Now, he has drawn a fine distinction. There is no sadness at all. Not even an apology. Only, regret over the hurt caused to the party’s image by the failure to assess the “impatience” of the kar sevaks and, as a result, being unable to carry out a “meticulously” prepared plan of action to construct the temple without violating any law.

Advani hasn’t clarified how the party intended to carry out such an operation on a highly sensitive subject involving religion, ancient history and present-day politics. A faint hint is available about it from the clearing of the ground around the masjid by the Kalyan Singh government in 1992 by the pulling down of small temples on the plea of promoting “tourism”. At the same time, an intention was regularly voiced by Arun Shourie and others about “reverentially” removing the mosque brick by brick to another location.

It is not known if this was the plan which the Hindutva brotherhood had in mind. Even if it did, it is unclear how the saffronites would have been able to undertake and implement such a delicate and elaborate enterprise, which would have entailed persuading the owners of the land to forsake their rights and the adoption of an innovative technology.

Besides, if the slogans raised by the Sangh parivar activists at the time are remembered – teen nahin, teen hazar, nahin rahegi ek mazar – threatening the destruction of 3,000 Muslim shrines, it is difficult to say how reverential the proposed translocation would have been. This is not the only mystery. In 1997, five years after the event, the then vice-president of the BJP, K.R. Malkani, alleged that ISI saboteurs had infiltrated the ranks of the kar sevaks and carried out the destruction, which was why there were celebrations at the Pakistan high commission that night.

But, speculations apart, what is clear from Advani’s comments is that, first, the parivar had some sort of a plan and, secondly, that the call to the kar sevaks to gather near the mosque was a part of it for, otherwise, why should the call have been given ? What was not planned, however, was the violent outburst of “impatience” and the leadership’s failure to control the crowd, which was later described by Kalyan Singh as a “conspiracy” to remove him – a backward caste leader - from the chief minister’s post.

But doubts still remain about Advani’s claims. For one, the “impatience” could have been foreseen because the entire movement from the time of his 1990 rath yatra was marked by the whipping up of communal tension and an abortive attack on the mosque by a saffron mob when Mulayam Singh Yadav was the chief minister. And, for another, the smiling faces of Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati when the mosque was being pulled down did not suggest any unhappiness over the crowd going out of control. Evidently, Advani’s sadness at the damage to the party’s name was not shared by the other leaders.

Several conclusions can be drawn, therefore, from his latest statement if it is taken at face value. First, his absence of remorse on what large sections of the population, including Hindus, consider as an act of sacrilege denotes an attitude typical of the BJP. Just as Narendra Modi has remained unapologetic about the Gujarat riots of 2002, having described them as “stray incidents” despite the deaths of 1,200 people, similarly, Advani does feel the need to say sorry for what had happened in Ayodhya 10 years earlier. Yet, both the incidents are the reason why the BJP’s “credibility” has been dented and why the party lost in 2004, as Atal Behari Vajpayee said after the poll defeat.

Secondly, it is unnerving to think that a person, who saw nothing wrong in the destruction of a protected monument, became the country’s home minister. Not surprisingly, when the Bajrang Dal was implicated in the murder of the Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1999, Advani sought to exonerate the saffron outfit of any wrongdoing while Murli Manohar Joshi and George Fernandes saw an “international conspiracy” in the tragedy.

Thirdly, such remorselessness explains why attacks on churches were a feature of saffron politics in Orissa in 2008. The BJP is the only party which has made the targeting of the places of worship of the minority communities an aspect of its electoral politics. In this context, Advani’s latest remarks are an indication that both he and his party remain where they were in the 1990s. (IPA Service)