Until about a month ago, no meeting of the RSS would be complete without generous doses of hate rhetoric aimed at the Congress and minorities. And Lal Krishna Advani was a fixture at almost all its meetings.

Last week, nearly 150 delegates, including national functionaries of the RSS, state-level organisers and other important pracharaks gathered in waterlogged Surat for a four-day meeting of the prant pracharaks of the ideologically embattled organisation. If at all there was any rhetoric, it was primarily aimed at Advani who was, for a change, absent at the baithak. That wasn't surprising considering that the meeting was convened to discuss, among other things, the "deviations of the BJP leadership from the Hindutva ideology". Shorn of diplomatese, that meant the aim of the meeting was to haul up Advani for the flattering things he said about Mohammad Ali Jinnah during his visit to Pakistan last month.

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PAST GLORY: Advani and RSS leaders at an earlier meeting

In the run-up to the conclave, there was much speculation about Advani's future as BJP president. Would he be allowed to continue in his post? Would the Parivar insist that he divest himself of one of the two posts he holds, that of leader of the Opposition and the BJP chief? Three days before the conclave, senior BJP leaders M. Venkaiah Naidu and Rajnath Singh met the RSS Joint General Secretary Suresh Soni. They wanted an assurance that no adverse comments would be made on the party president as that would have negative fallout on the party and its prospects in the forthcoming assembly elections in Bihar.

Such was the secrecy surrounding last week's conclave that it could have easily been mistaken for a meeting of the Masonic Lodge. Even local RSS leaders who have served the organisation for decades were kept out and the normally affable RSS spokesman Ram Madhav shied away from the press. All participants were warned against leaking any information to outsiders. On its opening day when cameramen tried to take pictures of leaders at the entrance of the Eklavya Bhavan, the conclave venue, the organisers draped the entrance gate with a huge white curtain to deny photographers and cameramen any visuals.

From behind the curtain, not much news emerged. But if there was one message that came out strongly at the end of the four-day meeting, it was this: those who have indulged in major ideological deviations would not go unpunished and that the RSS would go to any extent to set the ideological "mess" within the Sangh Parivar in order.

So is Advani's tenure as BJP president about to end? If Advani refuses to step down within a given time frame, will the RSS snap its links with the BJP? At the end of the meeting, a statement, meant to convey a clear message, was to be drafted but the terrorist attack in Ayodhya forced minor alterations. As Advani headed for Ayodhya after the attack, a senior RSS leader remarked, "At this juncture we are keen on not highlighting our differences with a section of the BJP leadership. But those who have deviated from our ideology will have to pay the price."

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CLOSED-DOOR MEET: RSS leaders arriving at the Surat conclave

However, the no-compromise-with-ideology line took over on the second day when over 100 state-level and zonal pracharaks, who as propagators of ideology are the backbone of the RSS, gave a chilling feedback of the shattering impact of Advani's comment on Jinnah on the swayamsevaks. They warned against any further ideological compromise. Seething with rage, several pracharaks said if ideological deviation as committed by Advani were allowed to be repeated, they would be better off shutting down the shakhas. When some pracharaks from the south and western India objected to the kind of language used by the VHP leaders against Advani and other BJP leaders, it brought forth a swift response from other pracharaks who said that extreme views will always be countered with reaction.

The consensus at the conclave was in favour of Advani's removal, if the strong words were any indication. As one pracharark said, "The time has come for the RSS leadership to replace empty warnings by action. In fact, action on the Advani issue should have been taken by now. We can't run the RSS merely on empty rhetoric."

