At the best of times, 30 Prithviraj Road, the official residence of L.K. Advani resembles a fortress. As the BJP president and a former Union home minister, he is accorded Z category security; visitors are routinely frisked and every object scanned before entry. These days though, Advani's security resembles an underworked force. The hordes that used to gather outside his house every morning have suddenly vanished and the visitors' book has very few entries. Inside stays an almost loner, bereft of company, barring his immediate family and a handful of hangers-on. The former deputy prime minister's brief rendezvous with Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi, his declaration on Pakistan soil that Partition was an irreversible fact and his anguish over the events of December 6, 1992, seem to have become the cruellest paradox in Advani's life-and the party's too.

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IMAGE-ALTERING TRIP: Advani at Lahore Fort

The first signs of his isolation were evident on the evening of June 10 when Advani drove into the BJP headquarters at Ashoka Road, three days after he had resigned as party chief following his controversial remarks in Pakistan. In the past, everytime Advani drove over to the party headquarters, BJP Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu and some other senior party leaders joined the cavalcade. But not this time. There were no drum-beaters and even the laddoos, the quintessential herald of glad tidings in the BJP office, seemed like a hasty afterthought. The props were as token as the statement released at the end of the meeting of the BJP's top brass convened to quell the fire in the party that followed Advani's utterances. It praised him for undertaking the tour, but stopped way short of endorsing his newly found opinion on Jinnah. "The BJP reiterates that whatever may have been Jinnah's vision of Pakistan the state he founded is theocratic and non-secular, the very idea of Hindus and Muslims being two separate nations is repugnant to it." Just a day earlier, Advani had rejected a similar resolution because he wanted the party to support his view that Jinnah had envisaged a secular Pakistan. But this day the party refused. And Advani acquiesced. He swallowed the snub and withdrew the resignation.

Has the man who, just eight months ago, was brought back to lead the party that was still reeling from last year's electoral debacle lost his touch? Has the clear-headed ideologue and the quintessential organisation man lost his grip over the party apparatus that he almost singlehandedly set up? If the outrage at the party headquarters and among the cadres is any indication, the meltdown has begun. The Iron Man now seems just a distant image. If at all there is any iron, it is only in the gates of his bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi. Advani is now a pathetic shadow of the politician who once built the most audacious alternative to Congressism. By reinventing the man who was the most favoured bogeyman of the Hindu nationalists, Advani had hoped to reinvent himself. Instead, he triggered an internecine war in the House of Saffron. And in the end, when he had to choose between courage and submission, the leader discovered he didn't have enough iron in his soul to stand by his conviction. In his desperate effort to get acceptance from the same pseudo-secularists he used to rage against, he lost his own constituency without acquiring a new one, not counting the Pakistan information minister.

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UP IN FLAMES: Party supporters protest against Advani's remarks

Why did Advani do it? And why of all places in Pakistan which till the other day, he was so keen to have branded as a terrorist state? The most obvious explanation, of course, is that he wanted to break out of the image trap that he was in-the image of Mr Tough bent on galvanising Indian nationalism, who would give hot pursuit and a bloody nose to all its enemies. He wanted a makeover for himself and for his party so both could harp on issues that the voter can emote with. The BJP has been on a downhill slide since it touched 182 seats in the 1999 general elections and it was Advani's conviction that the party needed more than Ram and Ayodhya to pull it through. His remarks were an attempt at effecting an ideological shift that would see the BJP emerge as a more secular outfit that was acceptable to not just the communally minded Hindus but to the community at large.

