right thing mattered. But when Vajpayee became PM, I saw at close quarters how the prime minister and his coterie went out of their way to belittle and even humiliate Advani.

Few people know that the home minister of India did not even know when the nuclear tests were scheduled. All the political lightweights like the foreign, defence, and finance ministers were in the know. Even a flunkey minister like Pramod Mahajan was in the loop. But the BJP’s political heavyweight and the man who sat on the seat once held by Sardar Patel did not know. Once again LK Advani’s innate decency got the better of ambition.

The only time Advani fought back was when Vajpayee tried to dislodge Narendra Modi from his bloodied perch in Gujarat. The PM was right. Blood stained hands and high office do not go together. But Advani, now chaffing at the bit under the gauntlet of taunts and slights from the PMO and PMH, decided to stand by Modi.

And Modi remained. Advani was sowing the seeds of his eventual political demise in doing so. Narendra Modi is not from the forget-and-forgive school of politics.

Modi could have been got rid off later, when Haren Pandya was killed. The old firm of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah rigged up a legend of a hit squad from Hyderabad as doing the job. When the case was in the trial court, I told Advani about how the evidence was concocted and was plainly false. I provided him the defence’s forensic experts testimonies. These testimonies were from persons at the top of the field. I told him that at best Modi and company might manage a conviction from the lower court but no upper court will be able to sustain it.

That is exactly what happened. A bench of the Gujarat high court threw out the conviction and deemed that the judgment was of dubious quality and made a scathing reference to the judge who convicted. That judge was by then elevated to the Gujarat high court and hence it was an unprecedented slap on a brethern judge. Anyway after my conversation with LK Advani, he true to fashion, just wrung his hands and said nothing can be done. The matter was in the courts and let the law take its course.

The law is yet to take its course, but the laws of human nature have stayed true to form. When you are 82, you don’t become a contender, not when six out of every 10 Indians is less than 30 years old. But in not endorsing the choreographed elevation of Modi to standard-bearer of India’s only other national party, Advani is expressing a view, which he long deferred. That Narendra Modi is unfit for high office. But the times for saying that and doing something about it are long past now.

The writer is an economic & political analyst