Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Hindu leader tolerant of Islam 1924-2018
● Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former prime minister of India who has died at the age of 93, was originally regarded as a hard-line Hindu nationalist but 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 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 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. 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 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.
The son of a teacher, Vajpayee was born on December 25 1924 into an upper-caste Brahmin family in the princely state of Gwalior (in what is now Madhya Pradesh). He gained a degree in political science at DAV College in Uttar Pradesh.
He was briefly imprisoned 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, 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 he drank alcohol and in later life was said to have had a relationship with a married woman.
For a while he studied law, but gave that up to become a journalist.
In June 1975 he was arrested, along with other political leaders, and kept in custody during the entire span of prime minister Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency, until 1977.
His first stint as prime minister lasted only 13 days as his party failed to muster the required support in parliament. The lack of a powerful majority — and reliance on coalition partners — again hampered Vajpayee’s second 13-month stint in power from March 1998.
In May 1999, India launched airstrikes 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. Vajpayee was returned to power.
In the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks, Vajpayee was one of the first leaders to throw his support behind the US-led coalition. His leadership was put to the test in December 2001, when an Islamic terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in Delhi left 14 dead, leading to demands by BJP members for retaliatory attacks on Pakistan.
He stepped down from politics in 2005, while remaining a revered figure within the BJP, celebrated as the “Great Connector” for his inclusive vision.