Advani withdraws resignation as BJP clarifies stand on Jinnah

NEW DELHI: BJP's leadership crisis was on Friday resolved for now with L K Advani withdrawing his resignation as its president but he had to accept the party's repudiation of his controversial praise for Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The four-day political drama ended on Friday evening at a meeting of parliamentary board and other top BJP leaders at which the party praised Advani's recent visit to Pakistan and sought to explain away his praise for Jinnah which had angered the RSS and led to his resignation.

With a view to placating the RSS, the party issued a statement after the meeting, which sharply criticised jinnah for dividing India on communal lines and said that there can be no "revisiting" the founder of Pakistan, who had led a communal agitation for creation of that country.

In a muted response, the RSS, which had taken serious exception to Advani's various statements in Pakistan, especially his praise of Jinnah, said it had sought a clarification from the BJP and "it has come and the controversy has ended".

"The BJP has clarified its stand and it is the correct portrayal of history," RSS spokesman Ram Madhav said on the end of the leadership crisis in BJP. But, he said, the entire controversy was avoidable.

Firebrand VHP leader Pravin Togadia said Advani has not apologised for his remarks on Jinnah and the Babri Masjid in Pakistan and by this he has insulted the Hindus who will never forgive him.

The BJP statement said the party "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.

"The BJP has always condemned the division of India on communal lines and continues to steadfastly reject the two-nation theory championed by Jinnah and endorsed by British colonialists.

"There can be no revisiting the reality that Jinnah led a communal agitation to achieve his goal of Pakistan, which devoured thousands of innocent people in its wake and dispossessed millions of their homes and livelihoods," the BJP statement said.

The statement virtually rejects Advani's view in Pakistan that emergence of the two countries as independent, separate and sovereign nations were an unalterable reality of history.

In a bid to clear the air on his remarks on Jinnah after the visit to his mausoleum in Karachi, the BJP statement noted that Advani welcomed the event of launching of the restoration work at the Katasraj Temple and in that context, without describing jinnah as secular, reminded the people of Pakistan of its founder's address to the country's constituent assembly.

In that address Jinnah had urged full freedom of faith for all its citizens and no discrimination between its citizens on grounds of religion.

The statement virtually rules out a debate on Jinnah, which Advani had advocated on his return when RSS and other Sangh Parivar affiliates expressed displeasure over his remarks on Jinnah after the visit to his mausoleum in Karachi