India's Top Hindu Nationalist Quits Party

NEW DELHI -- India's most prominent Hindu nationalist, the man often blamed for spreading anti-Muslim hatred in India, quit Tuesday as head of the country's main opposition party following criticism of his kind words for the founding father of Pakistan -- a man reviled in India.

The resignation of Lal Krishna Advani, 77, as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, also made it official that India's Hindu political movement was splintering.

The movement -- which transformed the BJP from a fringe group to a national power under Advani's leadership -- has become increasingly polarized, particularly since the BJP-led government lost power last May.

Staunch hard-liners in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP's parent organization, have criticized the party's peace overtures to rival Pakistan. The RSS chief also said last month that Advani and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee should step down and make way for younger leaders.

But the most recent trouble began last week when Advani left on his history-making trip to Karachi, the Pakistani city where he was born when Britain still ruled the subcontinent.

It was a surprising trip: Advani had long been disliked in Muslim-majority Pakistan as the man responsible for a nationwide campaign that led to the 1992 razing by a Hindu mob of a 16th century Indian mosque, sparking weeks of bloody communal clashes.

But his trip, which was aimed at improving relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors, marked a week in which he reinvented himself. "The best week of my whole life," he called it.

The man who had long slammed Pakistan for aiding Islamic militant groups in Kashmir spoke of friendship between the two nations. He endeared himself to alumni from his former high school, St. Patrick's, in Karachi.

Most importantly, he visited the mausoleum of the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and left calling him a leader who believed Hindus and Muslims should live together peacefully.

"My respectful homage to this great man," Advani wrote in mausoleum's visitors' book.

That brought him praise from Pakistan.

"His remarks ... have given him a new look in Pakistan," said Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "The people have forgotten his old face and they were looking at a new Advani."

But Advani's statements created a storm in Hindu-majority India, where people do not associate Jinnah with secularism.

Many people blame Jinnah for causing the partition of India and the creation of the new overwhelmingly Muslim nation of Pakistan when British colonialists divided the subcontinent at independence in 1947. The partition led to the killings of an estimated 1 million Hindus and Muslims in communal riots and the displacement of 10 million. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence, two over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Yet Jinnah said in his public speeches after Pakistan's founding that the new nation belonged to all religions, not just Muslims.

Advani responded to the criticism with his resignation on Tuesday, apparently writing the letter even before he arrived home.

"I have not said or done anything in Pakistan which I need to retract or review," Advani said.

While the BJP had yet to make an official statement, it appeared likely that his resignation would be accepted.

"He stood by his resignation, though we are pleading with him to accept our requests and to take back his resignation," BJP general-secretary Venkaiah Naidu said at a news conference.

Naidu slammed the sharp comments against Advani by the BJP's Hindu allies, who called him a "traitor" and celebrated his resignation with firecrackers.

"The BJP strongly disapproves of the statements ... the language used is totally objectionable, not expected from a nationalist organization," Naidu said.



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