Retro-card !! A Bumpy road .... behind .... Advani almost sank the Lotus party in 2005 ...... BJP and Hindutva politics have come a long way .... some years back .... elites and editors did not hesitate to compare the scene with "the tragic way of Lebanon"

Editor Aroon Purie's comment on 'India Today' - Dec 31, 1992 issue after Babri Masjid demolition: -- 

"....we in the media got an unsavoury taste of the future if these self-proclaimed warriors of Hinduism were ever to rule".  

** "It is a shame because the largest opposition party of the country thought nothing of reducing this country to a mobocracy by encouraging its followers to take the law into their own hands. 

"Although they were attempting to rewrite history, they did not want their misdeeds to be recorded for prosperity. .... The jackboot of fascism shows scant respect for the pillars of democracy and therefore the crushing of the press in Ayodhya was quiet in character.  It showed the sinister underbelly of this so-called religious movement".  

The 'India Today' edit also said: "It is a shame too that the government (of Rao) did not have the courage to enforce the law of the land. At the moment this is the fundamental issue, not the fact that the structure was a mosque or a temple....... The BJP has been trying to cloud the issue by arguing that many temples were destroyed in Kashmir..... they forget to mention that the destruction of those temples were acts of terrorism". 

London newspaper 'The Guardian' article on Aug 5, 2019 after Article 370 was abrogated in Jammu and Kashmir:  

Pakistan has frequently sought to internationalise the dispute, angering India. Delhi regards events in the part of the region it administers as an internal matter and has reacted badly to statements by politicians ranging from Britain’s Robin Cook in 1997 to Donald Trump, who said last month during a meeting with the Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, that India wanted him to mediate between the two regional rivals.

"We should brace for extensive protests. Though the degree of autonomy enjoyed in practice by Kashmir has been much reduced over decades by repeated state level interventions, it was nonetheless of huge symbolic importance to the local population."

Pakistani newspaper 'Dawn' article ;; June 22, 2005 

after  L K Advani called Jinnah 'secular' in Karachi.

The article was titled: 'Rise of a Moderate Advani ?'

It said:

"On this side of the border (that is Pakistan - blogger)  it would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that the dream of a secular state was buried alongside Jinnah, even though the intrusion of religion into affairs of state did not become a serious irritant until the advent of the Zia-ul-Haq regime. 

To Muslim fundamentalists, the concept is at least as abhorrent as it is to their Hindu counterparts, and they have never felt obliged to pay it any sort of lip-service. More often than not, the secular and liberal aspects of Jinnah’s personality have been brushed out of his projected image, 

and there have been phases during which he has effectively been subjected to an Islamist makeover — a process that has inevitably facilitated his demonization in India. "

"Most Muslim theologists were opposed to the split, and the more virulent among them tended to describe Jinnah not as Quaid but as Kafir-e-Azam.

That jibe is reminiscent of some of the epithets that have been flung in Advani’s direction this month: he has been described as a “traitor” and “Advani the Pakistani” has been advised to “go back home”; 

Ashok Singhal has said the VHP cannot allow the BJP to become the “Bharatiya Jinnah Party”."

Modi Govt (2014 to 2024)

India has run the world's largest poverty-eradication drive in the last 10 years and has pulled 250 million people out of poverty.

ends