OBIT: SUSHMA SWARAJ
In 1999, Sushma Swaraj contested from Bellary, Karnataka—this was when the Bharatiya Janata Party was not well known in the state and no one had heard of either the BJP or Sushma Swaraj. The battle was a tough one. She was taking on Sonia Gandhi of the well-entrenched Congress party, but Swaraj was quick to embrace the challenge. She engaged two tutors to teach her Kannada and, using all her skills and photographic memory, within a fortnight she was addressing rallies in fluent Kannada. I personally checked with a few local journalists on her Kannada and everyone agreed that she really did pull it off. Her diction and choice of words were perfect. And though she lost by just about 50,000 votes, she won many hearts.
Swaraj took on every role—parliamentarian, party worker, minister—with a dogged determination, persistence and honesty which was uniquely hers.
In 2009, the party decided that Swaraj was among the stalwarts who would campaign but not contest, but on this occasion she made her preferences clear and was allowed to
contest. She stood from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh and won. Though the party suffered a scathing defeat, winning just 116 seats, the BJP had come a long way, up from just two members of Parliament in 1984. This was partly because of the efforts of the team, which included Swaraj, picked by L.K. Advani in the mid-1980s to build the BJP’s parliamentary strength to a target of 200 MPs. The other members were Narendra Modi, Pramod Mahajan, Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and Govindacharya. She played a crucial role in building the party where she was widely regarded as an indulgent ‘didi’.
The same year, Swaraj also took charge as leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha from Advani, fiercely articulating their point of view and holding the ruling government accountable. This was at a time when several scandals, such as the coal and telecom scams, were rocking Parliament daily. A gifted orator, particularly in Hindi—considered by many to be in the same league as Atal Bihari Vajpayee— Swaraj communicated the party’s stance with precision.
In 1998, when Vajpayee asked her to take over as the chief minister of Delhi, Swaraj was reluctant to move from national to statelevel politics, but took up the challenge all the same.
Among the many ‘firsts’ to her credit, Swaraj had the distinction of being the youngest-ever minister at 25, the minimum prescribed age. She was the first-ever woman spokesperson of a national party and the first woman to be appointed as a full-time external affairs minister of India.
As foreign minister, she broke the mould. The profile does not entail any interaction with people, but she changed that and became the first minister to use social media to make herself more accessible. Indians from across the world reached out to her and were seldom disappointed.
Swaraj was Indian to the core, but global in her outlook. She was a full-time politician and career woman and also a family woman, embodying Indian traditions and culture. Irreplaceable, Swaraj will always be a role model to all those who wish to join public life. ■
Sushma Swaraj played a crucial role in building the BJP, where she was widely regarded as an indulgent ‘didi’