Advani's meek surrender

If Advani loyalists think the man or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he heads has emerged stronger after the unsavoury row involving Pakistan's "father" Mohammed Ali Jinnah, they are horribly wrong.

Even when he left for Pakistan early in June, Advani looked every inch a confident man, a politician who some day would get to rule this country a la his long-time friend and self-confessed moderate Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

But Advani is no Vajpayee, and this episode has proved he can never be one.

When Vajpayee, the man who has earned remarkable acceptability from BJP's numerous allies despite never hiding his commitment to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), visited Jinnah's memorial in Islamabad, there was no outcry.

After all, it has become customary for leaders visiting Pakistan to pay their obeisance to Jinnah, one who is widely blamed in India for the 1947 partition of the sub-continent that triggered so much human misery.

People visiting the Mao mausoleum in Beijing are not expected to adhere to Maoism. You can visit the Jinnah tombstone, place a wreath and come away without offending anyone's sensibilities.

It is as much a formality, as much a military dictator bowing to Mahatma Gandhi's memorial at the Rajghat here.

Advani, himself a victim of the 1947 India split, should have known better.

The original support base of the RSS-sponsored Jana Sangh, the BJP's predecessor, lay in northern India, mostly among the Hindu trading class and the Punjabi middle class that was uprooted from Pakistan.

They never forgave Jinnah for what his ideology did to them, and one can't fault them for that.