Editorial: LK Advani — a legacy of triumph, irony and unfulfilled ambitions

Lal Krishna Advani, who has entered his 100th year, is perhaps the only politician whose political journey intersected with every important phase of modern India. The original Hindu Hruday Samrat, who scripted the BJP’s rise on the crest of the Ram temple movement, Advani’s legacy is celebrated as much for bringing nationalism to the centre stage of Indian politics as it is criticised for stoking communal passions. The greatest irony of his chequered career was that he was kept away from the celebrations surrounding the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January 2024, the culmination of the nationwide mass movement he had spearheaded more than three and a half decades earlier. Likewise, the Prime Minister’s Office remained elusive throughout his political life. He was the eternal number two during the Vajpayee era and was later outmanoeuvred by his own protégé, Narendra Modi. His prime ministerial ambitions were finally extinguished when the BJP chose Modi to lead the party into the 2014 general elections. Soon afterwards, Advani, along with other senior leaders, was relegated to the Margadarshak Mandal, a glorified retirement home with no meaningful role in the party’s decision-making. Yet, a decade later, he was conferred the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour. Advani remains the original charioteer who steered the BJP to national prominence during his years at the helm of the organisation, with his nationwide Rath Yatra permanently altering India’s political landscape. The legacy of the BJP patriarch is complex, multi-layered, and open to widely differing interpretations.

Advani’s brand of politics continues to evoke sharply divergent reactions. Many admire him for inspiring a cultural awakening among Hindus and for blending religious identity with a broader nationalist narrative. In contrast, others hold him responsible for deepening social polarisation and fuelling communal tensions in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. In the present era of muscular Hindutva, however, Advani’s political approach appears to have lost much of its earlier resonance. In a blog post published in 2019 and titled “Nation First, Party Next, Self Last”, he cautioned the BJP against pursuing muscular majoritarianism and what he described as faux nationalism. He strongly disapproved of the tendency to brand critics as enemies of the nation. However impressive his achievements may have been over a political career spanning nearly seven decades, both in the organisation and in government, certain moments exposed its inherent paradoxes. Despite being the face of the party for decades and the natural choice to lead it into the 2014 elections, he lost the internal leadership contest to a more charismatic Modi, who embodied a more aggressive version of Hindutva politics. Then, in 2017, the path to Rashtrapati Bhavan was effectively closed when the Supreme Court restored criminal conspiracy charges against him and other senior BJP leaders in the Babri Masjid demolition case.