New Delhi: After being dormant for almost five years, veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani’s personal blog got activated on Thursday with the senior party leader writing a piece titled: Nation First, Party Next, Self Last.
Tagging the blog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “Advaniji perfectly sums up the true essence of the BJP, most notably the guiding mantra of ‘Nation First, Party Next, Self Last’. Proud to be a BJP karyakarta and proud that greats like L.K. Advaniji have strengthened it.”
Writing on the eve of the BJP’s foundation day (April 6), Mr Advani wrote that his party has never regarded those who disagreed with it politically as “anti-national” or “enemies” but only as adversaries.
Mr Advani, 91, one of the BJP’s founding members, also thanked the people of Gandhinagar for their love and support. He had represented the seat six times since 1991 but has been replaced this time by party chief Amit Shah.
Mr Advani’s blog comes at a time when the campaign for the Lok Sabha polls is in full swing and the party often attacks its rivals as being “anti-national” or of speaking the language of India’s enemies like Pakistan.
“The essence of Indian democracy is respect for diversity and freedom of expression. Right from its inception, the BJP has never regarded those who disagree with us politically as our ‘enemies’, but only as our adversaries. Similarly, in our conception of Indian nationalism, we have never regarded those who disagree with us politically as ‘anti-national’. The party has been committed to freedom of choice of every citizen at the personal as well as political level,” Mr Advani wrote in the blog, in which the last post is of April 23, 2014.
He also noted that the “defence of democracy and democratic traditions, both within the party and in the larger national setting, has been the proud hallmark of the BJP”. Wishing everyone contesting the coming polls, Mr Advani wrote that everyone should “collectively strive to strengthen the democratic edifice of India”.
The veteran leader added: “True, elections are a festival of democracy. But they are also an occasion for honest introspection by all stakeholders in Indian democracy — political parties, mass media, the authorities conducting the election process and, above all, the electorate. My best wishes to everyone.”
Electoral reforms, with special focus on transparency in political and electoral funding, which is so essential for a corruption-free polity, has been another priority for our party, Mr Advani said.
As one of the party’s founders, he said he deemed it his duty to share his reflections with the people of India, and more specifically with the millions of BJP workers, “both of whom have indebted me with their affection and respect”.
Asserting that the triad of satya (truth), rashtra nishtha (dedication to the nation) and loktantra (democracy, both within and outside the party) guided the BJP’s struggle-filled evolution, Mr Advani said the sum total of all these values constitute cultural nationalism and good governance. “The heroic struggle against the Emergency rule was precisely to uphold the above values,” he said.
Mr Advani also recalled his long association with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and said serving the motherland has been his passion and mission ever since he joined it at the age of 14 years.
