Denial of a rightful place to Advani has to be viewed as part of a clear power shift within the extended RSS parivar. And this was clearly brought about by the bitter inner-party intrigues over Ayodhya episode. Consider this. When the details of verdict began tickling in, the old veteran of many Ayodhya battles was simply not available. As against this, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was quick to pronounce the parivar's authentic response at his media briefing. Even the irrepressible Pravin Togadia outpoured himself only after Bhagwat set the tone, and safely without any deviation. It took three more hours for the BJP to come out with its brief and politically correct remarks.

Yet some of us, by sheer force of habit, made it look like Advani was making spontaneous announcements after 'consulting his party colleagues'. True, the Core Group met at Advani's residence. But it was not a 'consultation' but a formal meet called by party president Nitin Gadkari. It had to be delayed for Gadkari's arrival from airport and Murli Manohar Joshi's presence. In the good old days of 'durbar', such decisions were taken by his trusted party aides and the outside wiz kids composed mainly of failed journalists. Joshi has been a total outcast. This time after the meeting, Advani had only read out a prepared statement on behalf of the BJP. He even refused to answer questions from the media.

At a morning meeting with the leaders at the RSS headquarters, Bhagwat had made it clear that no senior leader of the BJP or VHP should make any comment on the verdict without hearing Jhandewalla. And Bhagwat was ready with colleagues and legal experts to analyse and declare an authentic view of the entire parivar. This has never happened in parivar. Should the RSS enforce this kind of 'Stalinist' discipline? Will such rigorous curbs damage flexibility and adversely affect parivar outfits' growth? Not only the orphaned backroom boys of the disbanded durbar. Even many others in BJP seem to have reservations about what the former calls the new command system in parivar.

Before going into this aspect, let us have a look at how the new trend plays out in the main opposition party. When Advani went to Somnath last week for his annual darshan to mark the beginning of his 1990 rath yatra, media was taken along in strength. But the party hierarchy had virtually ignored it. Unlike earlier, no senior leader was present. It was mostly Uma Bharti, whom he wants to bring back and the family members. Clearly, the RSS and its more hawkish outfits like the VHP, Bajrangdal and the Sant Sammelan are not prepared to pardon L.K. Advani for the dhoka he did to the Ram cause while in power. They do not want to give him another chance as they fear he still has the potentials to cause troubles.

There is no other explanation for so systematically sidelining him in Ayodhya-related consultations. It has now been made into a pattern. He was kept out of parivar's crucial strategy session on Ayodhya on September 22. Instead, Bhagwat wanted others in BJP like Gadkari, Arun Jaitley and Joshi give the right inputs. Similarly, Advani was not present at the BJP's internal meeting two days later to discuss the post-verdict plans. There is no mistaking of the signals. We are now told that at least in a couple of meetings this year, Bhagwat had insisted that the biggest blow to India's 'largest mass movement' - Ayodhya agitation - was its 'politicisation' by the BJP.

Hence rather than the Muslims or 'secularists', it was the old bosses of the BJP who had done maximum damage to the Mandir cause. He had specially warned the present BJP leadership not to repeat similar 'politicisation.' Thus the RSS parivar's 20-year-long Ayodhya agitation marks the beginning and end of the BJP's last attempt at its tryst with independent functioning. The first had begun in 1980 under Atal Behari Vajpayee with his roadmap to build the BJP as a right-of-centre party with 'secularism and Gandhian socialism' as bedrock. But that had ended up in a fierce Hindu backlash in 1984 with the party winning just two Lok Sabha seats. In many places, the RSS worked to punish the 'pseudo secularist' who tried to barter Hindutva for personal glory.

However, Advani's subsequent selection as party chief had only worsened the BJP's Hindutva vs. power paradox. In 1990, for a change, the charge against Advani was that he was neglecting the Ram cause to share spoils of power under the V.P. Singh government along with the Left, the other outside supporter. Then in early September, he finally decided to take the Rath yatra plunge. That decade had witnessed a powerful Advani setting up his own durbar, silencing traditional leaders, winning the media glare and corporate back-up. The BJP reached the pinnacle of glory but at the cost of the party's prized system of inner-party consensus. Now the parivar's main charge against Advani - and Vajpayee - is that they jettisoned Hindutva to retain ministerial perks.

For this, they ignored the parivar on whose votes they came to power, tried to perpetuate personality-centered party running and joined the 'secularists' against the parivar. The most unpardonable charge has been that Advani had allowed his durbar boys to negotiate with corporate and foreign lobbyists to take the BJP away from the RSS control and turn it into a right-of-centre secular alternate to the Congress. Right or wrong, the new RSS chief under pressures from the VHP group, is now bent on disallowing such distortions any more.

First, the BJP has been told not associate with the VHP's Hindutva agitations. The ban has been in force right from the Sethusamudram agitation. Second is the dismantling personality-centred politics and restoration of democracy within the BJP even if it meant micromanagement by Jhandewallan. This clearly negates the NDA concept of a Vajpayee-centred poll campaign. The problem with the first is that no VHP stir without the media clout of its political wing has so far made any mark. The same is attributed to the aspiring middle classes' brief honeymoon with the BJP in late 90s. But as of now, the RSS does not seem much to bother about such consequences.(IPA Service)