In a party of unguided missiles, Lal Krishna Advani has been something of a constant. Bigwigs and small fry of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have thrown tantrums, and sometimes an odd flower-pot or two, but the septuagenarian leader has never been one of them. Atal Bihari Vajpayee may have threatened every now and then to resign, Uma Bharati raved before television cameras and M. Venkaiah Naidu penned an emotional outburst ? but Advani has always been sanguine.

In fact, old scribes hold that the only visible sign of emotion in the former BJP president is when he addresses journalists. When he has nothing to say to them, Advani merely walks away. But when he has a statement to make, he stands in front of them, and quietly rubs his hands.

Advani hasn’t publicly rubbed his hands yet ? so the world still has no answers to the Advani conundrum: why someone always perceived as a hardliner in the party went all mushy in Pakistan. When Vajpayee flagged off the peace bus to Lahore, nobody was really surprised, for the former Prime Minister ? despite the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s spectre-raising views on the subject ? had spoken about brokering peace with Pakistan. But the metaphorical fez cap that Advani donned for his Pakistan trip late last month was an unexpected development, which explains why there is still high drama ? despite the fact that Advani seems to have survived to tell the tale ? over his Pakistan yatra.

The Advani drama kicked off when he came back from Pakistan last week to loud cries of protest. Demonstrations were organised in Gujarat, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia was, if possible, more vitriolic than ever. The BJP president resigned ? while, inexplicably, holding on to his two posts of leader of the Opposition and of the Parliamentary party ? when it became apparent that quite a few within the party supported the outcry against him. And, yesterday, he took back the resignation when a compromise resolution was inked ? which commended Advani while condemning the two-nation theory.

But friends of Advani ? and they seem to be really dwindling in number these days ? say that his controversial speech in Pakistan praising Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s vision of a secular Pakistan didn’t come as a surprise to those who know him. “He has been reading up on Jinnah for a while, and formulating his thoughts,” says a close associate.

Now that the first act of the play is over, theories are being aired on why Advani found it necessary to praise Jinnah. Many believe that with Vajpayee, the so-called moderate, on the margins of the party, Advani may have been eyeing what the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) endorses as the liberal spot in the BJP. Not surprisingly, when most members of the Sangh parivar were frothing at the mouth, the NDA praised Advani for his strong views on Jinnah.

Advani, an old student of St Patrick’s School in Karachi, could also have seen shades of Jinnah in himself. There are, on the face of it, a few similarities. Like the Gujarati Jinnah, who liked his bacon, Sindhi Advani is not a ritualistic man. A vegetarian and a sparse eater himself, Advani has no problems with mutton finding its way to the dining table, especially since he is keen that the family dine together.

Then, like Jinnah, Advani used the communal card openly to mark out his own space in politics. Which is why the man who doesn’t have a puja room at home and is not into daily rituals, found it necessary to start an electoral campaign with religious fervour in Khan Market’s Hanuman temple.

But whatever the reason, one thing is clear ? the Jinnah speech was not an off-the-cuff remark. “He always measures his words before he speaks,” says another old associate. “In a way, his actions are like those of a chess-player. He thinks of all the options and repercussions before taking his first step.”

Which is why Advani has always been a posterboy for the BJP. He started off as an RSS pracharak in Rajasthan, but is credited with building the party from scratch, after it had been reduced to a strength of two in Parliament. He nurtured a second line of command and went off on a rath yatra ? leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, ensuing bloodshed, and the electoral consolidation of the BJP.

Clearly, like a careful shatranji, Advani is going step by step. He first brought life to a moribund party, and then ensured that it lost its tag of a forum of untouchables after the fiasco of 1991, when not a single regional and secular party agreed to align with the BJP to form a government. “After the fall of the 13-day BJP government in 1996, he meticulously chalked out a plan to build ties with the leaders of regional parties,” says a former BJP minister.

Clearly, in move three, Advani is setting out to give himself a plank of political respectability. The man who likes watching James Bond in cinema and reading Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, talked about Jinnah making history, Advani may well have been hoping for a similar epithet for himself.