Laudable goals indeed, which to a large extent were triggered by the current cross-border peace wave. Add to that the reception that Advani got in Pakistan. His eight-day tour had all the trappings of a visit by a head of state: official red carpet welcomes, meetings with President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and other notables, addresses to several institutions, a grand tour of the archaeological remains of Takshasila, laying the foundation stone for the project to restore the historic Hindu temples at Katas Raj. In Karachi, at the fag end of his visit, Advani was flattered when the acting president of Pakistan (deputing for Musharraf who was on a state visit to Malaysia) flew in from Islamabad to attend a luncheon that the chief minister of Sindh had hosted in his honour. Rarely has the BJP president been serenaded thus in his own country. And so overwhelmed was he by the hospitality that he went on to literally stand on its head all that his own party and the larger Parivar have held close to their hearts. Addressing the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations, Economic Affairs and Law on the last day of his tour, Advani summed up, saying, "Fiza zaroor badli hui hai, bahut badli hui hai (The atmosphere has definitely changed)."

ADVANI ON JINNAH "His August 11, 1947 address is a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to practise his own religion. My respectful homage to this great man." AT JINNAH'S MAUSOLEUM IN KARACHI, JUNE 4 HIS PARTY ON JINNAH "The BJP reiterates that whatever may have been Jinnah's vision of Pakistan, the state he founded is theocratic and non-secular. There can be no revisiting the reality that Jinnah led a communal agitation to achieve his goal of Pakistan." STATEMENT ISSUED BY THE BJP, JUNE 10

Little did he then know that much had changed back home too. The first signs that he had miscalculated in relying on the implicit backing of his party came when Advani's speech writer and political secretary Sudheendra Kulkarni faxed the text of his remarks at Jinnah's mausoleum to the party headquarters in Delhi. Party spokesman Prakash Javdekar's eyes literally popped out when he read the contents of the fax. He worked the phone lines and got in touch with party leaders across the country. Naidu was in Chennai, Pramod Mahajan in Assam, Arun Jaitley in Orissa and Sushma Swaraj were contacted. They were unanimous in their opinion that the statement would spell the death knell for the party and as such was not being released for the media. Though the phone calls from across the border to the BJP office ended there, party leaders huddled together to defuse a crisis they knew was impending. Late on June 5, a day before Advani was scheduled to return to Delhi, the BJP general secretaries decided that a statement be issued upon Advani's arrival explaining the context in which the remarks were made. The damage control measures went on through much of the night, but came to an abrupt end the next morning when RSS General Secretary Mohan Bhagwat, presumably reflecting the opinion of the Nagpur headquarters, stated categorically that Advani must withdraw his words or step down as party president.

CROSS-BORDER TALK Advani goes in for an image makeover in Pakistan

"The demolition was the saddest day of my life. I am not saying this for the first time." MAY 31, ISLAMABAD "I don't see any harm in the Hurriyat leaders coming here for talks and they have a right to it." JUNE 1, ISLAMABAD "It is wrong to say that I was responsible for the Agra failure. I suggested to Vajpayee to invite Musharraf." JUNE 1, ISLAMABAD "I have to say that fiza zaroor badli hai, bahut badli hui hai (the atmosphere has changed a lot)." JUNE 2, LAHORE "Emergence of India and Pakistan as two sovereign, independent nations is an unalterable reality of history." JUNE 2, LAHORE "I am a victim of a gap between my image and real self. I feel wronged if the image of me is that of being communal, a bigot or anti-Muslim." JUNE 4, LAHORE "Partition cannot be undone. But some of the follies of Partition can be undone and they must be undone." JUNE 5, KARACHI

Within hours, Advani himself landed back in the capital. By then, the RSS and the VHP had upped the ante.The second rung of BJP leaders kept a studied silence prompting a furious Advani to send in his resignation within hours of reaching Delhi. Their silence was not strange. Almost all of them-Mahajan. Naidu, Jaitley-owed their party positions to Advani, but later began to distance themselves from the leader. Naidu, besides using his proximity to Advani to build up his own image, never hid the fact that he was waiting to make a comeback as party chief. Mahajan and Jaitley, on the other hand, could never come to terms with the fact that whether in office or not, Naidu was allowed the freedom by Advani to exercise presidential powers.

