Moderate Mr Advani

Events have moved swiftly in the BJP, and the architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement now leads the "moderate" group in the party, which has the support of the allies in the National Democratic Alliance. This is exactly the position that Mr Vajpayee occupied not so long ago.

In that important sense, Mr Advani's comments on Jinnah, during his Pakistan tour, have positioned him well as seemingly belonging more in the centre than on the fringes. That is the significance of what has happened so far.

Mr Advani has resigned as party president but not as leader of the Opposition in Parliament; so he would like to lead the party in the next elections and be its prime ministerial candidate. That will be possible only if he manages to turn the tables on his critics. If not, his political career will hang in the balance because of his determined and clearly pre-meditated bid to re-fashion his own image.

Unless Mr Advani retracts his comments""which seems unlikely since he has passed up the immediate opportunities to do so""the RSS is unlikely to want him back as party boss. So it is a contest between "moderates" backed by Mr Advani and "hard-liners" of the somewhat unthinking Murli Manohar Joshi kind.

The subterranean divisions within the BJP have therefore come to the surface, and the party has to choose between its unalloyed ideology that appeals to the faithful, and a pragmatic line geared to the untidy era of coalition politics.

The BJP's partners in the National Democratic Alliance have made their preference clear, but that is unlikely to cut ice just now with an angry RSS. In a two-coalition scenario, the partners may have no choice other than to accept whoever emerges as the boss of the BJP""unless someone revives the old idea of a third front.

The relevant point just now is that if the new party president is not a person of Mr Advani's choice, the latter's position as leader of the Opposition, too, could be under threat.

As for the remarks that have set off this chain of events, Mr Advani's comments on Jinnah make sense as tactical talk by a BJP politician, not as a fundamental understanding of the person. If the creator of a state based on religion is secular, who can be called communal?

To be sure, Jinnah did not start out as a communal politician and was an ardent proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity; it is also true, as Mr Advani has pointed out, that he wanted people of all religions to have equal rights in a secular Pakistan.

But between that starting point and the unrealistic end point is a long history of unbendingly divisive politics that suited imperialist designs and resulted in the painful and bloody partition of the country. To call such a man secular, while calling critics of the BJP pseudo-secular, is to beg a lot of questions.

But then, Mr Advani thinks the BJP too is a secular party; so perhaps his understanding of Jinnah must be seen in context. For it permits Mr Advani to argue in favour of a Hindu rashtra and still claim to be secular in his orientation.