Advani, his book, and Christians in India

15 April 2008

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. Lal Krishan 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 to distance 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.