Vajpayee, The Best Congressman We Never Had?

Might Atal Behari Vajpyaee be the best Congressman we never had? Given the company he has kept all his political life, he remains amazingly untainted by the vices of the family from which he has emerged - the Sangh Parivar. It was Govindacharya who chanced on this revelation when he called him a 'mukhauta'. Although it was Vajpayee who had coined the notorious equivalence between 'Hindutva' and 'Bharatiyata', it is hard to find in his words or action any extremism of the RSS kind. He seems to have instinctively learned that the exclusivism of his peers ill-suited an aspirant for the office of Prime Minister. He, therefore, kept away from Advani's Rath Yatra and the movement to demolish the Babri Masjid. 

 

Indeed, he was the only BJP leader of eminence to stay well out of Ayodhya that Black Sunday of 6 December 1992 when the three gumbaz of the Masjid were brought down one after the other. It was perhaps the finest moment of his political life, to be a BJP leader and yet not be part of the "Ek dhakka aur do/ Babri Masjid thod do" crowd. I do not recall his having leant his voice to the hypocrisy of the claim that Mir Baqi's structure was a not a place of worship, but a "vivadhit dhancha".

 

He was also much more a socialist than his peers. It was at his instance that the economic philosophy of the Bharatiya Janata Party at its foundation was described as "Gandhian Socialism", a phrase they have since abandoned. They switched to the free market only after Dr. Manmohan Singh's reforms began to get reflected in higher GDP growth figures. 

 

Unlike his disruptionist followers, Vajpayee loved the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debate - and, indeed, was a master of the dialectics of democracy. I remember attending a function to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of the Lok Sabha (2002) when he bemoaned that while, in the past, MPs would walk out when they wanted to show their opposition, now the Opposition was walking in the opposite direction - right into the Well of the House. The irony is that when a couple of years later, the BJP found itself in Opposition, it made the invasion of the Well its primary instrument of politics. Had Vajpayee continued to lead the BJP in Parliament, there might have been occasional disruptions but not the forcible closing of Parliament for days on end as we witnessed in the worst period of the BJP's Rajya Sabha chief whip, S.S. Ahluwalia, who would repeatedly lead his 'shouting brigade' right up to the Chairman's elevated height. 

 

Illness has now muted Vajpayee's extraordinarily powerful voice but evidence of his outstanding Parliamentary abilities is available to anyone who cares to look into the parliamentary records - preferably not in English translation but in the original Hindi. He spoke impeccable Hindi, almost never using an English word. His style of delivery was peculiarly his own - jocular but with rapier trusts, never offensive but always telling. I spent hours in the Lok Sabha just listening to him speaking, fascinated by the long pauses, usually followed by a punch line. Not only did he command attention when he spoke, he was also an excellent listener, allowing the argument from the other side to flow over him without betraying anger or annoyance, without disruption. He also did me the great kindness of taking particular care to take his seat when I was on my feet. 

 

On one occasion, when I was commenting on the Narashimha Rao government's decision to accord full diplomatic recognition to Israel, I thundered that we must not allow the Israelis to dictate to us the religion of the person we should be sending as our first Ambassador to Tel Aviv. I heard Vajpayee asking his neighbour in a loud sage whisper, "Yeh kiski ki baat kar rahein hain?" Pat came the reply "Unke dost, Hamid Ansari ki". Hamid, then our Ministry's most accomplished West Asia expert, is now the Vice President, and as such, the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.  

 

Entering Parliament in 1957 at the age of 31, he quickly became the leader of his tiny Parliamentary party, but notwithstanding his party's minuscule numbers, had a voice that was listened to with much anticipation every time he rose to speak. His high moment came in October 1962 when, at the peak of the Chinese invasion, he led a four-member delegation to see Nehru to persuade him to convene the Rajya Sabha. Nehru agreed, and Vajpayee launched into a scathing attack on Nehru's foreign and defence policies. He was given his full head without interruption. It is a pity, therefore, that when the Opposition was calling for a debate on the Kargil invasion, Vajpayee ducked it, failing pathetically to rise to Nehru's stature. 

 

His other notable passage of arms was with C.N. Annadurai over the role of Hindi in national affairs. Both were orators par excellence in their respective mother tongues. Vajpayee had the advantage of speaking in Parliament in his mother tongue, Hindi. 'Anna' responded in faultless, free-flowing English. They kept the nation riveted until Indira Gandhi's three-language formula quieted the dispute for a while.

 

When in 1979, the Janata government of Morarji Desai appointed Vajpayee as Foreign Minister, my first reaction was one of alarm. Why were they appointing a right-wing, anti-Islamist to this vital portfolio? Vajpayee fooled everyone. Taking to his assignment like a duck to water, Vajpayee became the first Foreign Minister since Swaran Singh to visit Islamabad. There, he delivered his banquet speech in flawless Urdu, much to the chagrin of his Madras-born counterpart, Aga Shahi, whose Urdu was non-existent. He then quickly rushed through a programme of normalization of relations, including the reciprocal opening of Consulates-General in Karachi and Mumbai. I heard the news over the radio in Baghdad where I had completed only two of my three-year posting and would, therefore, not even be considered for the assignment. To my immense delight, a few days later, a telegram arrived transferring me to Karachi. Vajpayee, who did not know me at the time, knew nothing of why I had been selected, but in later years in Parliament he did me the great honour of waiting in the chamber, or returning to it, to hear me out on Pakistan. 

 

The single most severe challenge to his championship of higher values in politics came in the wake of the Gujarat pogrom. After Home Minister Advani had visited the state and given Modi a clean chit, Vajpayee went to Ahmadabad. At his press conference, he said,  "I have just one message for the Chief Minister. He must adhere to 'rajdharma'. For the King or the ruler cannot discriminate between people, whether on the basis of birth, caste or religion." So stinging was the public rebuke that Modi butted in, "Hum bhi wahi kar rahe hain, sahib." Vajpayee did not respond. It is now learnt that he intended to dismiss Modi. (I am indebted to Manoj Mitta's The Fiction of Fact-finding: Modi & Godhra for these details) 

 

That was the moment Vajpayee could have been considered for the Bharat Ratna. But, after having privately complained, "Is kalank ko mere moonh par laga diya", Vajpayee back-tracked - and the same Modi who had never visited a Muslim refugee camp in the aftermath of Godhra except when, for protocol reasons, he accompanied the Prime Minister to the Shah Alam camp, found his road opened to becoming Vajpayee's BJP successor in Race Course Road. That lapse makes it clear that while Vajpayee might be deserving of a high Padma award, giving him the Bharat Ratna is really going too far over the top.