BJP's Jinnah jinx hits Jaswant Singh

India has seen two remarkable leaders of the BJP making two different Jinnah statements, but getting two different results.

The BJP's iron man and its Hindutva face, L K Advani, was an unlikely candidate to break the party's unwritten code on Mohd Ali Jinnah when he praised Pakistan's father of the nation while on a visit to the neighbouring country in 2005.

Speaking in Karachi, Advani called Jinnah a 'secular' person.

Was Advani overwhelmed by a return to the place of his birth? Or by Pakistani hospitality? Or was it considered a political statement?

Either way, the senior BJP leader returned to a hostile party and was forced to quit as its president.

But the scars never healed. As recently as January this year, he was still giving explanations, maintaining that he was influenced by the 1947 comments of a Hindu spiritual leader.

In his blog, Advani wrote, "In a subconscious way, Swamiji was to play a decisive and contributory role in my own remarks about Jinnah when I went to Pakistan."

At the time, Jaswant Singh supported him. And despite Advani's troubles he saw no problem in writing a book on Jinnah.

Speaking to NDTV about his book, Singh had said, "This is my research, why should there be a problem? During partition it was thought that this would bring peace, it never did."

But the irony is that Jaswant has been turfed out, and the decision is backed by the man who survived the BJP's Jinnah jinx.