One should not just carried away by charisma and longevity of leaders. The best way to consider their aptitude is to evaluate their performance. As India's home minister for six years, is there much to write home about the gentleman who is compared with the venerable Sardar VP Patel? Despite all talk of pseudo secularism, how many times did Advaniji visit West Bengal as home minister and to what extent was the infiltration checked? What steps did he take to end the Ayodhaya imbroglio? Wasn't his stand on Ayodhya any different from that of the VP Singh government? Wasn't India's Parliament attacked and IC-814 hijacked and terrorists freed during his Home Ministership? In 1998-99, didn't the worst spell of violence in Kashmir after restoration of democracy in the troubled province in 1996 took place when he was the incharge of internal security? Didn't the messiah of Hindutva not start organizing Iftar parties in the last year of his Deputy Prime Ministership/Home Ministership? Finally, wasn't the bandobast he organized against the kar sevaks in Ayodhaya as Home Minister, the toughest ever, worse than what they experienced under the so called "Mullah" Mulayam Singh?
