ADVANI IN THE DOCK

It was a well orchestrated media campaign on Thursday when all the national channels had “exclusives” to corner Lal Krishna Advani on the Kandahar hijack episode. Former National Security Adviser Brijesh Mishra was quite generous in giving “exclusive” interviews to all those who sought one and he was there in almost all the channels saying the same thing. Was it just because of the competition among the channels or was there a design? Difficult to say! But, it appeared to have been orchestrated because all these channels devoted the whole day showing Mishra, Yashwant Sinha, George Fernandes and Jaswant Singh and also excerpts from an interview with Advani in 2008, just to prove a point that Advani was aware of Jaswant’s escort mission to Kandhahar along with three terrorists ten years ago.

While Times Now called it “explosive exclusive”, it was “Devil’s Advocate” special bulletin in CNN-IBN. How can NDTV 24x7 lag behind? It also had an interview with Brijesh Mishra with the same questions and answers. The only difference was the backdrop for the interviews. Where Mishra exposed himself as Vajpayee buddy was when he spoke for Atal Behari Vajpayee and thus underscored the existence of two powerful factions in the saffron party. He also said while Vajpayee is a statesman, Advani is a mere organiser. To a question as to how Vajpayee would have handled Jinnah book controversy, he said something to the effect that he would not have banned the book and would not have expelled Jaswant. His intent for revealing the “facts” after a lapse of ten years was obvious.

There were corroborative “exclusives” with the former Union Minister Yashwint Sinha as well. Well, nothing new can come further from Jaswant Singh who already described the party with which he had three-decade long association and held three most important portfolios in the NDA government, as an Indian equivalent of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) of the US. (For the uninitiated, KKK is a hate group created in 1865 to protect interests of white farmers and the group used to indulge in violence against immigrants based on race and torched churches.) So, he said, Advani was quite “economical” on facts.

For a better perspective of any controversy, context is important. In his book, My Country, My Life, published last year, Advani sought to give the impression that he was not aware of Jaswant’s mission to Kandahar. There were momentary ripples as you don’t expect the Home Minister of the country not to be privy to such a crucial decision. Of course, as usual, everything was forgotten thereafter until the Congress raised the Kandahar issue at the time general elections this year. Interestingly, Jaswant stood for Advani. Now, after he was expelled from the party in a most undemocratic manner, Jaswant says he covered up for Advani. It should be noted that other members of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) who are opening up now were keeping mum then.

The talk shows that followed the so-called exclusives in all the channels had the same set of panellists – Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Chandan Mitra. Needless to say, discussions were on the expected lines except that the Congress spokesperson wanted an “apology” from Advani for “misleading the nation and his deception and prevarication”. On Times Now channel, Singhvi called Advani a “liar”, saying he would like to use a four-letter word for Advani starting with “l” and ending with “r”.

In none of these shows, the anchors asked a simple question as to whether the Congress party was aware of the decision to free three terrorists and why did the party wait for one full decade to raise the issue. Brajesh Mishra no doubt gave a juicy (or is it explosive?) bits. No one asked him why did he not rebut Advani immediately after the publication of his book? Poor Chandan Mitra was straining his vocal chords to make a point that there was an all-party meeting to find a solution to the crisis and that Sonia Gandhi was present at the meeting. There was no effort on the part of these channels to present the controversy in its correct perspective except to paint Advani black because as Singhvi said “he was caught with his hands on the till”

First of all, why did the Congress make Kandhahar an election issue? There were two reasons. BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate was caught on the wrong foot in his book where he demonstrated his selective amnesia. He made himself quite vulnerable and quite naturally, the Congress did not want to spare him. Two, the Congress wanted to push the principal Opposition into defensive position before the latter could succeed in targeting the ruling coalition for its successive failures in tackling terror culminating in 26/11 and the lacklustre performance of the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil leading to his unceremonious ouster. But the anchors were clinging to their blinkers.

Singhvi said during the show that the nation’s image was sullied when the country’s External Affairs Minister was seen escorting dreaded terrorists. True, if the incident is seen in isolation. The Congress spokesperson conveniently forgot that his own party activists were among those who made high decibel demand in December 1999, effectively channelized by the frenzied media, for the rescue of 160 plus hostages holed up in the Indian Airlines plane in a place surrounded by daredevil Talibans and extremists. Because the media was revving up the campaign for the release of hostages and the nation was sitting on an emotional tinderbox, the option before the government was either sacrifice the lives of 160 plus innocent hostages or free three terrorists as a trade-in. After a series of all-party meetings, the government decided to secure the release of hostages. Assuming for a moment that the government decided to sacrifice the lives of hostages, what would have been the impact of such a decision? It was therefore a Hobson’s choice for the then government.

Of course, this does not absolve Advani of his effort to distance himself from an important decision of the government when it does not suit him politically. To be fair to Jaswant, he clarified in his interviews that he had to escort the terrorists in the same plane for two reasons. Indian negotiators in Kandahar wanted the presence of a senior member of the government just in case of last minute hiccups and they did not want to take any chance with the lives of hostages and secondly, the Pakistan government had refused to allow two planes to overfly its territory and thus the minister and the terrorists had to be accommodated in the same plane. While Singhvi was talking about the “sullied image” of the nation, the channels did not think it fit to re-run the tape as they did in the case of Mishra’s bytes and other portions of Jaswant’s interview where he lambasts Advani.

So much for the national channels’ sense of objectivity and fair play.