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Dark spell of demolition - dnaindia.com
- Ravi Shankar
- By a bizarre coincidence, I happened to be the only hack who found himself inside the Babri Masjid during the demolition.
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That violent, dun-coloured day was perhaps the turning point in Advani's career. For one used to mastery over crowds, the sudden unpredictability, independence and savagery of the Ayodhya mob must have been unsettling. A long standing pracharak, brought up within the disciplined khaki shorts-and-wooden staff ethic of the RSS, Advani has been unused to the chain of command being snapped as easily as the mosque's fence. Maybe, it was this shock which tainted his psyche with indecision, later producing a weak home minister and a stumbling leader. This weakness went on to make him a captive of the mob, a leader who had to exchange his rath for a vengeful bandwagon of hate.
The only BJP leader who refused to climb on that bandwagon, which started then from Ayodhya to roll through Gujarat, is Vajpayee. Today, the invalid leader's memory must be a caliginous one, wandering along the unmarked frontiers of history and dreams.
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