Mohua Chatterjee/TNN
New Delhi, Oct 28: Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Monday denied that Sadhvi Pragya, accused of being behind the Malegaon blast, has anything to do with the party, adding that even if she may have been a ABVP activist at some point or had any association with the Sangh Parivar, she had obviously parted ways and hence had little to do with the saffron party now.
While he had no knowledge of who Pragya was till now, Advani told TOI that it seemed obvious that she would have parted ways with the parivar outfits because her thoughts and methods did not match with those propagated by the organizations which she may have belonged to. This was reason enough for her to move out of them.
Elaborating on the issue, Advani cited the case of Nathuram Godse who killed Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. "Godse was associated with RSS earlier in his life but left the organization way back in 1934 because he did not agree with its ways," he pointed out. Even then, RSS was hounded after Gandhi's assassination. "After all, that was the first time I went to jail as I worked as an RSS pracharak in those days," he added.
Even organizations disapprove of people who do not fit in with their ways. Just as that was the case with Godse, Pragya's could also have been the same, felt Advani.
Explaining that there are many people who may follow the same ideology and yet choose a different path, Advani pointed out that naxalites also claim to follow the Marxist ideology just as Left parties like CPM. But they have nothing to do with CPM, CPI or other Left parties which are part of mainstream politics and hence cannot be equated with the underground Red ultras.
Even as television channels may claim that the sadhvi's links with BJP or other parivar outfits have been confirmed, the BJP central leadership has disowned her. At a juncture when the party is turning terrorism into a major plank for the coming elections, BJP surely is treading carefully on the sadhvi issue.