SPEECH BY
SHRI L.K. ADVANI,
CHAIRMAN, BJP PARLIAMENTARY PARTY AT
THE CONCLUDING SESSION OF THE PARTY’S NATIONAL COUNCIL
AT NEW DELHI ON MARCH 3, 2013
Adhyaksh Shri Rajnath Singh ji, Sushma ji, Arun ji, Chief Ministers and Ministers of BJP/NDA ruled states, and all other esteemed colleagues of mine present at this National Council session.
At the outset, I join all of you in congratulating Shri Rajnath Singh ji, whom we have elected as the President of our Party. This is his second term as Party President. He has been a senior leader of the Party for a long time. He brings with him considerable political and administrative experience.
I wish Shri Rajnath Singhji all the best. And I urge the entire Party organisation to re-galvanise itself under his leadership for the extremely challenging tasks and battles that face us in the coming months.
The popular mood in the country is anger and revulsion against the Congress-led government at the Centre. Many factors are feeding this mood, but chief amongst them is the firm belief among all sections of society that this is the most corrupt government in the history of independent India.
Two defining characteristic of UPA-1 were unbearable price rise, and the Cash-for-Votes scandal.
The defining characteristic of UPA-2 has been the string of mega corruption scandals involving thousands of crores of rupees.
The fairly widespread support to Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption was an eloquent indicator of the popular mood.
Unfortunately, the BJP failed to read, and respond adequately to this mood. In the two Houses of Parliament, the Party attacked government strongly on both these issues. But our overall response outside was a disappointment for even our own supporters. Without mincing words let me admit that our wavering and unprincipled handling of the situation in Karnataka caused great damage to our image. We forgot that the people judge the commitment of any political party to fight corruption not by its pronouncements but by its practice and, when the need arises, by its punitive actions.
On the issue of corruption, the Party must adopt very strict norms.
Friends, when the BJP was launched in 1980, Shri Vajpayee had urged us to become ‘A PARTY WITH A DIFFERENCE’. We indeed built a strong reputation on this score, which endeared the BJP both to the common masses and also to a large number of politically conscious persons across the country.
People, even our political opponents, admired us for the ethos of discipline and team work in the BJP.
However, contrary to this aspiration, the image of the BJP that has gained ground in the past few years, is that of A PARTY WITH DIFFERENCES, which also keeps talking in multiple voices.
Honest differences of opinion are natural in any political organisation. They are indeed welcome. They contribute to its vitality and growth.
We in the BJP take legitimate pride in the fact that we are a non-dynastic party that values and promotes internal democracy. But we must recognise that internal cohesion, especially at the top levels of the organisation, sustains internal democracy. If internal cohesion is allowed to be weakened by lack of internal discipline, which has always been the hallmark of the BJP and earlier the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Party begins to project an image of an organisation suffering from internal differences.
I therefore urge Shri Rajnath Singh ji, in cooperation with senior leaders at the Central and State levels, to start taking firm steps to remedy this situation.
Friends, the political situation in the country today is transmitting an unmistakable signal: The people want change.
A point of stagnation in India’s progress is clearly visible.
The government has completely failed to rein in price rise. On the contrary, each new policy decision further fuels food inflation and a rise in the prices of other essential commodities and services.
The Centre’s relations with State Governments have rarely been this disharmonious.
The Congress leaders are completely bereft of any big and bold ideas to accelerate economic growth, remove imbalances in development, and push reforms to promote Good Governance.
Barring empty slogans, the Congress party and its government have failed abysmally to respond to the dreams, aspirations and positive energies of India’s youth.
The pathetic performance of the UPA government at the Centre is fully matched by that of Congress governments in various states.
Therefore, it’s now crystal clear that the people of India want to get rid of the UPA government.
With UPA-II about to enter the last year of its term, people’s attention will get increasingly focused on the alternatives available whenever Parliamentary elections take place.
