Speech by Shri L.K. Advani, Leader of Opposition
(Lok Sabha) at a rally in Jabalpur
Jabalpur – February 06, 2008

Jabalpur. I’ve come here many times in the past.

I very vividly remember my visit during the 1997 Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra. Jabalpur had been rocked by a severe earthquake.

I was heartened to see strong manifestation of the voluntary spirit among the people of Jabalpur and Madhya Pradesh in facing this natural calamity.

Indeed, volunteers and philanthropic help had come from different parts of the country.

Tragedies and crises have always united our people.

Jabalpur is a cantonment city.

The people of India are proud of our Armed Forces. Whenever our jawans were called upon to defend the nation, our people stood solidly behind them.

We have seen this national unity most recently during the Kargil War.

The Pakistani soldiers had occupied the peaks. Our Army was at the bottom of the mountains. The terrain was extremely rugged. The temperature was sub-zero.

Hence, the enemy had a clear locational and visual advantage.

And, yet, our brave jawans captured one peak after another and finally made the entire Pakistani Army run away. They even left their dead soldiers behind. It was our jawans who carried out the last rites as per the Islamic traditions.

The Kargil War, which was fought when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, was the first war in the history of independent India when we neither lost any part of our territory nor allowed any part of the territory recovered on the battleground to be bartered away in the arena of diplomacy.

Experience of past wars:
The difficult legacy that the Congress has left behind

It is necessary and instructive to recall here the experience of the past wars.

As we all know, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then Home Minister, was given the responsibility of securing the integration of 562 princely states to form the Indian Union. He used different strategies and tactics to achieve this goal, including the use of military when needed, as in the case of forcing the Nizam of Hyderabad to surrender.

Jammu & Kashmir was the only state whose integration was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru Nehru’s responsibility. He had taken that responsibility upon himself. Not only was J&K not fully integrated, but for the last 60 years our country has been bled because of that problem.

Pakistan invaded Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947. While leaders like Patel wanted firm and swift military action to throw out the invaders, our first committed a historic blunder by ordering a ceasefire and thus preventing the Indian Army, which was then on the verge of achieving total success, from completely regaining the lost territory.

Recently, Air Marshal (rtd) KC Cariappa has written a biography of his father Field Marshal KM Cariappa, India's most distinguished soldier. The only other soldier to be so honoured was Gen. Sam Manekshaw, for his role in the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971. According to this book, Nehru went against the advice of both Cariappa and Maj Gen Thimayya, who was the operational commander. They were convinced that capture of Muzzafarabad, now the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, was imminent.

It was because of this blunder that the matter was unnecessary taken to the United Nations, and an entity called the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) came into being. Many of Nehru's Cabinet colleagues, such as Patel, B.R. Ambedkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, K.M. Munshi and others were distressed by Nehru’s decision to internationalise the issue.

A fortnight ago, I was asked to release a book by Prof Makkhan Lal titled Secular Politics, Communal Agenda -- A history of Politics in India from 1860 to 1953. The book describes how, but for Sardar Patel's decisive action in getting Kashmir’s Maharaja to sign the Instrument of Accession, India would have lost Jammu & Kashmir forever.

The book quotes N.V. Gadgil, who was a Minister of Public Works and Refugee Rehabilitation in Nehru’s Cabinet — incidentally, he was the father of V.N. Gadgil, who later became a general secretary of the AICC — saying, "I am afraid Nehru is responsible for the prolongation of the problem through his willingness to compromise at every stage... Had Vallabhbhai been the man to handle the Kashmir question, he would have settled it long ago. He would have occupied the whole of the State.”

Some people in the audience at this political rally might wonder: “Why is Shri Advaniji telling us about the events that took place 60 years ago? Why is he telling us about books that he read or released?”

Friends, I am not talking only about the past. Rather, I am talking about the past as it has been impacting on our present. All of you know about the heavy price that India is continuing to pay because of the non-resolution of the Kashmir issue. It was not resolved in 1947-48. It was not resolved even in 1971, when Pakistan was not only defeated in the war but had suffered the ignominy of having as many as 93,000 Prisoners of War (PoWs) captured by the Indian Army.

I recall here what V.P. Menon, Secretary in the States Department who assisted Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states, has said by way of a warning: "A nation that forgets its history or its geography does so at its peril".

Today India has been saddled with unresolved boundary problems with two of our big neighbours — Pakistan and China. Both problems were created due to the bungling of Congress governments.

How long are we going to live with these problems as India marches to become a great power in the 21st century?

But can a Congress government solve these problems?

How can it? How we expect a party that is responsible for the creation of problems, also to resolve them?

