New Delhi, Aug 19 - Veteran leader Jaswant Singh, thrown out by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday, was a moderate face in a party known to be a right-wing organisation ever since its inception.

In contrast to several hawkish senior leaders, Jaswant Singh's was a moderate voice that represented the English-speaking, progressive view in the party that had helped it to reach a wider urban constituency beyond its conservative, Hindu chauvinist, trader base.

He was among the few BJP leaders who did not mince words in criticising the Ram Sene, a right-wing fundamentalist outfit whose members attacked a group of women in a Mangalore pub in January this year.

Similarly, during the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002, Jaswant Singh was one of the very few leaders who avoided coming out in defence of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

After the Mangalore attack, Singh said in a media interview: 'It (the assault on women in the pub by Sri Rama Sene activists) is an obscenity. Who gives them the moral right to police our society? It can only be possible in the absence of any understanding about our culture, ethos and liberal values.'

'I cannot countenance efforts to Talibanise the Hindu society,' he said, when his own party leaders were giving conflicting reactions, sometimes defending the attack on women in the pub and sometimes washing their hands of it.