Extending the Hand of Friendship Pakistan India

IN more than one way, Lal Krishna Advani is certainly a changed man from the man he was in 2001, when for the first time I met him at Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's luncheon in Delhi in honour of General Pervez Musharraf, chief executive of his country, as he then styled himself, prior to the July Agra meetings.

I had one memorable exchange with Mr Vajpayee, a gentle soul. As he shook my hand, I asked "Kitney saal lartey rahengay?," to which he sincerely responded, "Arrey bhai, abb to bahout hogia, bahout hogia." Introduced earlier to Mr Advani by Cushrow Irani, editor of The Statesman, I politely suggested that he pay a return visit to the city of his birth. The remark was brusquely dealt with by Advani telling me he would do so in his own time, and at the right time. (This exchange was heard by a sad looking Manmohan Singh, standing silently nearby.)

Advani took his time, and chose exactly the right moment, and this man, known formerly to be a difficult man to deal with as far as Pakistan was concerned, a man hostile to the peace process, and apparently unforgiving, has charmed all he met during his six days in Pakistan. As deputy prime minister and home minister in the government of Mr Vajpayee, it was he who was considered to be the dominant figure. As leader of the opposition, as he has been since last year's elections, and under India's functioning parliamentary democracy, he remains one of the most prominent personalities of Indian politics.

I met him for the second time here in Karachi. The Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economics and Laws hosted 'an evening with Mr L.K. Advani' on June 5, which received no mention in the press as on that day he had lunched with the Sindh governor and other local illuminati, visited the site of his old house, toured Mohatta Palace, and been feted by the Hindu community.

This was his second visit to Karachi in six decades where he had spent the first 20 years of his life here. When he left in 1947, the population of Karachi was a mere 400,000 (he had a little dig at our statisticians who claim that the population of Karachi is now nine million whereas he and we know it is nearer 14 million).

He had much to say about his old school, St Patrick's, which has so often cropped up in his talks and meetings with our leadership -- with Musharraf, who is an old boy, with Shaukat Aziz, also an old boy. On a visit to the Philippines in 1974, he met another old Patrician, and in Tel Aviv, ran into one of the three Jewish boys who were with him in class at St Pat's.

Having dispensed with his school days, he moved on the Jinnah's August 11, 1947 speech. There was in Karachi, prior to partition, a man who holds a most reverential place in Advani's life, Swami Ranganathanandaji (a mere 17-letter name when compared to the 28-letter Vitianandashivaramakrishnaji, as a late friend was named). After partition Swami left for India and on a visit to Kolkata many years ago, at Advani's last meeting with Swami before he died, he was asked if he had read Jinnah's speech, which was, as Swami put it 'a classic exposition of a secular speech', as it referred to religious freedom, tolerance, and to the absence of discrimination of any kind. Swami asked if he would send him a copy on his return to Delhi.

He then spoke of how his visit was partly political and partly cultural. He had travelled to Chakwal to lay the foundation stone of the uplift project of the Katas Raj Temple, one of the projects in which Pakistan and India were cooperating in the preservation and rehabilitation of historic and archaeological sites. This visit had triggered the August 11 speech in his mind -- and he quoted : "If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make."

This has not so far happened (not that Advani said so) but he did hint that it is never too late to make a beginning.

To Advani's mind he agreed with Jinnah that the biggest hindrance to India's gaining independence was the religious factor, "the angularities of the majority and minority communities", as Jinnah put it, from which there is a lesson to be learnt, and he again quoted, this time the most famous passage of that famous speech : "You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques, or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing