When the Jan Sangh first entered the corridors of power in New Delhi as a constituent of the Janata Party in 1977, Advani was given the relatively unimportant information and broadcasting portfolio while Vajpayee got the prestigious external affairs. The latter also automatically became the BJP's first president when the Jan Sanghis walked out of the Janata Party in 1980 over their refusal to sever their links with the RSS.

It was only a decade later that Advani hit the headlines with his rath yatra, but much of the negative fallout during the BJP's subsequent history was a direct consequence of this fateful event. It is now clear that the party began to beat a retreat from the objectives of the yatra within six years by shelving its programme of building a Ram temple, which is unlikely ever to come up.

Advani himself has been trying to modify his own image by pretending that he is no longer the aggressive proponent of Hindutva as in the 1990s. When a party discards an agenda and a leader tries to present himself in a new garb, it is obvious that his earlier venture was an ill-conceived one.

A closer analysis will also show that Advani was always similarly wobbly about what he said and did. Because he was less than surefooted, there was a tendency on his part to sail close to the wind. Inevitably, such cautious tactics involved fudging and prevarication.

This penchant for being economical with the truth - which has now blown up over the Kandahar episode - was evident in small matters as well. For instance, when Uma Bharati was accused during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement of making virulent anti-Muslim speeches, Advani first accosted her and then said that it was another sadhvi who was making such speeches. He neither mentioned Rithambara nor said whether he condemned such utterances.

The same habit of steering clear of the need to express an opinion was seen during the rumours about Lord Ganesh drinking milk. Advani said that he was incredulous at first, but then was told by several people that they had witnessed the miracle. But he never clarified what he himself believed.

Murli Manohar Joshi, to his credit, was more forthright. It was the physicist in him which took precedence over his obscurantist saffron self to make him say that he did not believe in the rumours.

Even over the Babri masjid demolition, which Manmohan Singh described as Advani's biggest “achievement”, it has never been clear exactly what Advani meant by saying that it was the “saddest day” of his life - whether he was remorseful because of the destruction of the “ocular provocation” (his words) or because of the breakdown of discipline among the kar sevaks.

Over the nuclear deal, too, it was evident that the majboot neta had been persuaded to go against his own instincts by more insistent personalities like Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, neither of whom had an RSS background.

Those who thought of Advani as a “towering” personality, as a sociologist recently did, were evidently impressed by the larger-than-life role that he played during the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, which had earned Vajpayee's disapproval. It was the only time, however, when Advani emerged from the shadows of Vajpayee, who was the most popular figure among the saffronites because of his oratorical skills and amiable personality even when the Jan Sangh and the BJP were in the doldrums.

Advani, in contrast, was the unsmiling apparatchik who lacked the charisma of the party's automatic No.1. It was as an unthinking party functionary that he practically exonerated the Bajrang Dal from the accusations of the murder of the Christian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two sons in Orissa by saying that his knowledge of the Bajrangis ruled out their involvement.

It is not an assessment which will be widely shared. Besides, he should have known that such a comment from the Union Home Minister might influence the police investigation. He showed the same indifference to the Gujarat riots, which caused genuine anguish to Vajpayee. Not for once has Advani said anything adverse about Narendra Modi, presumably because he is a contestant from Gujarat's Gandhinagar constituency.

Advani is temperamentally and intellectually a No.2. It was a quirk of circumstance, viz. Vajpayee's ill health, which pitchforked him as a frontrunner. But the electorate saw through him and now his party, too, has realized that his continuance as the topmost leader would only take the party downhill. (IPA Service)