The dramatic I-won't-take-it-lying-down resignation and the later meek surrender to Hindu hardliners marks the end of an era for the L.K. Advani we have known for two decades.

If Advani loyalists think the man or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he heads has emerged stronger after the unsavoury row involving Pakistan's "father" Mohammed Ali Jinnah, they are horribly wrong.

Even when he left for Pakistan early in June, Advani looked every inch a confident man, a politician who some day would get to rule this country a la his long-time friend and self-confessed moderate Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

But Advani is no Vajpayee, and this episode has proved he can never be one.

When Vajpayee, the man who has earned remarkable acceptability from BJP's numerous allies despite never hiding his commitment to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), visited Jinnah's memorial in Islamabad, there was no outcry.

After all, it has become customary for leaders visiting Pakistan to pay their obeisance to Jinnah, one who is widely blamed in India for the 1947 partition of the sub-continent that triggered so much human misery.

People visiting the Mao mausoleum in Beijing are not expected to adhere to Maoism. You can visit the Jinnah tombstone, place a wreath and come away without offending anyone's sensibilities.

It is as much a formality, as much a military dictator bowing to Mahatma Gandhi's memorial at the Rajghat here.

Advani, himself a victim of the 1947 India split, should have known better.

The original support base of the RSS-sponsored Jana Sangh, the BJP's predecessor, lay in northern India, mostly among the Hindu trading class and the Punjabi middle class that was uprooted from Pakistan.

They never forgave Jinnah for what his ideology did to them, and one can't fault them for that.

Those born after 1947 were taught in schools that but for the uncompromising Jinnah the India one knew until Aug 15, 1947, a physical entity that stretched from the Afghan border all the way up to Myanmar, would have remained in tact.

Suddenly, whatever the provocation and whatever his motive, Advani uttered words that seemed to turn history upside down. It is doubtful if Advani visualised that he was triggering a volcanic burst.

As India and Pakistan make peace and see the human side of one another after five decades of hostility, some things won't change - at least that easily. The popular Indian assessment of Jinnah is one such thing.

Right from 1986 when Advani became the BJP president replacing a Vajpayee, the man from Karachi has been making waves. Even when he gave the prime ministerial baton to Vajpayee in 1996, he was still the livewire.

The situation was no different even after BJP was shocked and stunned by the 2004 electoral verdict. In these two decades, Advani came to be known as the aggressive Hindutva champion, a man who would have saved India had he been around when Jinnah was in the thick of it all.

And so, when Advani said what he said in Karachi, there was no way the constituency he had nurtured and which helped him become what he has become was going to forgive him.

The face-saving BJP resolution issued Friday is a resounding slap for the Advani who was seemingly trying to change ideological tracks.

It is a lesson for those, in India and Pakistan, who want to try unexplored territory - "out of the box", as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would say - in their quest for peace.

(Narayan Swamy, the chief news editor of IANS, can be reached at narayan.swamy@eians.com)