ISLAMABAD – Almost seven decades after he died, Pakistan’s founding fatherMohammad Ali Jinnah continues to trigger controversies — be it over praiseby some BJP leaders or merely because of a portrait of him hanging on auniversity wall.

The BJP is working overtime to put a lid on a row, which was ignited afterits leader and Uttar Pradesh minister Swami Prasad Maurya called Jinnah a”great man” after some party leaders sought removal of his portrait fromAligarh Muslim Univeristy, but it is only a reminder of the bigger stormsthe Pakistan’s founder has caused in the saffron party.

Jinnah, who became became the Governor-General of Pakistan after partition,died in September 1948.

His praise of Jinnah in 2005 had cost L K Advani — the longest serving BJPpresident — his job as the party chief eventually and, many believe, itcaused a permanent strain in his relations with the RSS from which he couldnever recover.

The BJP stalwart’s tall stature within the party and impeccable Hindutvacredentials as the leader behind the Ram temple movement helped him weatherthe storm and remain a formidable force for several years.

There was no such comfort for party veteran Jaswant Singh, who wassummarily expelled from the organisation in 2009 for his praise ofPakistan’s founder.

On a sentimental trip to Pakistan in June 2005, Advani, who was born inKarachi in 1927, had showered praise on Jinnah, calling him a great man andsuggesting that he was a secular leader.

In a visit to the Pakistan founder’s mausoleum in Karachi, the then BJPpresident wrote, “There are many people who leave an in-erasable stamp onhistory. But there are very few who actually create history.”

Advani further wrote, “Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rareindividual. In his early years, Sarojini Naidu, a leading luminary ofIndia’s freedom struggle, described Mr Jinnah as an ‘Ambassador ofHindu-Muslim Unity’.”

Continuing with his encomium, he said, “His address to the ConstituentAssembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is a classic, a forceful espousalof a Secular State in which every citizen would be free to practise his ownreligion but the State shall make no distinction between one citizen andanother on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man.”

Still reeling from its shock defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the BJPwas convulsed from its president’s praise of a man, who has been a hatefigure for the Hindutva movement.

The party tried to distance itself from his comments while its ideologicalmentor RSS publicly expressed its disagreement with Advani’s statement.

Taken aback, he declined to withdraw his statement but offered to resignimmediately upon his return to India. He continued for some months beforeRajnath Singh replaced him in December 2005.

Many believed at that time that Advani’s lavish praise of Jinnah was drivenby his desire to shun his Hindutva hardline image and project a soft andmoderate image of him as a leader of a party keen to mend relations withPakistan.

The ghost of Jinnah came back to haunt the BJP again when Jaswant Singh, aparty veteran who held external affairs and finance portfolios in theVajpayee government between 1998-2004, showed praise on the man blamed bymost Indians for division of India in 1947.

In his book ‘Jinnah- India, Partition, Independence’, Singh blamed theCongress and its stalwart Jawahar Lal Nehru for the partition and saidJinnah was “demonised”.

Gujarat had also banned the book for its critical reference to SardarPatel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the state’s chief minister.

Singh, never a favourite of the party hardliners, was expelled from theparty. Advani later played a key role in admitting him back into the party.

BJP leaders believe that praise for Jinnah by leaders like Advani and Singhunderlined their discomfort with the party’s hardline image as theybelieved that it affected the party’s adversely in elections.

Under Modi and Amit Shah, the BJP is unambiguous and unapologetic about itsstand on Jinnah, that he was the man responsible for India’s division.

Asserting this line of thinking, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanathyesterday said in a TV interview, in the midst of the AMU controversy, that”Jinnah divided this country and How can we celebrate his achievements'”