Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : A day after patriarch LK Advani penned his feelings on the eve of his party’s foundation day, businessman Robert Vadra slammed the BJP for not giving him the ticket to the general election.
Taking to social media, Vadra said it is sad that such an important leader of the party had been forgotten. “The most important pillar of the party–long lost and forgotten. The true leaders with ethics and statesmanship should be rewarded and not ignored,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the BJP chose to downplay the veteran leader’s criticism with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying: “Advani Ji perfectly sums up the true essence of BJP, most notably the guiding Mantra of ‘Nation First, Party Next, Self Last.’
“Proud to be a BJP Karyakarta and proud that greats like LK Advani Ji have strengthened it,” Modi said.
While Vadra may be playing to the political gallery on the eve of the election, not long ago the BJP veteran was seen as the original Hindutva poster boy, someone who laid the foundation for the rise of his party with his Somnath to Ayodhya journey, laying “the first seeds of Hindu polarising politics” the “new BJP” under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is often accused of.
The Rath Yatra, a political and religious rally, was held in September-October 1990. Organised by the BJP and other Hindu nationalist affiliates of the RSS, it was led by then party president Advani.
The purpose of the yatra was to support the agitation, led by affiliates of the Sangh Parivar like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, to construct the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
Many wonder if Advani had not pushed the BJP into associating with the Ram temple movement through a presidential resolution at the national executive meeting in Palampur and embarked upon the the first-of-its-kind political mobilisation for a religious cause, the BJP would have reached the place where it is today.
Advani’s Rath Yatra was timed to cover 10,000 km to reach Ayodhya to coincide with the BJP’s proposed kar sewa, and the rest, as they say, is history.
