L.K. Advani, the newly-reappointed president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), addresses a press conference at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Oct. 20. Advani has signaled a return to hardline Hindutva for the party that has suffered several electoral debacles in the recent past, including in the April-May general elections that brought the Congress Party back to power after eight years. (Photo: AFP)

NEW DELHI : Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani, who turns 77 next month, took the reins of his election-battered party for the third time on Oct. 19 and immediately signaled a return to its core hindutva ideology.

Advani, who took charge in the absence of able younger leaders to shoulder the responsibility, became the new BJP president after M. Venkaiah Naidu –– the youngest party chief ever –– bowed out in the wake of successive election defeats, the latest being in Maharashtra.

Advani, Leader of Opposition in Parliament and a former deputy prime minister, was welcomed to a festooned party headquarters with the bursting of crackers, noisy band music and victory slogans as he came accompanied by Naidu.

The party is clearly hoping that Advani, credited with bringing the BJP to national prominence two decades ago, returns to the helm at a time when it is demoralized after losing two major elections –– the April-May parliamentary elections as well as the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

With the younger leaders locked in a bitter war of one-upmanship, it is left to Advani to set things in order and make his struggling outfit battle-ready for elections in five states, including Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana next year.

“The formalities of the change of leadership are over. Party workers should think about the party’s future now,” said Advani, addressing functionaries after taking charge.

Often called India’s prime minister-in-waiting and the “Iron Man” of the BJP, Advani took his party from a two-MP presence in the Lok Sabha in 1984 to power in New Delhi a little over a decade later.

A favorite of the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Advani was born in Karachi, now in Pakistan. He joined the RSS when he just was 15.

His anointment as the BJP president in 1986 was the start of the party’s rise on the pro-Hindu plank of building a temple at the site of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya that Hindu nationalists believe was the birthplace of Lord Ram.

In his tenure, the BJP won 89 seats in the 1989 elections and, two years later, emerged as the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha. In 1996 it became the single largest party, and Vajpayee –– Advani did not contest the election following a corruption charge –– became the prime minister of a short-lived government.

In 1998 and 1999, Advani remained behind Vajpayee. Later, as deputy prime minister in the previous BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), he wielded unparalleled power both in the government and the party. Though his personal popularity has been limited –– he has ranked poorly in opinion polls on probable prime ministers –– he enjoys the implicit trust of his party men. For a dispirited BJP, Advani is the sole hope for a return to its days of glory.

A day after he took over, Advani, at a press conference, said: “They (the RSS) have welcomed my taking over the party.” He was responding to a question about the RSS’s charge that the BJP was losing elections as it had abandoned its core ideology.

He also indicated that he would lead the charge against the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by the Congress Party, especially targeting its Italian born president, Sonia Gandhi.

Although the last couple of election results have suggested that the BJP’s strategy of targeting Gandhi’s foreign origin has backfired, Advani seemed determined to take the battle to the Congress camp. “It is a sad irony, and a deeply worrying development, that the Congress Party, which was at the forefront of India’s freedom struggle, has surrendered itself to the care of a dynasty, now headed by a person of foreign origin,” he said.