Chronicles of a death foretold

There are many breathless stories being told about former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure in the Janata Party government. But Vajpayee’s media advisor, Ashok Tandon has a different take on the whole period. In a column after Vajpayee’s death he wrote that it was an open secret that Prime Minister Morarji Desai didn’t want the external affairs portfolio to be allotted to Vajpayee. The former Jana Sangh, which merged its identity with the Janata Party, was allotted three cabinet ministerships. Vajpayee was one (the other two being LK Advani and Nanaji Deshmukh, the latter bowing out in favour of another Madhya Pradesh nominee). External Affairs was Vajpayee’s first choice and Desai had no option but to give it to him — which he did in bad grace. The sensationalist news magazine Blitz then reported on “Prime Minister Desai’s dirty tricks department”. Vajpayee faced unrelenting assault on his personal life.

Many in the Congress party also unleashed a campaign of character assassination against Vajpayee including allegations that he never took part in the 1942 Quit India Movement and that he had apologised to the British government when arrested as a student. Desai apparently was so nosy that he kept tabs on his cabinet colleagues and also on the then Janata Party president Chandrashekhar. Vajpayee’s greatest coup was his trip to Moscow: A visit that bestowed the Soviet stamp of approval on the Janata government. In the light of all these facts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi might do well to review his opinion of Desai as one of the ‘tallest leaders’ of Gujarat whom ‘the Congress humiliated’.