Jinnah and the Demise of a Hindu Politician?

It seems scarcely credible that a few words about a man who died almost sixty years ago might undo a politician's career, tear apart a major party and dominate public debate in a nation for months. Yet, that is precisely what happened in India following the visit in 2005 by L.K. Advani, an eminent Hindu right wing leader, to the mausoleum of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan. This paper seeks to explain this extraordinary denouement in the light of the powerful hold of nationalist histories on the imaginations of post-colonial Indians and their perceptions of Pakistan and its founder, dooming Advani's politically motivated attempt to side-step this long-entrenched historiographical legacy.