PARTITION: Tape 40 TAPE 40 Writer 255MODEM Mod Date & Time 255MODEM Mar 12 04:44 Side A L.K. ADVANI, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party interviewed at his office in the BJP headquarters at 11 Ashoka Road, Delhi, 11 March 1997 full-time worker for RSS in Karachi at the time of partition - came over in September 1947, aged 19; brought up in Hyderabad and Karachi (some details in Vizarini's book on Advani); initially reluctant to be interviewed - apparently because he didn';t want to talk about the legacy of partition - but relented and spoke with obvious affection about Karachi, Sindh and Sindhi culture [very different and much more damning account of the Karachi bomb incident than the one given below in Atmaram Kulkarni, 'The advent of Advani'] 4 - [affection for Karachi] 'extremely, after all I was born in K, I had my schooling in K, a few years ofcollege in K, I was 19 years old when I left in K' 14 - 'Sindh was a province ... which did not have a v large popn ... but the H popn was prin in the cities and towns, whereas the M popn was in the c'side mainly ... in undivided I, the two neatest cities were Karachi and Bangalore, so I naturally I have a v fond rememberance of that birthplace of mine' 48 - 'in my school, it was the biggest in town, St Patrick's high school, there were v few Ms, hardly any, and that was true about most schools, excepting a few madrasas etc ...' 62 - 'it's a rough thing, but out of even 3 and a half to 4 lakhs [popn of Karachi] 70 to 75% wd be Hs, and the remaining divided among the others' 68 - 'now it's [K] totally different, and what really hurt me, pained me, once was a news item which appeared ... which sd that a survey ... had ranked K as among the 10 dirtiest cities of the world, I was really shocked' 78 - visited Karachi in 1978 as India's I and B minister for a couple of days 80 - [first realised partn wd happen] 'this was early in 47, in the first few months, things were moving in that direction, and it became obvious in the month of April, May, somewhere there, and we did feel v bad about it, v sad about it, part that Sindh sd be part of Pak, that I sd be partitioned on the one hand, cos for most of us the idea of dividing I was not something we cd reconcile with easily' 100 - became RSS when 14, and became a prominent activist; 'the ML wasn't v strong there, and in fact even if opinion were to be taken among the Ms of Sindh, I don't know how many wd have favoured partn ... ' 112 - 'the enthusiastic support for partition came from areas of the co which were outside that area of Pak; it's an irony really that Hs who migrated as a result of partition from Sindh, from