Why has the BJP patriarch, L K Advani’s chariot come to a halt? You know how it is with these old vehicles, you need to keep servicing them. And despite the chariot starting to make creaking noises, it seems no one in the BJP was ready to oil it. Seems the BJP no longer wants to trundle along on a rath, when it can speed along in a Tata Nano.

Hints of falling out from favour could be seen when Advani gave the two-day vichar sammelan of the BJP a miss – supposedly because he had a stomach infection. This was followed by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi being made the chairman of BJP’s poll committee. Which resulted in the 85-year-old veteran penning an emotional letter saying that he was quitting all party posts. Nowhere in the letter did he take Modi’s name and cited the “personal agenda” of the party members for his decision. His letter said that BJP no longer abided by the “founding principles” forged by its founding members “Shyam Prasad Mookerji, Pandit Deendayalji and Vajpayeeji”.

Sniff Sniff! How sad for a man to abandon the party which he had nurtured for decades. Well, this isn’t the first time that Advani is quitting from a party post. In fact with this final swansong, he has scored a hat-trick in quitting. In June 2005, he resigned after RSS asked him to step down for praising Jinnah and calling him a “secular leader” in Pakistan. Seven months later, after he’d already withdrawn his fist resignation, he again resigned on the same issue.

Sounding a little Ram Jethmalani-esque. Far from it. He was once the blue-eyed boy of the RSS and the entire sangh parivar. He was a staunch proponent of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology from his formative days. The loh purush was the real saffron strongman.

But Advani didn’t start off as a politician. He was a high school teacher in Karachi and joined active politics when he was elected the Secretary of the RSS. And that’s when his very long journey in politics began. Over the coming years, he joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and finally became its President. The Jana Sangh then became the Janata Party and thanks to the Emergency, the Janata Party came to power and Advani became Minister of Information and Broadcasting. The Janata Party then became the Bharatiya Janata Party with LK Advani representing it in Rajya Sabha.

In 1986, Advani became the president of BJP and was responsible for introducing the more aggressive form of Hindutva and the party defeated the Congress in the next elections. And in 1990, he set off on the infamous rath yatra across the country to educate citizens about Ayodhya and the Ram Janmabhoomi movement – (different matter that it was a Toyota car redesigned as a rath, but it’s the thought that counts). After two years of arduous campaigning, his yatra ended in Ayodhya and was followed by the Babri Masjid demolition by thousands of kar sevaks – an event that has since cast a blot on the secular fabric of the country. In his memoir, My Country My Life, Advani called this rath yatra, “an exhilarating period in my political life”.

However, like all good parties, even BJP was wracked by inner politicking, and in the next assembly elections the Congress won. Yet, in 1998, the BJP came back to power as part of the National Democratic Alliance and Advani became Deputy Prime Minister. However, in a clear incidence of deja vu, reports of multiple scams led to NDA losing the 2004 assembly elections. From 2004 to 2009, he was the leader of the Opposition.

So how did he go from heading the demolition of the Babri masjid to be being touted as a “secular” leader? Advani’s never accepted his role in the demolition. During his appearances before the Liberhan commission, which was formed to probe the turn of events that led to the demolition of Babri Masjid and subsequent riots, he insisted that the act was the work of “a few hundred people” who didn’t listen to the appeals made by leaders to come down from the domes of the masjid. He also denied having made any provocative speech at the site of the dispute. Seventeen years after it was formed, the Liberhan Commission held him responsible for the demolition and for having full knowledge of the scale of damage that would take place on December 6, 1992.

Talk about a chariot of fire. Well, that rath definitely fired up the BJP’s vote-bank. The rath yatra which started from Somnath in Gujarat and ended in Ayodhya worked wonders for BJP. Having whipped up strong Hindutva sentiments across the country, the incident increased the party’s vote-bank from 85 in 1989 to 120 in the 1991 general elections. Eventually, BJP occupied the position of principal Opposition in Parliament. Advani also played a major role in bringing NDA to power in 1998.

So what resulted in him losing his sheen for the party? After the humiliating defeat of 2004, Advani consciously started working towards a secular image because he thought that to remain relevant in India it was important for the BJP to distance itself or appear to distance itself from RSS.  In 2005, during a visit to Pakistan, Advani stunned everyone by showering praises on Jinnah and calling him a secular leader. It earned him the wrath of the RSS and cost him his post of BJP president. Again, during the 2009 general elections when he was fielded as the Party’s prime ministerial candidate under the tagline of “nidar neta nirnayak sarkar”, he failed miserably.

How come that didn’t end his political career?  You’re underestimating his tenacity. The eternal yatri again undertook a yatra called Jan Chetana Yatra in 2011. This time, the yatra was not about Hindutva but about corruption. Trying to cash in on the Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement, he flagged off his yatra from socialist icon Jaya Prakash Narayan’s birthplace in Chhapra district of Bihar. And there was no RSS or Modi to flank him during the yatra. It was Nitish Kumar, a “secular leader”, who flagged off the campaign by the former Hindutva icon, Advani.

Did his efforts of showing himself as pro-development and pro-secularism bear any fruit? The fruits are for all of us to see. He was sidelined in the party like never before. Ironically, the Modi who is his nemesis today was once his disciple. During a similar chintan shivir in Goa almost a decade ago he saved Modi from the wrath of Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was backed by Shanta Kumar, Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie to oust Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister after the 2002 riots. However, Modi is no Ekalavya to cut off his thumb as guru dakshina. Even Advani’s protégée Sushma Swaraj seems to have switched loyalties. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan who he had compared to Vajpayee has not voiced support for the beleaguered leader either.

So, will the BJP abandon him for good? Well they are putting up a good show of cajoling the grand old man back into the party folds. But no one is ready to accept any of his demands – which include making Modi “convener” of the poll panel instead of Chairman and to form a parallel poll committee.

The cosmetic sympathy for Advani may just wear out soon.