What I have not able to understand is why it has taken 25 years (the BJP is celebrating its silver jubilee) for Advani to wake up and confirm the general impression that the Sangh guides the BJP in politics. Yet, he was the one who broke links with the Janata Party in 1979 when told to sever connections with the RSS. The party could not survive the split and its government came tumbling down. When Advani went to that extent of founding a new party, the BJP, what could have impelled him to attack the RSS now?

Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was also unhappy with the RSS. He even thought of parting company with the BJP at one time. But his gab of the tongue and his ability to project a liberal image while plugging the Hindutva line stood him in good stead. Even the RSS did not push him to a corner as it has done in the case of Advani whom the RSS considers its own man. It was afraid of Vajpayee's acceptability in the country.

My belief is that Advani realised after the BJP lost in the general elections that if the party wanted to come to power -- 273 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha -- it could not afford to distance more than 150 million Muslims, nearly 14 per cent of the total electorate. Muslims' alienation from the RSS is complete because they have seen its complicity during communal riots.

It would be wrong to assume that the praise of Qauid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, was Advani's undoing. He had been showing his unhappiness with the RSS for some time. He had protested many a time that the RSS was foisting on them the sanchalaks (preachers) for posts in the organisation and seats in state assemblies and Parliament. In fact, he had lessened consultations with the RSS on important matters. Things had come to such a pass that the RSS started feeling ignored. It was an expression of exasperation on the part of RSS chief Sudarshan when he said that both Vajpayee and Advani should retire because they had grown old. But Sudarshan is himself well above 70.

The real grievances of the RSS is that the BJP, while in the government, pursued what was required for running it and paid little heed to the Hindutva ideology. This is not wholly true because Murli Manohar Joshi followed the RSS brief and played havoc with education and culture. He even stopped grants for Gandhian institutions because the RSS did not like their secular education instruction.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that the BJP forged to harness the support of 24 political parties to have a majority in the Lok Sabha adopted a common minimum programme. The BJP agreed to keep aside three of its main demands: one, not to build a temple at the site where the Babri masjid stood before the demolition; two, not to insist on scarping Article 370 that gave a special status to Jammu and Kashmir and, three, not to press for a common civil code. The RSS was a party to the understanding reached. Its defence at that time was that if the BJP wanted to head the government, it had no option except to modify its agenda to get the support of other political parties. I am sure that the RSS would have allowed the same aged Vajpayee to continue if the BJP had returned to power. Ideology is important but the government is more important.

The reason why the RSS has gone back to the purity of ideology is the BJP's wilderness and consequently its own. It does not make any difference to the RSS whether India remains democratic or gives up its pluralism. A Hindu state is all that it wants and matters little if, in the process, the country's ethos, attained through the struggle for independence in which the RSS played no role, is destroyed. Why doesn't the RSS, for a change, engage itself in improving the Hindu society which is groaning under the caste system? In fact, I expected the BJP national executive that met in Chennai last week to raise its voice against the atrocities committed recently against the dalits. Has the Hindutva ideology no place for those Hindu brethren who have been suffering for centuries all indignities and discrimination at the hands of upper castes?

But the RSS is more concerned about power politics than reforms in the Hindu religion. But things are not going to be easy for the RSS. Advani's remark has begun a fierce debate within the BJP. It is not simply They versus We, nor Advani's supporters versus the opponents. The fight is between the RSS and many BJP followers. The non-RSS voices are feeble because they are afraid of persecution after Advani's exit. Still members in Tamil Nadu, Keral and Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP is trying to implant, support Advani.

But they too believe that the RSS cadre makes them win at the polls. That is the reason that the resolution adopted at the Chennai conclave included the same old RSS-inspired exhortations like "minority-ism" and "appeasement of Muslims." They realise that such slogans do not sell any more. They are like used cartridges. Yet the RSS believes they are part of the struggle to pursue its ideological battle. Strange, the RSS has not changed its tactics even after knowing that the call to build the temple at the Babri masjid site does not evoke any response. It is banking on persons like Narendra Modi of Gujarat carnage fame.

The post-Advani BJP is going to be a hotchpotch outfit of extremists and liberals, RSS-men and the BJP-men. There will be a majority of people who will be riding two horses at the same time. They will be talking at each other instead of talking to each other.

Naturally, there will be no cohesion in thought and action. The RSS is determined to give a new edge to extremism which is fraught with danger, knowing well that the minorities are not in a mood to take things lying down. The kind of a BJP set-up that the RSS has in mind holds little for the future.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.