Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Indian prime minister whose image as a liberal and moderate belied his Hindu nationalist roots
ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE, the former Prime Minister of India, who has died aged 93, spent most of his 50 odd years as a politician in opposition before being chosen as his country’s 13th Prime Minister in 1996; originally regarded as a hard-line Hindu nationalist, he came to be widely viewed as the moderate face of the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A mild-mannered man recognised as one of his country’s leading orators and poets in Hindi, Vajpayee was active in the Hindu nationalist movement for longer than any other leader of his party; yet uniquely among senior figures in the BJP, whose Hindu revivalist ideology still alarms India’s secular elite, Vajpayee emerged as a statesman capable of transcending his political roots. His opponents often described him as the “right man in the wrong party”, a liberal in the Nehru mould.
Vajpayee practised the politics of accommodation. He was among the first politicians to propose the idea of coalition governments, long before they became unavoidable in India. He urged his colleagues to participate in state-level coalitions as far back as 1967, a strategy which enabled the Hindu nationalists to come to power for the first time in 1977, ending decades of Congress Party rule.
Vajpayee became foreign minister under the short-lived administration of Morarji Desai. He also played a moderating role in key campaigns of the Hindu nationalists, including a movement in the 1960s to ban cow slaughter, an affront to Muslims.
In the 1990s opinion polls routinely showed that while just a quarter of the electorate supported the BJP, between 40 and 50 per cent felt that Vajpayee would make the best prime minister, eclipsing Sonia Gandhi, heiress to the Nehru-gandhi dynasty.
As a Hindu nationalist, Vajpayee would naturally have been expected to take an uncompromising line with Pakistan over Kashmir, yet as Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, told him when he became prime minister for a second time in 1998, “Pakistan’s relations with India were never as warm as they were when you were foreign secretary in the 1970s.” He seemed the sort of man with whom Pakistan could do business, and was also trusted by many Indian Muslims who feared the BJP.
Vajpayee’s main motivation seemed to be the desire to see India accepted into the club of the world’s great powers. In 1998 he braved international condemnation by ordering nuclear tests to go ahead; and he lobbied unsuccessfully for India to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. He saw India’s constant jousting with Pakistan as detracting from these goals, although he had to tread a careful line to avoid antagonising core supporters wanting a more confrontational approach.
The son of a schoolteacher, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on Christmas Day 1924 into an upper caste Brahmin family in the princely state of Gwalior (in what is now Madhya Pradesh). He was educated at Victoria (now Lax Mibai) College in Madhya Pradesh and at DAV College in Uttar Pradesh, where he gained a degree in Political Science.
Vajpayee won his spurs when he was imprisoned briefly in 1942 for taking part in the “Quit India” campaign against British rule, though he was not a close supporter of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Soon after his imprisonment, he came in contact with the secretive Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the fundamentalist quasi-military organisation founded in 1925 to protect Hinduism from Islam, and which later became a grassroots element of the BJP. Like many RSS members, he never married so as to dedicate his life to the nation, though unlike his more austere colleagues, he drank alcohol and in later life was said to have had a relationship with a married woman.
In 1948, following Gandhi’s assassination by an RSS activist for his policy of appeasement towards Muslims, Vajpayee was again briefly imprisoned, in spite of having condemned the killing in a newspaper.
For a while he studied law, but gave up to become a journalist. His stint as editor of the monthly journal Rashtra Dharma, the weekly magazine Panchjanya and the dailies Swadesh and Veer Arjun was distinguished by his passionate espousal of nationalism.
In the early 1950s he came under the influence of Dr Shayama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) party, who wanted stronger measures to stop the exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) because of atrocities there. Vajpayee, who had been his private secretary when he died in 1953, decided to carry on his work.
Vajpayee was one of only four BJS MPS elected to the second Lok Sabha (Parliament) in 1957, becoming leader of the BJS parliamentary party the same year. He made his presence felt through effective oratory and soon became a star attraction. In June 1975 he was arrested, along with other political leaders, and kept in custody during the entire span of the prime minister Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, which lasted until April 1977.
He emerged from prison as one of the stalwarts who forged the Janata Party-led coalition that defeated the Congress for the first time in 1977, under the leadership of the 82-year-old Morarji Desai. Desai made Vajpayee his foreign minister, and though his tenure was short-lived due to the government’s collapse two years later, it was marked by several historic firsts.
