The Bhishma Pitamah of Indian Politics
An acclaimed poet, an extraordinary orator, a brilliant journalist, a Hindu nationalist but also a peace-talking moderate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was elected as the prime minister of India three times.
Also known as the “Bhisma Pitamah of Indian politics”, with his neatly combed grey hair and smooth, plump face, Vajpayee was the voice of reason and rationality—qualities that won him admirers across the Parliament and also made him the PM when the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) needed a moderate rationalist person who could bridge the gap between their Hindutva ideologies and secularism. He passed away at the age of 93 on August 16, 2018.
Early life
Born to Krishna Devi and Krishna Bihari Vajpayee, a school teacher and a poet, on December 25, 1924, in Gwalior, Atal Bihari Vajpayee excelled in academics from a young age--graduating with distinction in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. He got an early start in public life when he got involved in the Quit India Movement of 1942 and was even arrested for it. He was already a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) since 1939, and after finishing Master’s in Political Science from Kanpur, he began to work full-time for the RSS.
Political career
Vajpayee was elected 10 times to the Lok Sabha from four different States (the first time in 1957 from Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh), and was twice a Member of the Rajya Sabha in a long career spanning 50 years.
Vajpayee was among the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), of which he was the president from 1968 to 1972. When the BJP was formed in 1980, Vajpayee was its first president.
He served three terms as the Prime Minister of India: first for a period of 13 days in 1996, then for 13 months from 1998 to 1999, and finally, for a full term from 1999 to 2004. A member of the BJP, he was the first Indian prime minister who was not a member of the Indian National Congress party to have served a full five-year term in office.
He served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh until 2009 when he retired from active politics due to health reasons.
Achievements
It was during his tenure as prime minister that India carried out the Pokhran-ii nuclear tests in 1998. Vajpayee sought to improve diplomatic relations with Pakistan, travelling to Lahore by bus to meet with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif. Soon after, the Kargil War (also known as Operation Vijay), took place between May and July 1999, after Pakistani soldiers under the guise of Kashmiri militants infiltrated the Line of Control and captured strategic peaks.
Vajpayee then sought to restore relations through engaging with President Pervez Musharraf, inviting him to India for a summit at Agra. This eased the tension created by the 1998 nuclear tests.
In March 2000, Clinton became the first US President to visit India in 22 year –his visit was hailed as a significant milestone in relations between the two nations, leading to expansion in economic ties between the two countries.
Vajpayee’s government introduced many domestic economic and infrastructural reforms-- the National Highways Development Project and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan campaign.
Personal life
Vajpayee remained a bachelor his entire life. He adopted and raised as his own child Namita Bhattacharya, the daughter of long-time friend.
A noted Hindi poet, Vajpayee’s published works include Kaidi Kavirai Ki Kundalian and Amar Aag Hai.
He suffered a stroke in 2009 which impaired his speech. On June 11, 2018, he was admitted to AIIMS in critical condition following a kidney infection and he passed away on August 16, at the age of 93. Vajpayee was cremated with full state honours and over thousands of people and dignitaries attended his funeral procession. He was conferred India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee in 2015.
The government declared in 2014 that Vajpayee’s birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day.