Mr Advani will be hard put to defend a figure the parivar loathes. But he cannot withdraw his remarks without losing authority. Unless the BJP makes a radical break with the VHP and a good chunk of the RSS, it will plunge deeper into a leadership crisis.

Mr Advani wanted to give his hard-Hindutva image a makeover -- in Pakistan, of all places. The man believed to be responsible for razing the Babri mosque was front-paged admiring chandeliers in the opulent Faisal mosque. He said December 6, 1992 was "the saddest day of my life." Yet, he was asked to lead the reconstruction of the Katasraj Hindu temple -- as if his party specialised in rebuilding monuments!

Mr Advani dissociated himself from "Akhand Bharat" by saying that Partition is "an unalterable reality of history." He bent over backwards to appear a "moderate" who has put anti-Islam, anti-Pakistan prejudices behind him.

There was an element of nostalgia in his Pakistan visit, only his second trip since 1946. As he wrote: "I do feel sentimental ...

I am somewhat at a loss to articulate the totality of my feelings and thoughts." A similar romanticism was visible when he discovered that the Indus (Sindhu) originates in Ladakh -- the root of his Sindhi identity.

However, nostalgia cannot explain Mr Advani's utterances. The Pakistan media went ga-ga over them, speculating on the reasons for "a change of heart" in the life-long swayamsevak.

General Pervez Musharraf made an astute calculation in inviting Mr Advani and laying out the red carpet. He can claim to have "softened up" the man whom Pakistanis see as the Agra Summit's villain. The General can now get more military and economic aid from the United States.

Three questions arise. Why did Mr Advani go out of his way to lavish praise upon Quaed-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah? Was he right in saying that Jinnah stood for a secular state which doesn't distinguish between citizens on grounds of faith? Third, what's the likely long-term impact of the present crisis on RSS-BJP relations?

Mr Advani's reconciliation-and-friendship note brought him tremendous attention in Pakistan because he fits a stereotype -- the dhoti-clad communal Hindu who starts his visit by inaugurating an old temple reconstruction.

Mr Advani said: "[T]his was the first time any Indian leader had been asked [to rebuild temples]... since 1947." -- if Pakistan is moving towards Jinnah's secularism, "we should acknowledge it."

Mr Advani wanted a new image because he feared he won't be BJP president for long -- after vitriolic attacks against him by the VHP-RSS, and his failure to relieve the party's leadership crisis. So he's positioning himself as a Second Vajpayee -- despite the reaction from Mr Praveen Togadia denouncing him as a "traitor."

Mr Advani is comprehensively mistaken about Jinnah's "secularism." The very project Jinnah stood for, his entire political mission, was deeply communal -- to build a new nation by rejecting a non-denominational, multi-religious, multi-ethnic state.

True, Jinnah was not pious. (Nor, probably, is Mr Advani). But secularism is not a personality trait. You don't become secular because you know Urdu couplets, wear a sherwani, or throw iftaar parties. (Many wrongly think Mr Vajpayee is secular because of this.)

Secularism is about separating religion from politics. For communalism, the legitimate subject of politics is the community, defined by religion. This is the basis of the Two-Nation Theory, which Savarkar invented and Jinnah embraced, but Gandhi and Nehru rejected.

True, Jinnah in his famous speech of August 11, 1947, said: "You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, That has nothing to do with the business of the state. In course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith or each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state."

Jinnah's exhortation came too late. It clashed with the basic inspiration behind the Pakistan movement. Jinnah's personality was contradictory. He was a pro-reform constitutional modernist. But he obeyed the compulsions of Muslim-separatist politics.

Ultimately, the second aspect of Jinnah's personality prevailed. Pakistani historians say he never explained the rationale of his August 11 speech.

Mr Advani's admiration for Jinnah is understandable. Communalists of different shades bond together. One communalist recognises and respects the ideology of another. For years, the Muslim League and the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha worked separately, but for the same goal -- of establishing a society in which one group would be dominant by virtue of religion.

One doesn't have to be hostile to peaceful co-existence with Pakistan to be critical of the Two-Nation ideology. This column has always advocated peace with Pakistan -- without woolly-headedly blurring distinctions between secularism and communalism.

The crucial issue while judging a person or movement is not this or that utterance, but their actions. By that criterion, Jinnah wasn't remotely secular. Nor are Savarkar, Golwalkar, or Vajpayee/Advani. But Mr Advani's reductionism misunderstands Jinnah's politics.

Once you equate Jinnah with Gandhi, and abolish critical distinctions between secularism and communalism, you can equate Gandhi with Godse. You can reduce a giant like Nehru to a pygmy like Deen Dayal Upadhyay. That only serves to legitimise the sangh's venomous ideology. Advani-style reduc-tionism is pernicious.

Mr Advani has contributed to a serious aggravation of the sangh parivar's continuing ideological-political crisis and internal conflict. The conflict could well degenerate into full-scale warfare.

This prospect must worry parivar well-wishers, but should please those who share an antipathy to its exclusivist, chauvinistic politics.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.