Saturday, June 11 2005 15:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM) today (Jun 11, 2005) said that L K Advani's resignation from the post of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief and its withdrawal underlines the fact that the party was "a creature of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)".

"Only those with illusions about the true nature of the party expected any defiance and break with the RSS ideology," CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said in a statement.

Observing that there was no surprise that the "latest intellectual effort to legitimise communal parties has fallen flat", Karat said the only good thing which has emerged out of the affair was that Indo-Pak relations continued to be on the path of progress.

On Advani's comments on Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the CPM leader said "Jinnah was demonised by the Hindu communalists as solely responsible for partition. Their version cannot be accepted by any objective view.

"At the same time, Hindu communalists made an equal contribution towards communalising politics and facilitating the two nation theory. In this category falls the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha of Savarkar," he said.

"The effort of Advani to depict Jinnah's advocacy of a tolerance of other religious communities within an Islamic State as a secular vision, is in line with his depiction of Savarkar and Hindutva as secular. Advani does not realise that it is not enough to decry a theocratic State to be secular," Karat said.