THE FIRST DUO
of the BJP, Vajpayee and Advani did have their differences, but they stood with each other through the party’s worst trials. They disagreed on the BJP’s participation in the Ayodhya movement, and the period between 1998 and 2004 tested an otherwise enduring partnership. Despite disagreeing with Advani, Vajpayee relented on Modi after the 2002 Gujarat riots and on the fateful India Shining campaign that arguably cost the BJP the elections in 2004
Those who were present at, or witnessed on their TV screens, the funeral of Atal Bihari Vajpayee on August 17 would not have failed to notice one thing. Among all the political leaders sitting mournfully at the cremation ground, the one who looked the loneliest was Lal Krishna Advani. Not surprising. In Atalji’s demise, he had not only lost his senior party colleague but also “my closest friend of 65 years”.
In the history of independent India or, perhaps, any other democracy in the world, no other political partnership between two leaders of near-equal eminence was as close and strong, or lasted for so long, as the one between Vajpayee and Advani. Politics, especially power politics with competing ambitions, can be a highly destructive solvent capable of dissolving the best of friendships. Our political landscape is strewn with acts of skulduggery by comrades turning conspirators. V.P. Singh was a minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government. But as soon as he sensed trouble for his own prime minister, he raised the banner of revolt. H.D. Deve Gowda pulled the rug from underneath the feet of Ramakrishna Hegde in Karnataka. After C.N. Annadurai’s demise in Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi and MGR became sworn enemies. The Janata Party government collapsed mainly due to personality clashes at the top.
The significance of the unbroken bond between Atal and Advani can be understood against this backdrop. They first met way back in 1951 as two young pracharaks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) assigned to work for the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Vajpayee had already begun making waves as a captivating orator, a popular Hindi poet and editor of Panchajanya. Advani was unknown to the outside world but, as a well-read migrant from Karachi with a good command over English, he had caught the attention of the higher-ups in the RSS, who asked him to work for the Organiser. Both worked under the tutelage of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, a highly erudite leader, who left a lasting imprint on the party as well as its future avatar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Those were extremely difficult days for the party. Looking at the BJP’s fivestar headquarters in New Delhi today, it is hard to imagine that the Jana Sangh was a very frugal party—even Vajpayee, Advani and their colleagues used to travel on bicycles. The party was widely admired for its disciplined cadre and incorruptible leaders, but even in local elections, it routinely lost deposits. After one such disappointing defeat, Advani told Vajpayee, “Come, let’s go and watch a movie to cheer ourselves up.” The title of the Raj Kapoor-starrer they watched together was prescient: Phir Subah Hogi (there will be a new dawn). If the BJP today is basking in the high noon of success, a large part of the credit goes to the ideal jodi of Vajpayee and Advani.
Upadhyaya’s sudden departure in 1968—a murder mystery that remains unsolved till date—placed the mantle of leadership on Vajpayee. Advani became his most trusted comrade, and remained so until ill health incapacitated Vajpayee nearly a decade ago. Their mutual trust was tested during many trials and tribulations. The struggle for democracy during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency saw both behind bars. They were reliable pillars of strength for the Janata Party, which Jayaprakash Narayan had forged in 1977. They were
both best-performing ministers in Morarji Desai’s government. They tried their best, but in vain, to keep the party united and the government stable. When, along with other members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh, they were forced to leave the party on the spurious ‘dual membership’ issue, it was Advani who advised Vajpayee, “Let’s begin a new journey. Let’s form a new political party.” Thus was born the BJP in 1980, with its founder-president Vajpayee making a poetic prophesy—“Andhera chhatega, sooraj niklega, kamal khilega”—The darkness will disappear, the sun will rise, and the lotus (the party’s symbol) will bloom.
The slogan that animated Indian politics throughout the 1980s and ’90s was ‘Atal Advani kamal nishan, maang raha hai Hindustan’—India wants a BJP government under the leadership of Vajpayee and Advani. During this period, the party benefited from both Vajpayee’s soft, secular image and Advani’s image as an icon of ‘Hindutva’.
It’s not that there were no differences between the two. Advani has shed candid light on them in his 2008 memoirs, My Country My Life. They were not exactly on the same page on the BJP’s participation in the Ayodhya movement, which catapulted the party from a mere two MPs in 1984 to 89 in 1989 and further to 119 in 1991. For a few years, Advani’s Ram rathyatra made him more popular than Vajpayee among leaders and supporters of the BJP and RSS. Nevertheless, in an unparalleled act of self-abnegation, Advani, at the BJP’s ‘Maha-adhiveshan’ in Mumbai in 1995, announced that Vajpayee would be the prime minister if the party won the people’s mandate in the ensuing parliamentary elections. “Why did you do so?” I once asked him. His reply was emphatic—“I have always respected Atalji as my senior leader. I also knew that he was more acceptable to the people of India.”
