Yet, he cannot be unaware that nothing remains of the original Ramjanmabhoomi movement. Not only has the Ram temple not being built, the issue itself died within six years of the rath yatra when the BJP decided shelve it in order to form an alliance with “secular” parties. If anything justifies the phrase, pseudo-secular, coined by Advani at the time to describe secularism, it was the BJP's decision to camouflage its true self by dispensing with its religious-political plank.

It was able to do so without batting an eyelid because the movement was a compendium of half-truths and prevarication to start with. Some of these attempts to play footsie with the truth can be seen in one of Advani's recent interviews, where he even obliquely suggests that the RSS is some kind of a religions outfit.

When he joined the RSS, Advani says that “I did not think I was going to a religious organization. But the rath yatra made me think … People may not have known who Advani was, but they knew it was for the temple. They wanted to touch the rath, kiss the ground on which it passed. I realized it's the language of religion that can create greater patriotism than I had seen before. It was a time of education for me”.

But that his lessons were garbled is evident from the fact that Advani hides the political objective behind the mission - that he hurriedly embarked on the yatra after V.P. Singh's acceptance of the Mandal report on OBC reservations threatened to put the latter beyond the BJP's reach as large vote bank. Patriotism, therefore, had nothing to do with the yatra, only a cynical political calculation based on fright. Besides, the supposed connection between the construction of a temple and patriotism is nebulous, to say the least.

It is this kind of gobbledygook which is typical of Advani's ideas about the event and the movement itself. For instance, he says that Gandhiji began his meetings with Ramdhun. But he refrained from saying that the Mahatma insisted that any readings from a Hindu religious text would be accompanied by recitations from the Quran, the Bible and other holy books. Clearly, it is this incomplete nature of Advani's “education” which explains why the movement has lost its fizz.

It is understandable, of course, why he plays hide and seek with the truth. After all, he can hardly admit that the yatra began its journey from Somnath with the offerings of bowls of blood and vulgar communal rhetoric, which made Vajpayee warn the vanar sena accompanying the putative Ram not to set Lanka on fire.

Yet, this is exactly what happened to the BJP. Although it succeeded in capturing power at the centre in the wake of the temple movement, its chances of repeating the feat in 2004 were ruined by the Gujarat riots, as Vajpayee openly said, and in 2009 by the anti-Christian riots in Orissa. And, now, one of the BJP's major worries is that the vanar sena belonging to the VHP and the Bajrang Dal may go on the rampage after the Ayodhya verdict, for that will undermine its prospects in 2014 as well.

Today, the BJP is as worried about the riots as the Muslims and Christians because it wants to consolidate its position as a national party, which its high percentage of votes in the parliamentary polls - nearly 20 per cent - makes a legitimate aspiration, as does the fact that the party is in power in nine states. But its drawback, to which the judgment may draw attention, is it provocative record.

It is for this very reason that Narendra Modi is unwanted by its ally in Bihar. However much Modi may want to divert attention from the 2002 riots to his record of development in Gujarat, and however much he is a hero to large sections in the BJP as well as in the corporate sector who see in him a future prime minister, Modi lacks respectability because of his crude anti-minority outlook.

The same albatross hangs round the BJP's neck, irrespective of how valiantly Advani tries to project the virtues of religiosity in its political movement. Even if the verdict says that there was an ancient temple underneath the “ocular provocation” - Advani's phrase for the Babri masjid - the BJP cannot celebrate for fear of the vanar sena. (IPA Service)