He became the first Indian Foreign Minister to address the UN General Assembly in Hindi. Rather more importantly, he surprised political observers by embarking on a sustained charm offensive with Pakistan which involved easing visa restrictions and proposing a non-aggression pact.
The collapse of India’s first noncongress experiment saw Vajpayee launching the Bharatiya Janata Party, an amalgamation of the Janata party and the BJS. He served as the BJP’S president for the first five years of its existence but in the elections of 1984 the BJP won just two seats in the Lok Sabha, and Vajpayee lost his. He was replaced by LK Advani, who steered the BJP in a more aggressive direction.
Re-elected to the 10th Lok Sabha in 1991, Vajpayee showed his liberal leanings again when in December 1992 LK Advani orchestrated the Hindu fundamentalist march on the Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. Rioters demolished the mosque which Hindu radicals claimed had been built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. There was resentment at Vajpayee’s decision to condemn the campaign, but moderates rallied behind him and in 1993 he became leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha.
By this time he was widely regarded as an elder statesman whose best days were behind him. In 1996, however, he was thrust into the limelight when he was asked to arbitrate in an unexpected rebellion within the BJP in the western state of Gujarat.
Having dealt with that successfully, that May he went on to lead the BJP to a coalition-led victory over the Congress Party. But his government was weak, and his stint as prime minister lasted only 13 days as his party failed to muster the required support on the floor of the house.
The lack of a powerful majority – and reliance on coalition partners – again hampered Vajpayee’s second 13-month stint in power from March 1998. His failure to manage the international fallout from India’s nuclear tests in May that year caused disunity which ended in the dissolution of Parliament.
Subsequent attempts to wind down regional tensions seemed dashed when, in May 1999, India launched air strikes and ground assaults against what it said were Pakistan-backed infiltrators in Indian-held Kashmir.
Paradoxically the government’s very blunders enabled Vajpayee to bolster his image as a candidate for prime minister. In October 1999 he fought a presidential-style election, projecting himself as the statesman who had defended India’s honour by conducting nuclear tests and going to the brink of war with Pakistan. Opposition parties failed to form an alternative government and Vajpayee was returned to power.
But he risked a serious rift with his militant mentors when, as the price for building a coalition government, he agreed to forfeit the BJP’S most cherished goals – scrapping the separate civil code for the country’s Muslims; abolishing special autonomy for Kashmir and building a Hindu temple on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid.
Within six months of his coming to power, tensions threatened to erupt into internecine warfare after the RSS vetoed several cabinet candidates proposed by Vajpayee, forcing him to appoint BJP hardliners to key ministries. The attacks on Vajpayee suddenly stopped, however, after the RSS had apparently been warned that the government might probe allegations of tax evasion against the organisation.
Vajpayee’s governing coalition remained relatively stable, even though the image of his party was tarnished by an arms bribery scandal.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Vajpayee was one of the first leaders to throw his support behind the American-led coalition. However, Washington’s decision to declare Islamabad a “close ally” in its war against the Taliban aroused deep resentment among Hindu hardliners. Vajpayee’s leadership was put to the test in December 2001, when an Islamic terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in Delhi left 14 dead, including the assailants, leading to demands by BJP members for retaliatory attacks on Pakistan. The situation required great skill on Vajpayee’s part to remain in office.
He responded to the attacks by threatening air strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan and ordering full-scale mobilisation of India’s military on its 2,000 mile border with Pakistan. Yet despite India’s undoubted military superiority over its neighbour he was careful to stop short of outright war.
This time, Vajpayee completed a full five-year term as prime minister, but in 2004, to general surprise, he was swept out of office by voters unconvinced by a slick media campaign emphasising the country’s economic success with the slogan “India Shining”.
He stepped down from active politics the following year, while remaining a revered figure within the BJP, celebrated as the “Great Connector” for his inclusive vision. The Indian government awarded him its highest honours, including, in 2015, the Bharat Ratna.
In retirement he lived in a bungalow in a leafy enclave of Lutyens’s Delhi. Before his health failed, he would reserve early mornings for a walk in the garden with his dogs, and evenings were not complete without several shots of whisky, followed by a hearty dinner. He also enjoyed music, and watching Indian movies. But he became increasingly frail after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2009.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee adopted a daughter, who survives him.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, born December 25 1924, died August 16 2018