From the India Today archives (1990) | L.K. Advani: The saffron seer
India TodayYou’ve seen him somewhere. "A rare gentleman in politics, if I ever saw one," says journalist J. Dubashi, who is also a member of the party’s National Executive Council. "A soft spoken hardliner with a spotless character—a rare commodity in our social and political life," concedes Finance Minister Madhu Dandavate who spent time in jail with Advani during his 19-month incarceration during the Emergency. The BJP’s back-to-the-roots campaign was an unabashed nurturing of Hindu pride, and if the "pseudo-secularists," as he dubbed his critics, condemned this as political totalitarianism, well, that was their problem. Says Jaswant Singh: "If you’re looking for Lal Krishan Advani, you will not find him unless you rid yourself of cliches like ‘right wing,’ and ‘Hindu fundamentalist’.
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