It is not as if everyone at the conclave was gunning for Advani's head. As the meeting began with only a core group of RSS and VHP leaders and zonal pracharaks participating, some of the senior RSS leaders were in favour of granting Advani a reprieve in the hope that he would undertake corrective measures. Among them were RSS heavyweights H.V. Sheshadri, Madandas Devi, Suresh Soni and Sanjay Joshi, the RSS pracharak loaned to the BJP as its general secretary. The second in command in the RSS, Mohanrao Bhagwat, heard out everyone but did not take a clear stand, giving the impression that he preferred a cautious approach. But RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan, VHP's Ashok Singhal and Pravin Togadia besides M.G. Vaidya, who had openly called for Advani's sacking after the Jinnah episode, were of the opinion that only Advani's departure on the issue of ideology could clear the mess within the Sangh Parivar. Their ire against Advani also stemmed from the belief that he was trying to dictate terms to the RSS leadership by using a carrot-and-stick policy. One example that was often quoted in this respect was Advani despatching nda Convenor George Fernandes with conciliatory gestures to the RSS even as he allowed his former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni to speak out against "RSS interference" shortly before he quit as BJP national secretary. As an RSS leader said, "That Advani should resort to such tactics against the parent body was really shocking." But those who were ready to hand Advani a long rope believed that Kulkarni had committed the act on his own in a parting bid to create confusion in the Sangh Parivar and that Advani had no role in it. This belief rested on the logic that Advani would not have accepted Kulkarni's resignation if he had indeed instigated his former aide. But there was all-round condemnation of Kulkarni at the meet. However, faced with the feedback from the prant pracharaks of the impact of Advani's ideological indiscretion on the ordinary swayamsevak, even those who were in favour of adopting a soft line on Advani were firm that such deviations could end up in the entire Parivar being swept away.

One option that the RSS leadership discussed at the meet was to issue a statement clarifying its ideological position on some of the points raised by Advani in Pakistan-Jinnah, Akhand Bharat, Ram temple and regret for Gujarat riots-which were at variance with the organisation's stand. Though very little news filtered out of the closed-door conclave, it is learnt that at a special meeting of nine core RSS leaders, including Sudarshan and Bhagwat, a road map was charted out about steps the RSS will have to take if the BJP leadership decides to disobey its ideological diktats. While outwardly it appears that the attack on Ayodhya has united the warring family members, a section of the Parivar feels it could even hasten Advani's departure. As a BJP leader says, "We will need fully convertible debentures if the Ayodhya attack is to be converted into political advantage."

The question that remains is not if Advani will go, but when. What might hold his departure back temporarily is the choice of a successor. The alternatives don't leave much to be desired. Murali Manohar Joshi is hardly a team man; Rajnath Singh has leadership qualities but not political dexterity. Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj are relatively suave but have an unabashed urban image. Kalyan Singh could have been an ideal choice but the political detour that he took is a disqualification. For the moment, Advani may be safe. But only as long as wise old men stuck in the same boat keep arguing over who will row.

New Secularist L.K. Advani embarked on his liberal path by defying the RSS while he was in power. The Jinnah episode was the last straw. If VHP leader Ashok Singhal is among the more strident anti-Advani voices in the Parivar, he has his reasons. Some time in early 2002, Singhal is said to have called up the then Union home minister L.K. Advani to complain about the roadblocks being placed by the NDA government in the way of a VHP mass mobilisation programme in Ayodhya. In response, Advani is said to have asked the VHP leader whether he had taken leave of his senses. A few days later the Centre stopped the trains to Ayodhya in a bid to prevent VHP workers from reaching the temple town. That was perhaps the first indication that Advani had chosen to go on a collision course with the Sangh Parivar. More evidence was to come a few days later when the late Paramhansa Ramachandradas, who spearheaded the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, sought Advani's help on the Ayodhya issue. He is said to have asked Ramachandradas to come to a pact with the Muslim community to allow construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya while renouncing all claims to Kashi and Mathura. When Ramachandradas reminded Advani about an RSS resolution seeking transfer of the ownership of Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura temples to the Hindus, Advani paid scant regard. A few months later, when Ramachandradas died, the VHP officially attributed his death to the shock that Advani inflicted on him. In 2001, after agreeing to the RSS' suggestion to trifurcate Jammu and Kashmir into separate administrative regions, Advani reportedly went back on his word. Says Singhal: "At that point our trifurcation proposal was receiving excellent public response in Jammu and Ladakh." Advani's complete deviation from the RSS' ideology was more pronounced after he became deputy prime minister. The secular label that he pinned on Mohammad Ali Jinnah was part of the "secularisation" of Advani. He is yet to condemn the Deobandi Ulema's stand on the Imrana case. Today, Advani is the man the Parivar loves to hate. On July 6, the Allahabad High Court, overruling an earlier judicial verdict, ordered he had to face trial in the Babri Masjid demolition case. When the verdict came out, there were no crowds to commiserate with him. By attributing the BJP's Lok Sabha defeat to the "party losing touch with its core constituency", Advani identified the malaise, but he seems to have prescribed the wrong drug. -By Uday Mahurkar

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