Congress leaders are displaying a certain arrogance indicating that their party enjoys the TINA (There Is No Alternative) advantage. This arrogant expectation is completely at variance with the people’s mood.
However, two questions arise:
1) What will be the shape of this alternative?
2) What role should the BJP play in ensuring the fructification of this alternative?
The answers to these two questions are closely inter-related. Firstly, we must work closely with all the like-minded parties ─ both those within the NDA and those outside the NDA ─ to reassure the people that a strong, viable non-Congress alternative, with an agreed agenda of Good Governance, is available before them.
This is what I had meant, when, in my remarks at the last meeting of the BJP’s National Executive at Suraj Kund, I had put forward the idea of NDA-Plus.
Secondly, the BJP on its own must prepare a strategy to win the hearts and minds of the people to become a robust, large and leading constituent of the non-Congress alternative.
As I said, the two strategies are closely inter-linked. One cannot be overlooked for the sake of the other.
In this context, I would like to reiterate two important thoughts I had articulated in the Suraj Kund meet of the national executive.
Firstly, we must quickly build an agenda of Good Governance and Development based on (1) the good work that the NDA Government under the leadership of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee had accomplished; (2) the very impressive performance of the BJP/NDA governments in states, including Punjab and Bihar, (3) some new, innovative and breakthrough ideas that can inspire and catch the imagination of the people.
Secondly, the BJP must credibly convey our conviction that we care, equally and without any discrimination, for every section of society, irrespective of caste and religious considerations.
Our principal ideologue Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya had always emphasised that for us Hindutva, Bharatiyata and Indianness are synonyms. Indian nationalism, we hold, is cultural nationalism.
Pandit Nehru often criticised the Jana Sangh for being communal in its thinking. But I would like to quote Panditji’s own speech at the AICC session at Madurai in October 1961 in which he spoke about Indian culture being the “silken bond that kept us together in many ways”.
In his Madurai speech, Prime Minister Nehru said:
“India has for ages past, been a country of pilgrimages. All over the country you find these ancient places, from Badrinath, Kedarnath and Amarnath, high up in the snowy Himalayas down to Kanyakumari in the south. What has drawn our people from the south to the north and from the north to the south in these great pilgrimages? It is the feeling of one country and one culture and this feeling has bound us together. Our ancient books have said that the land of Bharat is the land stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the southern seas. This conception of Bharat as one great land which the people considered a holy land has come down the ages and has joined us together, even though we have had different political kingdoms and even though we may speak different languages. This silken bond keeps us together in many ways.”
I believe that the mutual equation between the BJP and the minorities must be changed, in order to achieve a fundamental transformation in India’s democracy, development and national integration.
The BJP must take the initiative in this direction by including a Charter of Commitments to the minorities in its Agenda of Governance and Development.
I am sure that we can succeed in this endeavour. In Goa, we have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of a large section of the Christian community, demolishing our opponents’ propaganda that the BJP is hostile to minorities. BJP’s splendid victory in the recent elections in Goa is a remarkable achievement.
I am heartened to point out in this context that a number of Muslim leaders have begun to see through the self-serving propaganda of the Congress party. A good example is the recent comment of Mahmood Madani, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Hind, praising the performance of the BJP Government in Gujarat.
Salaya is a small Muslim-majority town in Jamnagar District, Gujarat. Municipal elections held here last month gave BJP a pleasant surprise. For the first time in 25 years the Congress was thrown out. All the 27 seats in the Municipality were won by the BJP. 24 out of these winning candidates were Muslims.
Several foreign governments have also changed their stand towards the Gujarat Government and Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the most unfairly maligned politician in the history of independent India.
All this augurs well for the BJP.
And all this make me believe that the political atmosphere in the country can be changed decisively in favour of a BJP-led alternative to the Congress.
Let us move decisively in this direction in the months to come.
Let us convey a strong and credible message to the people of India that the BJP is ready to rise to the occasion by meeting their expectation for a stable, visionary and transformative alternative to the non-performing UPA.
Vande Mataram.
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