VAJPAYEE
was a man of many contradictions. The velvet glove that sheathed the iron fist. The moderate face of the hardline Sangh Parivar. A man of reason, restraint and resolution, the former prime minister will go down in history as the great amalgamator of the nation
In the supercomputer that our brain really is, there are terabytes of memories—a conglomeration of billions of experiences packed seemingly randomly into grey matter. Those that are unimportant lie forgotten in its deep recesses. But the ones that matter—the day you proposed to your partner, a tremendous success or failure, the death of a leader you revered—can be played back at will, in slow motion and in vivid detail. Ace athlete Milkha Singh once said that despite the lapse of over 50 years when he came fourth in the 400 metres event in the 1960 Rome Olympics, he could still run the entire race in his mind and even experience the sadness he felt at missing the chance to be the first Indian to win a track and field medal.
In his eventful life spanning 93 years, Atal Bihari Vajpayee experienced much triumph and tribulation. If we jog our collective memories, many such moments will float into view, vignettes we can freezeframe and dwell on. For, Vajpayee, whose cherubic demeanour resembled a benignly smiling Buddha, was a man of many contradictions, contrasts and even compromises. So, there was Vajpayee the Hawk, who blasted India out of its nuclear shackles by conducting the 1998 Pokharan tests and the next year waged war with Pakistan when its troops occupied the Kargil heights. And Vajpayee the Peacemaker, who was ever willing to talk to his enemies. He broke convention by travelling by bus to Lahore to greet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, shook hands in Agra with General Pervez Musharraf, who plotted Kargil and ousted Sharif in a coup soon after, and later flew to Beijing to sign a landmark agreement to sort out the border issue with China.
There was Vajpayee the Reformer, who rammed through a telecom revolution that drastically reduced the cost per minute of a call. And Vajpayee the Builder, who, like the Great Mughals, envisioned the Golden Quadrilateral highway to connect India. There was Vajpayee the Democrat, who successfully managed a coalition of diverse parties and interests in his third term and genuinely reached out to the opposition. And Vajpayee the Unifier, who won the hearts of Kashmiris with his insaniyat approach and emotional touch.
In person, too, Vajpayee was many-faceted. Unlike his RSS companions, he relished eating meat, enjoyed a drink, wrote poetry and lived in an unconventional household. His detachment was feigned—he was the boss without appearing to be one. He was ambitious, a wizard at outsmarting his rivals without being vindictive. Many felt he used renunciation of power as a means of reaffirmation. He snuffed a move by a section of the party to replace him with L.K. Advani by offering to quit as prime minister. He thought deeply, had granite calm and gave sage advice. He was a man of few words, but give him an audience, and he could hold them spellbound for hours with his oratory. Who can forget the opposition rally in Delhi’s Ramlila grounds in 1977 when the Emergency was lifted, when with eyes characteristically closed, Vajpayee said, “Khuli hawa mein zara saans to le lein, kab tak rahegi
azaadi kaun jaane (Let us breathe deeply the air of freedom, who knows how long it will last)”?
The grammar of his politics differed from those whose ideology he supported. He was considered the moderate face of the saffron-robed, trident-wielding army of the Sangh Parivar. The velvet glove that sheathed the iron fist. Many said he was the right man in the wrong party. To which he would retort that if the fruit was good, could the tree be bad? His enduring friendship with Advani, despite the pulls and pressures of power, would turn out to be a jodi and dosti after Bollywood’s heart. He disagreed with Advani’s rathyatra type of confrontationist politics but went along with the consensus. Like every leader, Vajpayee had his flaws too. He ignored his inner voice and compromised when it came to replacing Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister for his handling of the 2002 Godhra massacre and the riots thereafter.
Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ideologue K.N. Govindacharya once made the mistake of calling Vajpayee the mukhota (mask) of the party and paid a heavy personal price for his dismissive remark. Had he used it in the plural, he might have been forgiven. For, India remains a land of a billion contradictions. Any leader who rules it must wear many masks and reveal many faces to govern our vast and complex country successfully and be remembered respectfully for it.
So, where does Vajpayee figure in the pantheon of Indian prime ministers? A great leader is both a product of his circumstances and the decisions he takes to meet the challenges. When Vajpayee took charge, he had to deal with the volatile duality created by the 1991 reform process: of a rapidly expanding, aspirational middle class looking for better lifestyles, and impoverished farmers in the villages who were demanding basics like water, shelter and connectivity. The imperative was to reconcile the goals of social and economic equality by ensuring higher economic growth rates. This, in addition to managing the contradictions thrown up by an India that was deeply fragmented politically, economically and culturally. Not to mention the compulsions of the coalition governments he headed in all his three terms as prime minister. He handled all of this with gumption, grace and gravitas.
Every prime minister has searched for the wellspring they can tap into to revitalise and reinvigorate the nation. Vajpayee held that “the greatest curse, not merely of Indian politics but of national life as a whole, is the general incapacity to work together. Let’s learn to unite, instead of dividing, to create harmony where disharmony exists and to keep our self-interests and ego on a leash”. Vajpayee was the great amalgamator. The face of reason, restraint and resolution. He believed in moulding consensus, jettisoning narrow mindsets, reconciling diverse interests, knitting together disparate strands and respecting the rights of minorities for the greater goal of social harmony—for sarva dharma sama bhaav (an even disposition towards all religions). His reign strengthened the reform process and laid the foundations for the BJP to emerge as a serious alternative to the Congress. But Vajpayee’s most important legacy was that of a kinder, gentler and stronger nation. Of enlightened pluralism. This is a bequest we should do our best to sustain.
HIS DETACHMENT WAS ENTIRELY FEIGNED: VAJPAYEE WAS THE BOSS WITHOUT EVER APPEARING TO BE ONE