Lal Krishna Advani
Lal Krishna Advani is a renowned Indian politician and former President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). His full name is Lal Kishenchand Advani and he was born on 8th November, 1927 in Karachi (now in Pakistan). His father’s name is Kishichand D. Advani and mother’s name is Gyani Devi.
Shri Advani completed his formal education from Saint Patrick’s High School in Karachi and D.G. National College in Hyderabad, Sindh, moving on to graduate in Law from Government Law College, Bombay. In 1947, Advani was sent to Mewar in Rajasthan, which had witnessed communal violence following partition, to oversee the affairs of the RSS there.
L.K. Advani is a former Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999-2004).and Home Minister to the Government of India during 1998-2004, He was the Leader of the Opposition in the 10th Lok Sabha and 14th Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament). Advani began his political career as a volunteer of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.Over the years, L.K Advani has risen to become an outstanding politician.
Advani became a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was founded in 1951 by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. After serving various positions in the Jana Sangh, he became its President in 1975. When Jai Prakash Narayan, who led the public movement against the Emergency refused to campaign for the opposition parties unless all of them joined together, the Jana Sangh and many other opposition parties merged into the Janata Party. With the dissolution of Jana Sangh, Advani and his colleague Atal Bihari Vajpayee joined the Janata Party to fight the Lok Sabha Elections of 1977.
He was conferred the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award for the year 1999.
L.K. Advani has taken 6 yatras throughout India viz. Ram Rath Yatra, Janadesh Yatra, Bharat Uday Yatra, Bharat Suraksha Yatra, Jan Chetna Yatra.
Advaniji is widely regarded as an individual of great intellectual ability, strong principles, and unwavering support for the idea of a strong and prosperous India. As confirmed by Atalji, Advaniji has ‘never compromised on his core belief in nationalism, and yet has displayed flexibility in political responses whenever it was demanded by the situation’.
Advani was always convinced about his Hindutva (“Hindu first”) stand, even though this ideo logical position may have deprived him of the post of prime minister, and even while it intensified the debate over secularism. As a constitutional reformist, he called for an overhaul of the electoral system. His initiatives on curbing defection and criminalization are noteworthy in this regard. Restricting the number of ministers in both union and state cabinets is one of the most evident steps in realizing his vision of Indian politics. Advani has remained a controversial figure, but his contribution to India’s polity will be remembered for his clarity of thought and his capacity to build alliances for forming coalitions, including the National Democratic Alliance, which governed India from 1999 to 2004.
An emotional individual with strong family ties, he is a family man, being happily married to Kamla Advani, with two children, a son and a daughter.
Advaniji has said that ‘nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them, but I have had the good fortune of experiencing both, and in abundance’. (Image Courtesy © http://www.lkadvani.in)