I wish to say this solemnly and confidently: “The BJP shall resolve these legacy problems created by the Congress without compromising India’s national interests and national honour.”

Congress is both unable and unwilling to tackle jehadi terrorism because of its vote-bank politics

I have touched upon the issue of national security because “Suraksha” is one of the three commitments — apart from “Sushasan” and “Vikas” — which are going to be the main themes of my party’s political campaign, which we have started from Jabalpur today, and which will later merge into our election campaign.

For the past quarter of a century, “Rashtriya Suraksha” has acquired a new dimension. It connotes not only the threat to our security at the borders, but also internal security, owing to the emergence of two main threats: jehadi terrorism and Maoist extremism.

The BJP will deal with both these threats with a heavy hand, with an approach that has now come to be widely known as “Zero Tolerance”.

60,000 citizens and security personnel killed in terrorist acts. Far many more than the combined toll in all the wars fought by India so far.

Which self-respecting country, which country that cares for the lives of its citizens and for its future, can tolerate this?

And yet, the Congress party has been tolerating this. Other pseudo-secular parties have been tolerating this.

Successive Congress governments, including the Congress-led UPA government, have reduced India to a “Soft State”, one that lacks the political will at the top to confront the enemy and neutralise him.

The BJP will confront and neutralize the enemy.

During the NDA rule between 1998 and 2004, our government busted nearly 300 underground terrorist modules which were being run by the ISI with local help from organizations like SIMI.

• I want to ask Dr. Manmohan Singh to tell the nation, in the forthcoming Budget session of Parliament, how many underground terrorist modules were busted since May 2004, and how many operatives were arrested or killed.
• I want the Prime Minister to disclose to the nation the progress of investigation in all the terrorist attacks in India since May 2004 — Ayodhya, Varanasi, Jammu, Srinagar, Delhi, Malegaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Imphal, Bangalore and the second serial bomb blasts in Mumbai.
• I want the Prime Minister to tell the nation why Mohammed Afzal, the main convict in the terrorist attack on Parliament on 13 December 2001, has been given unofficial clemency, even though the Supreme Court itself has confirmed the death sentence for him?
• Dr. Manmohan Singh, you are a Member of Parliament from Assam. The Supreme Court itself has warned that the uncontrolled influx of infiltrators from Bangladesh constitutes an “external aggression” on Assam. I want you to tell Parliament what measures you have taken to implement the Supreme Court’s clear and unambiguous directions it issued after striking down the IMDT Act as unconstitutional.

I can say right now that the Prime Minister will answer none of these questions because he does not have the courage to tell the truth to the nation.

The truth is: the Congress party’s inaction is dictated by its short-term vote-bank considerations, because of which it is imperiling the country’s unity, integrity and security in the long-term.

BJP’s commitment to Sushasan, Vikas, Suraksha

Friends, the BJP is committed to protecting India and India’s democracy from all threats, both external and internal. At the same time, we are also committed to enriching our democracy, through Good Governance, to accelerate India’s all-round Development and to improve the lives of the commonest of her citizens.

Good Governance and Development are not merely slogans for us. We have tried to make them a reality when the people of India gave us a mandate to govern at the Centre for six years. India made rapid progress in many fields because of the bold initiatives taken by the Vajpayee government:

• We kept the prices of essential commodities under check.
• We launched a “Connectivity Revolution” in the country by building a network of world-class highways across the country.
• We did not neglect rural connectivity. Until 1998, there were 1.86 lakh villages in India (out of a total of about 6 lakh villages) which did not have proper roads. For the first time, our government launched the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana with the aim of providing good all-weather roads to all the villages and hamlets. Indeed, I am happy that the government of Madhya Pradesh has made impressive strides in building roads both under the National Highway Development Project and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.
• Our government encouraged the telecom and IT revolution in India which provided “digital connectivity” within the reach of the commonest Indian. It is because of NDA government’s policies that the mobile phone has become affordable even for a farmer, carpenter or rickshaw driver.
• Our government launched the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, with the aim of bringing every single child in India to school for basic education.
• Above all, our government made India a nuclear weapons power. Shockingly, the UPA government wants to nullify this achievement by entering into an unequal agreement with the United States.

• Tackle the threat of jehadi terrorism.
• Protect India’s unity, integrity, honour at all costs.
• Safeguard India’s democracy at all costs.
• Provide an internally cohesive coalition, as against today’s UPA coalition which is internally paralysed.
• Resolve the big legacy problems that India has inherited from the past bungling by Congress governments.
• Fight corruption at the top level.
• Bring down prices and end the betrayal of the aam aadmi.
• End the plight of kisans.
• Accelerate employment-oriented economic growth that can create millions of bright new opportunities for our youth in rural and urban areas.