Veteran Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani relinquished his post as the leader of the opposition in Parliament. An interview in the Hindustan Times:
Many people are saying your exit is the end of the ‘Advani era’?
How many people can feel as satisfied as I am today after such an eventful life? I got the support and affection of so many people. My years may have been spent more in the opposition than in the government, but I have had a satisfactory innings. As I told the MPs, there cannot be an end to a yatra that began for me when I joined the RSS at 14, which was to see India emerge as a great country. I mean it.
But were you not pressured by the RSS to leave?
Not at all. A point comes in a person’s life when one ceases to be pro-active on account of health reasons — as it happened in the case of Atalji, who is three years elder to me, and George Fernandes, who is three years younger to me. I do not want to use the word “retire”. More:
Chetan Bhagat, author of the bestseller, One Night @ the Call Centre, in the Times of India:
The BJP is screaming that Mr Jinnah was not indeed as secular as claimed by Jaswant Singh. Experts on TV are citing events in 1932 which prove that Jinnah was a good person; countered by an equal number of experts citing historical events which prove that Jinnah did terrible things.
To answer the Jinnah question from the point of view of the young generation – Who cares?
Really, whether Mr Jinnah did wonderful things or he did horrible things and whatever point of view your party likes to take – who gives a damn? How is this relevant to the India we have to build today? Are we electing leaders for the future or selecting a history teacher?
The strange thing is the media buys into this pointless debate – about Mr Jinnah being good or bad and spends hours discussing it. By doing so, it gives legitimacy to the whole exercise.
Meanwhile, the young generation fails to understand why do our politicians become so passionate defending these relics of the past? Why don’t they have a fanatical debate about how fast we will make roads, colleges, bridges and power plants? Why don’t people get expelled over current non-performance rather than historical opinions? Why don’t we ban useless government paperwork rather than banning books about dead people? More:
