Tag: Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Barely 20 feet away, at Smriti Sthal (spot of remembrance), lay the mortal remains of his party’s behemoth — former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In the wake of the Gujarat riots in 2002, Vajpayee, the then prime minister, had reminded Modi, then the chief minister (CM) of Gujarat, about a public servant’s inalienable accountability and non-negotiable commitment to “Raj Dharm” (duty of the ruler). Telling words, coming from a veteran who had been a part of India’s freedom struggle, who was jailed during former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s draconian assault on democracy in the name of Emergency. No one will perhaps ever know whether Modi’s mind had raced back to Vajpayee’s sagacious advice, as smoke billowed from the pyre at Smriti Sthal on Friday. He never let his ideology play second fiddle to opportunism. If the five years of full term as prime minister, between 1999 and 2004, brought Vajpayee the statesman to the fore like never before, then his role as the lodestone for India’s largest Hindu nationalist party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — was no less significant. His own man The transformation of the erstwhile ultra-rightist Bharatiya Jan Sangh into the present-day BJP was made possible to a large extent by the Vajpayee brand of politics of consensus and inclusivity. Vajpayee was the foremost Hindu nationalist leader who had realised very early in his career in active politics that nationalism, as the vast majority of Indians see and interpret the concept, isn’t something that ought to be worn on one’s sleeve. Rather, nationalism, and Hindu nationalism in particular, ought to be a way of life that is bereft of all forms of regimentation and indoctrination. He was his own man all through his life and career.