Lal Krishna Advani is trapped inside an image. In the art works of professional demonologists, it is an image incompatible with the drawing room aesthetics of left-liberal India.

So, many variations of Advani continue to dominate and divide Indian politics. The nationalist who borrows his rhetorical wares from the black markets of mythology to win his argument with the present. The aggrieved Hindu who never stops returning to the imaginary sites of cultural vandalism.

The divisive mobiliser on the right whose lasting legacy is as a catalyst to the demolition of India’s secular edifice. The man who has sought the true meaning of genuine secularism, as against pseudo-secularism, at the mausoleum of the founder of an Islamic Republic. The hawk who pretends to have a heart. Post-Ayodhya, Advani has never been painted in pastels.
This project in demonisation by the self-righteous majority has not bothered him. That is what he says when you meet him at 30 Prithviraj Road, his official residence.

Well, as he walks into the drawing room, which is a pictorial celebration of his family values, you can’t miss, in spite of that avuncular affability, the confidence of a man who has already won the argument.

And he looks relieved: at last he has become the narrator of his life story. Perhaps, he has been waiting for this moment: Advani redeemed by himself. My Country, My Life (Rupa & Co., 980pp, Rs 595) is the memoirs of a political leader whose life runs parallel to the spasmodic evolution of independent India. It is the testament of one of India’s most misunderstood politicians—and the one who could be the next prime minister.

His first encounter with the idea of the nation happened when he, at 14, walked from a tennis ground to an RSS shakha in Karachi. A matriculate from the city’s St Patrick’s High School for Boys, he enjoyed books, movies and cricket. And for this English speaking, middle-class boy whose second language was Latin, enlisting as a swayamsevak was not a cultural rebellion.
He joined the RSS on June 20, 1942. “From that day till now, for 65 long years, I have remained a devoted, committed and proud swayamsevak of the Sangh.”

And it was Karachi that set the stage for another life-transforming encounter. Every Sunday evening in his last three years in the city, he would go to the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram to listen to Swami Ranganathananda’s discourses on religion and politics.

Their last conversation was about Partition and the role of Jinnah. “Swamiji, in particular, lauded Jinnah’s historic speech in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 and said, “The true exposition of the meaning of secularism can be found in this speech.” In a subconscious way, this last conversation with Swamiji was to play a decisive contributory role in my own remarks about Jinnah when I went to Pakistan in May-June 2005.”

At 20, he would bid goodbye to the city that initiated him into Hindu nationalism; almost a month after Independence, a BOAC propeller aircraft would take him to Delhi. Advani’s first yatra began as a refugee. In a partitioned India, there would be more adventurous journeys for the nationalist conditioned by the Sangh and the Swami. (Either of them won’t be there to protect him when he returns to have a rendezvous with a secular Jinnah.)
The formation of Bharatiya Jana Sangh by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, a formidable mind, would mark Advani’s formal entry into nationalist politics.

“When I look back and ask myself what I learnt from various inspiring sources, the answer I get is this: from the RSS I received my grounding in nationalism and disciplined service of society; Deendayal Upadhyaya inculcated within me great idealism and a realisation of the need for purity and probity in public life; and from Dr Mookerjee I learnt the indispensability of value-based democracy as a vehicle for nation building.”

Those were the days of idealism. And politics was all about romancing the nation. It was the only rejoinder the nationalists could offer to the Congress. He could afford to be a conviction politician without being reduced to an ideological extremist.
The nationalist’s struggle against power reached a critical stage when the totalitarian temptations of Mrs G culminated in the declaration of the Emergency. The imprisonment of Advani and other “enemies of the state” made them the consciencekeepers of a country without justice.

My Country, My Life chronicles in anecdotal richness the origin, rise and the inevitable disintegration of the Janata Party, the first effective counterpoint to Congressism. Advani tells the story as witness and participant. The Janata experiment in power was a huge let-down. And the expulsion of Advani and other Jana Sanghis from the Janata and the subsequent formation of BJP set the first notation of bipolarity in Indian politics.

The party would, of course, grow beyond Gandhian socialism and integral humanism. It would need displaced gods as electoral allies. Advani, the quintessential organisation man, would semaphore them to the polling booth. BJP in power owed a great deal to the longdistance traveller of Hindutva.

In the wake of Ayodhya, the memoirist makes a great polemical effort to strike a balance between his individual sadness and the mass Hindu awakening: “A group of kar sevaks delivered their own verdict on some of the seminal questions of Indian history, both medieval and modern.

Ram or Babar? Genuine secularism or pseudo-secularism? Justice for all or always appeasement of some? Are Hindus to perpetually remain divided on caste, regional and linguistic lines or should they unite when fundamental challenges confront faith and nationalism?

It is not my claim that December 6 answered all these questions in the most satisfactory manner. But it did mark a day of Hindu awakening of truly historic import.” No one bothered to listen to his version of the truth then. He had already become a synonym for the savagery of the saffron. Ayodhya was a great hurt; in so many words, he vindicates himself, but without ceasing to be a Hindu who fights for his gods.

Still, the question remains: was BJP in power the happiest moment in his life? The book doesn’t provide a definitive answer. And that is not his intention either. Then remember that My Country, My Life is the autobiography of a man who has been defined not by power but by his struggle for or against power.

That is why Ayodhya and his audacious appraisal of Jinnah are much more engaging than his stint as a cabinet minister. For, BJP-in-power was essentially a Vajpayee moment, in spite of Advani’s hard work in mobilisation. His memoirs come to us at a time when he is no longer the proverbial number two but the singular leader of his party—and its prime ministerial candidate.
And the man who emerges out of the narrative is a refined reconciler who has the words and the intellectual means to be a philosopher king. We have not seen him before. Will the allies and grassroots colleagues elsewhere in the states recognise him when he steps out of the pages into the battlefield?

Some political memoirs are projects in mythmaking. This one is a declaration of independence from the mythology of Advani the smiling zealot. One book that transformed his life was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People. Never challenge others in an argument beyond a point, it taught him. With My Country, My Life, Advani is certain to win friends and influence India without losing the argument.