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A BJP without Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Harish Khare

The only time the party was able to secure a semblance of a national mandate was when it projected him as its prime ministerial mascot.

END OF AN ERA: The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. — Photo: Kamal Narang

THE ONLY graceful note at the Bharatiya Janata Party's five-day-long Mumbai congregation was provided by Atal Bihari Vajpayee's dignified announcement that he would no longer be available for electoral politics. The party's most successful vote-catcher and most acceptable face told his comrades that he would no longer be available to be encashed as a prime ministerial totem. But given the BJP's present preoccupation with personalities and intrigues, the ungrateful party did not even pause to salute a man who has brought it so much success and honour.

This rude indifference could perhaps be explained away by touting the Sangh Parivar's make-believe axiom that the organisation took precedence over individuals. The old man was just allowed to depart from Mumbai without even a send-off. This indifference to Mr. Vajpayee appears even more unbecoming in the context of the claim made by another aged and declining leader to be the party's prime ministerial face in 2009. Politicians, too, are entitled to their pipe dreams.

The cold-shouldering of Mr. Vajpayee reflects the BJP's new culture of too much cleverness, too much cunning, too much calculation, and too much cynicism. Like every other political party, the BJP, too, is entitled to its own style.

What is, however, curious is that the BJP leaders seem so anxious to overlook the simple fact that in the organisation's 50-year-long existence (beginning as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) the only time it was able to secure a semblance of a national mandate was when it projected Mr. Vajpayee as its prime ministerial mascot. All these years there were others — Sunder Singh Bhandari, L.K. Advani, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, M.M. Joshi — who never appealed to anyone except the party's faithful. Only Mr. Vajpayee made the grade beyond the limited and narrow confines of the BJP constituency, a necessary qualification in our continental polity.

It helped that Mr. Vajpayee belonged to the Hindi heartland; it did not hurt that he was a Brahmin, an asset that remains mysteriously useful in this ancient land. He had certain grace, a gift that eludes most of his party colleagues. It did add to his persona that he was a wonderful orator and put to good use his golden tongue during the long innings in Parliament. But in Parliament he was never a tactician in the sense of a Madhu Limaye or Nath Pai nor was he a disruptionist in the mould of a Raj Narain. His speciality was a way with words that he employed to capture the national sentiments of the day.

That gift elevated Mr. Vajpayee a notch above his party colleagues, who seemed only too happy to be pleasing the gods at Nagpur. No one knows exactly why Mr. Vajpayee was allowed by the Nagpur establishment to get away with his studied ambivalence; only a future historian can unravel the mystery. It is not even that he was totally without faults and flaws, yet he remained the only leader from the Right of the political spectrum to acquire an all-India persona. More instructively, he remains the only leader to have ascended the Delhi gaddi without ever having championed the cause of the poor, a pre-requisite in our inherently unequal and iniquitous society.

It is possible to argue that had it not been for the 1991 paradigmatic shift Mr. Vajpayee would have never made it to that nice corner office in South Block. He happened to be the only political leader with a pan-Indian image at a time when India was changing and needed a new but non-threatening face. No doubt, his prime ministerial bid was underwritten by Corporate India but there was something reassuring about him that made so many disparate forces and interests to bet on him.

The very qualities that helped him become Prime Minister also defined — and limited — his six-year stay at Race Course Road. His perceived weaknesses invited poaching from foes at home and abroad; a Pakistani general masterminded Kargil and Kandahar and not only got away with it but got invited to Agra. Yet, when the Advani faction made a run on the Prime Minister's Office and demanded Brajesh Mishra's head, Mr. Vajpayee showed the iron fist. But a year later, Mr. Vajpayee gave in and elevated Mr. Advani to the post of Deputy Prime Minister. Pragmatism and expediency became guiding principles. In the process his administration lost sight of the poor and the marginalised, who eventually ganged up to vote the National Democratic Alliance out in 2004.

Steering the political destiny of the Indian state has always been an exacting task. Any man (or woman) who would be Prime Minister is required to be an embodiment of decency and wholesomeness as well as to have a predisposition to live and let live. Mr. Vajpayee met most of these job descriptions. But it is indicative of the entrenched small-mindedness in the BJP that the party's prime ministerial aspirants remain so unwilling to imbibe Mr. Vajpayee's qualities. As long as the party remains a prisoner of the factionalists, it will be constrained to keep on looking with nostalgia on the Vajpayee era.

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