— Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

SOMBRE MOOD: The crisis that hit the BJP was resolved on Friday with the party's Parliamentary Board working a way out in New Delhi. Party leaders Jaswant Singh and Vajpayee discuss a point even as L.K. Advani looks on.

NEW DELHI: L.K. Advani on Friday withdrew his resignation as Bharatiya Janata Party president even as the party said it "continues to steadfastly reject the two-nation theory" championed by Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It said "there can be no re-visiting the reality that Jinnah led a communal agitation to achieve his goal of Pakistan, which devoured thousands of innocent people in its wake."

The week-long crisis in the BJP ended, but the party clearly refused to endorse Mr. Advani's remarks made during his recent visit to Pakistan that Jinnah was secular.

On Monday the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh said Mr. Advani's remarks were "totally unacceptable" and ran contrary to its ideological position. On Friday, after the crisis ended, RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav said the Sangh rejected the idea of a debate on Jinnah (as suggested by Mr. Advani) and demanded a clarification from the BJP, which was given. "It was not even a question of an RSS viewpoint but a question of the historical facts [related to Jinnah's role in the Partition of the country]," Mr. Madhav said.

Party leaders firm

All the BJP leaders stood together on the issue of "no deviation from ideology" and went along with the RSS position that there could be no question of re-evaluating Jinnah or his role in Partition.

The formal resolution of the crisis took place at a meeting of the BJP parliamentary board and central office-bearers to which the Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States were also invited. Everyone was present, including the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Jaswant Singh, who flew in from Israel.

Mr. Advani was party to the one-page statement adopted at the meeting and thus endorsed the explanation of his statements and agreed with the assertion that Jinnah led a communal agitation that killed thousands of innocent people.

Party general secretary Pramod Mahajan said that matters had been sorted out by Thursday evening when he took the "final draft" of the one-page statement to Mr. Vajpayee for approval. The "draft" was approved by the senior leader, Murli Manohar Joshi, a couple of hours ahead of Friday's meeting. On Thursday, Dr. Joshi said there could be "no dilution of ideology" on the Jinnah issue and there was no room for ambiguity that Jinnah practised communal politics.

A concession to Mr. Advani was the explanation by the party that he had welcomed the Pakistan Government's invitation to him to lay the foundation for the Katasraj temple "and in that context" and "without describing Jinnah as secular" Mr. Advani had "reminded the people of Pakistan" that Jinnah in his address to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly "had urged full freedom of faith for all its citizens and no discrimination between its citizens on grounds of religion."

The statement also praised Mr. Advani's visit for taking India-Pakistan ties to a "new level" in "continuation" of the initiative taken by Mr. Vajpayee.

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