Advani's sudden resignation jolted the party leaders who quickly drafted a resolution condemning the intemperate language of the VHP. Far from making it change his mind, Advani stepped up the pressure on his party, demanding that it not only endorse his remarks on Jinnah but also praise his Pakistan trip as a diplomatic coup. Sensing capitulation on the part of the second-rung BJP leaders, the RSS launched a counter-offensive. Chief K.S. Sudarshan and his VHP counterpart Ashok Singhal met in Jaipur where an agreement was reached that there would be no compromise on Jinnah. The next morning, as Advani was busy rejecting yet another resolution drafted by his party, the hardliners roped in Murli Manohar Joshi, an Advani baiter if ever there was one. Summoning TV crews to his house he announced, "I have told party leaders, including Venkaiah Naidu, that the basic ideology of the party should not be diluted in any resolution that may be adopted."

The irony of Advani's next step was inescapable. In his hour of crisis, as his hand-picked A-team deserted him, he turned to his old colleagues. He held discussions with Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, even as A.B. Vajpayee offered him unconditional support. Jaswant Singh, who was on a tour of Israel, spoke to him from Tel Aviv, advising him not to step down. The advice was laced with a double warning. For one, stepping down would amount to handing over the party to the RSS forever since the new incumbent was bound to be a nominee of the RSS. Second, the post of the Leader of the Opposition, which Advani still held, would amount to nothing if he did not simultaneously have the party apparatus in his grip.

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ANTAGONISTS IN THE FAMILY: Pravin Togadia (left); Singhal

The four-day resignation drama has exposed Advani's weakening hold on his own party. In the 25-year history of the BJP, a third of which had Advani at the helm, nothing of this sort had ever happened. The nearest that the party came to giving its soiled linen a public wash was when Uma Bharati staged a televised walk-out from a high level party meeting. And more recently when Advani found himself the target of the RSS chief's fulminations. There is a crucial difference though: on both occasions, the party leadership and the cadres stood by him. Last week, they didn't.

By the morning of June 10, with Jaswant back in Delhi-the crucial party meeting was postponed by a day to enable the former foreign minister to attend it-it became clear that the resignation would be withdrawn. Naidu hinted at it when he told the press that "a happy solution will emerge by evening".

Advani may have acquiesced but the debatable point is: is he in control? His term runs till next year, though the run-up to the party's National Executive meeting is likely to throw up challenges to his presidentship. Of course, he has an early opportunity to win back what was lost-if he can work out a winning strategy for the NDA in Bihar. Apart from a credible election strategy, that would also involve delicate negotiations with allies like the JD(U), the senior party in the state alliance.

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TAKING A HARD LINE: The saffron cadre has made its lack of confidence in Advani's leadership very obvious

More hurdles await as Advani tries to pick the pieces of what clearly is a lameduck party presidency. Elections are due next year, among other places, in Tamil Nadu and Assam, where the BJP's presence has so far been marked only because of alliances with local partners. How the imperious J. Jayalalithaa will react to Advani's bargaining chips is at best a matter of conjecture at this stage. Added to this is the fact that with the RSS losing faith in him and floating a whisper campaign for the election of a new BJP chief in the party elections due next year, just retaining the chair will be an arduous task for Advani. To regain the faith, he has to win back the confidence of the party cadres. After the sojourn in Pakistan, the message from the cadres is a resounding vote of no-confidence. And party leaders who hoped that Advani would sooner or later do a U-turn to win back the lost constituency were in for an early disappointment last week. At a book release function at his residence on June 15, the BJP president sent out an unambiguous message to the Sangh Parivar that he would stay and fight. "I stand by everything that I said during my tour of Pakistan," he said

In retrospect, Advani wanted a front seat in history and found his visit to the land of his birth was his best way to get there. He sought out a symbolic mausoleum in Karachi to reserve his place in history. The many successors-in-waiting, all of whom were chosen by Advani, however, believe that was his most decisive step toward building one for his own party.

-with Priya Sahgal

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