BJP President LK Advanis swarna jayanti rath yatra is intended to be a pre-run for the next Lok Sabha elections campaign, which the party expects some time by the end of this year. The yatra would help the party assess the mood of the masses and plan the electoral strategy accordingly.
Advani has become the partys unique selling proposition on the issue of corruption after his recent acquittal by the High Court in the hawala scandal. The corruption issue is to be the main issue during the 55-day yatra, scheduled to cover about 15,000 km by road, BJP general secretary Venkaiah Naidu said.
Peoples response to Advanis felicitation ceremonies in various parts of the country after the court judgement encouraged him to undertake this journey. At one such ceremony in Madras, Advani got a response he had never received earlier in the state, a party vice-president pointed out.
A confident Advani, who wanted to play a larger role and go to the masses was more than receptive to the idea of a rath yatra, when it was first floated by one of the party general secretaries.
The Swarna jayanthi rath yatra would complete the process started by Advani in 1996 and tell people that he has been vindicated. A triumphant Advani would attack the Congress and the United Front on corruption and present the BJP as the only national alternative.
This yatra is different from his other yatras in the sense that this would emphasise nationalism and patriotism at a time when the country is preparing to celebrate the golden jubilee of its independence. The yatra aims at rekindling flames of nationalism in the youth and inspire them with ideals of the national heroes, Naidu said. This would be the longest yatra undertaken by Advani.
In spirit, the yatra seems to be akin to the Ekta yatra launched by the then party President Murli Manohar Joshi in 1991.
Joshi vowed to hoist the tricolour at the Lal Chowk in Srinagar when terrorism was at its peak in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP group was airlifted by the government to Srinagar and allowed to hoist the national flag in strict security cover.
For Advani, the rath yatra is not a new phenomenon as he has undertaken similar exercise on three earlier occasions, 1990, 1993 and 1996. Not all yatras got the same response, although the party claims that all yatras were successful in taking the BJPs message to the people.
The 35 -day Ram rath yatra, became controversial when Advani was arrested at Samastipur (Bihar) and jailed by the then Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav. The BJP took umbrage to this and withdrew support from the National government at the Centre led by then Prime Minister VP Singh.
The BJP claims the yatra gave the BJP the necessary push to emerge as the largest party today. This spread the message of cultural nationalism among the people and caught their imagination, a BJP pamphlet says. In the 1991 parliamentary elections, the BJP was catapulted to the status of the single largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha.
Advanis Janadesh yatra in 1993 was undertaken in the aftermath of the demolition of the disputed Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid in December 1992. The then Union government wanted to bring a legislation in Parliament to ensure separation of religion from politics.
The partys pamphlet claims that the yatra aimed to rouse public opinion against two draconian bills the government was contemplating. If passed, the bills could subvert the basic scheme of election and allow preemptive disqualification to provide constitutional legitimacy to banning organisations mixing religious religion with politics, a senior party leader said.
The bills sought to make the state irreligious rather than one which respects all religions equally, besides providing for summary deregistration of political parties on flimsy ground, he said.
The BJP claims that the yatra succeeded in bringing the debate on the religion bill from the drawing room to the dusty villages of Bharat and the bills were finally withdrawn.
Advani launched his Swaraj to Suraj rath yatra in March 1996 to tell the masses that he was innocent in the Hawala case. Advani told people that the chargesheet was a design of the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to malign the BJP. Advanis sought peoples mandate for clean governance (Suraj).
The yatra did not get adequate response and those who came to attend Advanis rally doubted his integrity, a BJP leader admitted. Advanis popularity had gone down to such an extent that even party insiders had started questioning his integrity, although they publicly maintained that Advani was innocent, he said.