I had the rare honour of working closely with both Vajpayee and Advani during, and in the years preceding, the former’s premiership. Advani served as the PM’s loyal deputy, fully supporting the latter on all his landmark initiatives, including his efforts to normalise relations with Pakistan. However, the 1998-2004 period did create some strain in their relationship. The horrific 2002 communal riots in Gujarat had caused deep agony to Vajpayee. They had pained Advani, too, but the approach of the two leaders to dealing with the situation politically was different. In my interactions with the prime minister those days, I could clearly see that Vajpayee wanted the
party to ask the state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, to step down. He mentioned the same to Advani and other senior leaders on his way to the fateful meeting of the BJP’s national executive in Goa in April 2002. Advani did not back Vajpayee on this crucial matter, nor did a majority of the members of the national executive. A democrat that Vajpayee was, he accepted the party’s decision. Nevertheless, he continued to believe he was right. After the BJP failed to win a renewed mandate in the 2004 parliamentary elections, he once told me, with unrelieved sadness in his heart, “[The] Gujarat riots were a blot on the track record and image of our government. They were one of the reasons for our defeat.”
Another matter that caused Vajpayee much distress those days was the periodic attempts by the Vishva Hindu Parishad to resume mass agitation for the construction of the Ram mandir in Ayodhya. “I can deal with the opposition parties,” he once said to me, “but I am pained that our own people are creating problems for us.” I asked him, “Why can’t you deal with the VHP more firmly?” His reply was revealing: “No, I can’t. If I did, the party would split.” On this, home minister Advani shared the prime minister’s displeasure with the VHP. No wonder, he too became unpopular with the Hindutva hardliners.
Vajpayee was not happy with the ‘India Shining’ campaign, which got associated with Advani’s Bharat Uday Yatra (March-April 2004). The deputy prime minister had undertaken this yatra in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, which had been advanced by five months, to highlight the achievements of the Vajpayee government. Had the campaign been presented as ‘India Rising’ (the literal meaning of ‘Bharat Uday’), there would have been no controversy. But ‘India Shining’ conveyed a hype that Vajpayee instinctively disapproved of. Confirming his apprehensions, the Congress and other opposition parties slammed the ‘India Shining’ campaign—and reaped electoral benefits.
Vajpayee could feel that the RSS, which was then headed by K.S. Sudarshan (with whom both he and Advani had a very uneasy relationship), was not putting its entire weight behind his bid for another term in office. Many in the Sangh Parivar were unhappy that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was not committed to their three “core Hindutva demands”—construction of the Ram mandir in Ayodhya, abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir and introduction of a Uniform Civil Code.
I vividly remember an interaction with Vajpayee after the BJP’s defeat in the 2004 elections. There was a ‘chintan baithak’ (a brainstorming meeting) of senior party and RSS functionaries in Goa to assess the causes for the party’s unexpected debacle. As mentioned earlier, the Vajpayee government’s weak commitment to ‘Hindutva’ was cited by some as the main cause. During the tea break, sitting alone with Vajpayee, I was startled when he asked me, “Yeh Hindutva kya hota hai (What does Hindutva mean)?” In the way that he asked the question, there was both sadness and a sense of having been let down. Post2004, he withdrew from party affairs.
Soon thereafter, it was Advani’s turn to be upset by the RSS leadership. In an explosive interview to a TV channel, then RSS chief Sudarshan said that both Vajpayee and Advani should step aside and let a younger leadership take charge of the BJP. For someone going to be the party’s prime ministerial candidate in 2009, this was a clear snub from the head of the parent organisation. The RSS weakened Advani further by asking him to step down from party presidentship in the wake of the baseless controversy over his praise of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s “secular” beliefs during his peace-promoting visit to Pakistan in May-June 2005. About this episode, Vajpayee said to me, “Advaniji ne Jinnah ke baare mein jo kaha, usmein galat kuchh nahin tha (There was nothing wrong in what Advaniji said about Jinnah).” But, he added, “The whole thing should have been handled differently with proper prior consultation.”
Vajpayee always had an intrinsic and unshaken respect for Advani—his personality, his principled politics and for his immense contribution to partybuilding. On the morning after the cremation, I met Advaniji at his residence. He was sitting alone with his daughter Pratibha, listening to his favourite song from Dev Anand’s Hum Dono: Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya / Har fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya/ Gham aur khushi mein farq na mehsoos ho jahan/ Main dil ko us muqaam pe laata chala gaya.
After some time, Advaniji put the portable radio off, and, as if speaking to himself, said: “Almost all the people who built the Jana Sangh and BJP are either no more or ill health does not permit them to play an active role anymore. Therefore, those of us who are still blessed with good health should continue to do our utmost to promote the ideals and goals for which we entered politics. We should strengthen our democracy and make India a prosperous and harmonious nation.”
The writer served as a close aide to Vajpayee in the PMO from 1998 to 2004. He also worked closely with Advani in the BJP
WHEN I ASKED HIM WHY HE COULDN’T DEAL WITH THE VHP MORE FIRMLY, HE SAID, ‘I CAN’T. THE PARTY WILL SPLIT’