Strained RSS ties didn’t waver him
Uneasy, frosty and strained were some of the adjectives commonly used to characterise the relationship between AB Vajpayee when he was PM and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ideological mentor of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both sides — K.S. Sudarshan was the then RSS chief — made little effort to hide their differences. Yet, in the Sangh Parivaar, Vajpayee is feted today for the ease with which he straddled the roles of a political leader and an ideal Swayamsevak.
Vajpayee’s foreign policy, the firmness with which he kept the Sangh out of political decision making and his outreach to the minorities were distant from the RSS’s ideological positions on these issues. There were disagreements and even complaints from the RSS. Each time, the former Prime Minister prevailed.
The Sangh’s open criticism of his economic policies and his non-committal approach towards the construction of a Ram Temple on a disputed site in Ayodhya set him up for criticism, but his ideological moorings remained unwavering.
Former Rajya Sabha member and journalist HK Dua, who worked as media adviser to the ex-PM, recalls Vajpayee was a “man of consensus” and took the decision to improve ties with Pakistan, China and the US, which was out of line with the Sangh’s position.
“Despite Kargil, he went ahead and had talks with the author of the war Gen Parvez Musharraf, he wanted peace and to improve ties with the neighbour,” Dua said, recalling the Kargil conflict that followed months after Vajpayee’s bus journey to Pakistan. “He wanted to resolve the Kashmir issue and announced a unilateral ceasefire and spoke of having talks within the ambit of insaniyat ( humanity).”.
Discordant note between the Sangh and Vajpayee were con-
NEW DELHI:
spicuous over issues such as the Rath Yatra and over his response to the 2002 Gujarat riots, yet the communication channels were kept open, a senior RSS functionary said on condition of anonymity. “The Sangh was not very happy with his decision to hire Brajesh Mishra as the national security advisor, they did not approve of Jaswant Singh being given a ministerial berth, so while he agreed to drop Singh, he was steadfast in letting Misra hold the top job. He managed to bring people around,” the functionary said.
His ability to win people over, is what former RSS functionary and BJP general secretary Govindacharya remembers. Govindacharya ,who was famously quoted once as having called Vajpayee a mukhota or mask, said Vajpayee stood out for his mental matrix and conviction.
“His 1991 speech on Hindutva at the Boat Club in Delhi is unparalleled. He said we are not all Shakha goers, so we must learn to see the other’s point of view. His responses were different and even while disagreeing with the Sangh, he knew where to draw the line,” Govindacharya said.
On calling Vajpayee a mukhota, he clarified : “I had called him the most popular and acceptable face of the BJP; someone misconstrued the sentence it and turned face into a mask. Naturally, Vajpayee was upset and complained to Sudarshan, but I got a chance to explain my position to him. I wrote a 17-page letter to clarify what I had said and we were back to being amiable. He was fond of me.”