Asian Age
27 July 2004
Mr Vajpayee’s retreat
- By Amulya Ganguli
The diminution of Atal Behari Vajpayee is continuing apace. He is a much smaller man now than when he was Prime Minister. He was then regarded as something of a statesman, with a vision of sorts, highlighted by his repeated efforts to reach out to Pakistan — an approach which was so much in conflict with his party’s history and politics. But all that has now changed. Vajpayee has retraced his steps back to his party’s history and politics. He can again say with full conviction, as he once did, that the RSS is his "soul".
As is known, the retreat began with his trademark vacillations during his summer sojourn in Manali. He began to change his mind there almost on a daily basis unlike in the past when he allowed an interval of three or four days before saying the opposite of what he had said earlier. But in Manali, he held Narendra Modi responsible for the BJP’s defeat on one day, only to exonerate him on the next. These Himalayan flip-flops reached their climax in Mumbai, where he announced his retirement one day and then returned to politics on the next. Not surprisingly, it was also let it be known by the BJP that Modi had been able to convince Vajpayee that he hadn’t at all been complacent during the Gujarat riots. (The assurance, however, can have a double meaning.)
Since the Mumbai conclave, Vajpayee has acted as a regular foot soldier of the RSS and the BJP. In keeping with his latest stance, the moderate-turned-hawk firmly ruled out helping the Manmohan Singh government on the issue of FDI hikes in the telecom, insurance and civil aviation sectors. This former votary of economic reforms, the defeat of whose party had saddened the corporate czars and plunged the Sensex into a turmoil, has chosen to emulate the Left and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch to stand resolutely against a further opening up of the economy.
Why? Evidently because he is playing safe and is not willing to displease the RSS, just as he had listened to its diktats against appointing Jaswant Singh as the finance minister when he first became Prime Minister. After his humiliation in Mumbai, where a non-entity like Venkaiah Naidu could launch a not-too-veiled an attack on him (no doubt with the RSS’s encouragement) by criticising the "virus of individualism" in the party, there is no question of Vajpayee taking a stand on principles.
If Vajpayee had any faith in economic reforms, he would obviously have stood by them. However, it is possible that, first, he doesn’t have any convictions (as Ram Vilas Paswan once said) — all his pro-reforms postures being as theatrical as his occasional musings about secularism and, therefore, not to be taken seriously. Secondly, even if this hero of India Inc. did once support liberalisation and globalisation, his beliefs were not strong enough for him to sacrifice the easy life of a sybarite and a conformist by fighting a running battle with his opponents in the party and the parivar. Especially when they have become stronger after the party’s defeat as a result of (according to them) Vajpayee’s policies of moderation.
Former attorney-general Soli Sorabjee captured Vajpayee’s general mood of acquiescence vis-à-vis his critics when he told an interviewer: "I remember when they (the VHP) were burning the Pope’s effigy, he (Vajpayee) slapped his forehead in disgust and said pagal hain... You know how Vajpayee is; he listens, he agrees when you ask him kya ho raha hai, but…"
Yet, Vajpayee would have made the BJP set a remarkable example of non-partisan politics by siding with the Congress on the question of reforms. He could have insisted that on matters such as these, the parties had to shed their habitually blinkered outlook and extend the hand of cooperation. After all, if the Manmohan Singh government carries on the good work done by Vajpayee in improving relations with Pakistan, surely the BJP will not now throw a spanner in the works.
An endorsement of P. Chidambaram’s proposals would have enhanced Vajpayee’s stature, making him stand out again as a person who can rise above a narrow-minded approach to politics. If he wanted, he could have asked Arun Shourie write his usual 10,000-word thesis on reforms. (Now, of course, this pseudo-journalist is singing another tune.) Instead, Vajpayee went along with the BJP’s typically cussed attitude.
The "failure" to keep the flag of reforms flying was in keeping with his generally supine conduct. Whenever Vajpayee had come up against stiff opposition to what he (apparently) believed, he had backed down. In the Nineties, he was a silent, if disapproving, spectator of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation spearheaded by L.K. Advani, expressing his sorrows in bad verse. More recently, he has given ground to the Young Jerks — Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan et al — whenever they pressed their line.
It happened at a BJP conclave in Goa during the Gujarat riots when Vajpayee retreated on the question of dismissing Modi. He later said that he had been told that there would be more violence if Modi was sacked. Rarely has a party used blackmail in so crude a manner to keep its own Prime Minister in line. After that, the YJs became so bold that they rejected Vajpayee’s first and second choices for the President’s post — the then vice president Krishan Kant and Maharashtra Governor P.C. Alexander — and chose A.P.J. Abdul Kalam instead.
Only in the matter of making several attempts to advance the cause of peace with Pakistan did Vajpayee have his way despite the objections voiced by the VHP. But it is possible that these overtures were more the result of American pressure than Vajpayee’s quest for a place in history. The RSS and the YJs had learnt enough about the world beyond their mofussil mindset during the few years in the corridors of power to realise that America couldn’t be denied. A party and a parivar which quietly gulped the insult meted out to George Fernandes twice at American airports knew which side of the toast was buttered — or, rather, which side of the parantha had dollops of ghee.
In domestic politics, Vajpayee will now be expected to follow the party line in toto with all its mixture of sly innuendoes, half-truths and outright falsehoods. An example of such dubious tactics was the charge he made at a meeting to mark the birth anniversary of Syama Prasad Mookerjee about a "conspiracy" hatched by Jawaharlal Nehru’s government and the Jammu and Kashmir administration to assassinate the founder of Jan Sangh.
According to Vajpayee, when Mookerjee decided to violate the rules by entering J&K without a permit, "We thought that the Punjab government would arrest him… Later we came to know that the Jammu government and the Nehru government had entered into a conspiracy … that Mookerjee would be allowed to enter the state but not be allowed to leave."
It is a serious allegation against India’s first and most revered Prime Minister by one of its recent ones. But for a charge to stick, it has to be made by someone whose credibility is high.
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