Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A realist who said "wo wapas aa rahe haen"

With almost six decades of public life, former Prime Minister and the first from the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) to enter Parliament Atal Bihari Vajpayee arguably had been an open book for many to peep in and tell tales for the posterity.

A day before the 2004 Lok Sabha election verdict, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been surrounded by his party colleagues at the 7, Race Course Road residence of the Prime Minister. The leaders brought out their on-ground assessments of the just concluded voting. The BJP leaders concurred, and so told Vajpayee, exuding confidence of a victorious battalion returning to the base after a successful assault on the enemy front, that a resounding win is just a matter of a few hours.

Listening them all with innocence of a child, Vajpayee was untouched with flow of pride all around. At last, he said, "Wo (Congress) wapas aa rahe haen (The Congress is coming back to power)."

The beaming faces took refuge in somber expressions. His dismissal with trademark sleight of hand had none to contest. Then came the command -- Bhojan kijiye (take meals).

But Vajpayee wasn't a God. He was another mortal. And, so, he too rued till he lost his senses of having erred. "Pramod galat tha (Pramod Mahajan was wrong for persuading in advancing the Lok Sabha elections)," Vajpayee would so afterwards to his audiences.  

Vajpayee was just another mortal for the fact that he too fell for the "India Shining" campaign, which any incumbent government would like to believe in having given ears to Babus all five years. He was also just another mortal for the reason that he too rued wrong decisions. All make wrong decisions. And, all rue for rest of life as well. Time is spent, thus, in thinking and sharing about "ifs".      

VAJPAYEE was no Gandhian. He was not even a communalist. He was neither a socialist. He was essentially a realist. And, indeed, Vajpayee was a humanist.

Vajpayee was arguably the most pampered protégé  of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). He had been hand-picked for political works. With pride, he was hosted in thousands of homes of the RSS functionaries for meals. That he could reason with the leading lights of the Congress, and debated with uncommon élan had an electrifying impact among millions of saffron foot soldiers. They had more reasons to believe in ideologies which had not been accepted in the mainstream of the country.       

But Vajpayee was unshackled. Ideology didn't bind him. He was rather evolved. That he never succumbed to rhetoric exemplified his realism.

The Kandahar episode defines Vajpayee. The brief history is thus: An Indian Airlines flight IC 814 (Airbus A300) carrying 176 passengers was hijacked on December 24, 1999 while being en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Eventually, it landed in Kandahar. Terrorists sought release of hardened and jailed terrorists in exchange to release the terrorists.

The Winter biting cold was sweating out the strategists. The family members of the passengers had laid siege of the Lutyens' Delhi. Vajpayee's comrade and the then Union Minister Jaswant Singh's landline phone at his residence buzzed all day and night -- some abusing, some pleading.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Sherpa and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, who had then been the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) chief, was aghast at diplomatic failure to allow the ill-fated plane a free fly over the skies of a number of countries.

Years of training of Vajpayee's alma mater -- the RSS -- would have wanted that no hardened terrorists be released, that the government should have taken a leaf out of Israel and ordered commando operation.

Yet, Vajpayee seemingly wilted. He sent emissaries to hold talks with terrorists. And, in the end, he accepted all demands of the Pakistan backed terrorists. He didn't want to be an iron man of India. He just wanted his men and women safe and back in the country. For him, no price was big enough to secure the human lives. And, thus, Vajpayee, baring his soft core, revealed his undying trust in the virtue of humanism, and realism.

IT'S often said that to err is human, and repeating same mistake again and again is a hallmark of the highest order of stupidity. But Vajpayee didn't free himself from succumbing to string of judgmental errors, so as to say, to keep trying for a breakthrough in India's relations with Pakistan. 

In contrast, Dr Manmohan Singh displayed a consistent policy of maintaining a long distance with Pakistan, and never fell for any of the trappings, which occasionally blow in with western winds. Dr Singh was unaffected by a posse of intelligentsia in New Delhi, who hop from one event to another to showcase their pipedream for peace with Pakistan.

But Vajpayee fell for such trappings. He hopped on to a bus for trip to Lahore with Shatrughan Sinha as a companion. He hosted General Pervez Musharraff. He allowed safe passage to Pakistani Army regulars trapped on Kargil hills despite hundreds of Indian Jawans laying down their lives to wrest the honour back.

That Vajpayee defied all warnings to connect with Pakistan was ostensibly for the reason that he was a humanist at the core. He, indeed, believed that neighbours must be friends.    

VAJAPAYEE could defy protestations from within the saffron camp against privatisation of public sector units -- not just loss making, but even those who made profits. That he could lord over the one and only instance of the government showing spine to put in practice the maxim that "government has no business to be in business" was also for the reason that he had been a realist.

Paying homage to Veer Savarkar once, Vajpayee had given a loud statement of his being a realist. "Kavita aur bhranti to sath sath chal sakti hai, par kavita aur kranti ka sath chalna bahut mushkil hai (Poetry and confusion can go along, but not poetry and revolution)," Vajpayee had said, while describing the multi-faceted personality of Savarkar. He said so at a stage where he had been introduced as a poet.

The revolution that Vajpayee talked about was change in the society which could lead to transformation of the country.

AND, such changes, are most often brought about by a leadership sworn in to realism who painstakingly takes steps with aims to lay bridges for transformation. And, Vajpayee, indeed, took giant steps for India's qualitative transformation.