Aug. 19: The party that swears by the Ramayan was grappling tonight with an astonishing retelling of the epic in which Hanuman has metamorphosed into Ravana and whose slaying is being seen as only a precursor to a greater war.

Jaswant Singh was today unceremoniously expelled from the BJP for the stated offence of praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his new book, the sword not falling on a cliched night of long knives but in daylight over that faceless executioner called telephone.

The Darjeeling MP’s 30 years with a party he described as his “house” — and centuries-old courtesy that is the hallmark of the culture the BJP professes to represent — were swept away in one fell swoop.

BJP president Rajnath Singh broke the news of the expulsion — rubber-stamped by the BJP Parliamentary Board this morning — to Jaswant over the phone at a hotel in Shimla, where the occasional author had gone to attend a chintan baithak of his party.

“He has been expelled. From now onwards, he will not be a member of any body of the party or be an office bearer,” Rajnath said.

Jaswant, an outsider despite his long association with the party as he had never been part of the RSS, later reacted with allegories the Sangh parivar should find easy to relate to and hard to live down. “I was a Hanuman. Now I am being treated like Ravana,” said a “saddened and hurt” Jaswant.

The summary expulsion is being attributed to a forcible intervention by the RSS. The Sangh apparently asked the party president to send a clear message that any compromise with ideology was out of question, setting the tone for the baithak. Some leaders, especially L.K. Advani’s close aides, had advocated a moderate political project as a recipe for winning Young India.

Late tonight, the Narendra Modi government banned Jaswant’s book in Gujarat, citing critical references to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The book, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, says Pakistan’s founder was secular and not responsible for Partition.

Rajnath claimed he had told Jaswant yesterday not to reach Shimla. But Jaswant suggested otherwise. “It would have been better if I was shown the courtesy of Advaniji or Rajnath calling me personally to convey the decision. I would not have refused. I have never refused,” Jaswant said.

The silence of Advani, who too had run foul of the Sangh establishment for quoting from a Jinnah speech and had to give up the formal reins of the BJP, must have rankled more than the telephone cut.

Although Jaswant has always been close to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he shared cordial relations with Advani, too, often referring to him as “Lalji” and standing up for him during the earlier Jinnah controversy.

Advani’s circumspection, which made many a BJP leader recall similar spells of restraint when Govindacharya and Uma Bharti crossed swords with the then leadership, fuelled speculation whether he was bracing for the Jinnah artillery to gradually swivel towards him.

Sources said the real target of the expulsion could be Advani as questions are bound to be raised by his critics why he was being retained as leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha as he had never really dissociated himself from the comments on Jinnah.

Arun Shourie, a dissident who was not taken to the baithak, has already stirred the pot by asking Advani to clarify his views on Jinnah. If Murli Manohar Joshi picks up the thread and the issue gains momentum, it will be difficult for Advani to avoid a post-mortem of the Lok Sabha defeat.

But other sources felt that Jaswant’s expulsion at the very start of the three-day baithak could be a ploy by the Advani camp to deflect attention from other pressing issues — the poll debacle and its reasons and the change of leadership.