Why praising Atal Bihari Vajpayee to shame today's BJP is problematic
It is undeniable that Advani and Vajpayee were both complicit in the destruction of the Babri Masjid
As one of our greatest parliamentarians and orators passes away, it would appear that a dark curtain has been finally drawn between the BJP of the past and the BJP of the present. Even though Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India’s beloved poet-prime minister, raconteur, diplomat, biophile, and above all, statesman, had been ailing for the last few years, one felt that there was a link, however tenuous between the old guard of the BJP government of 1999-2004 and this one.
A link to a more gracious, cultured world where politicians of opposing parties often rose above their differences and made common cause in a spirit of give and take, where there was none of this fear and insecurity among media persons and activists of the sudden bullet, this horrifying politically orchestrated mob violence spreading across the country in the name of nationalism, these rapes and lynchings in the name of the cow, this social media-bred bitterness and animosity, and no need for IT cells churning out fake news and shyster rebuttals. Nor did the “party with a difference” as it proudly called itself, forge strange coalitions, or put up charge sheeted criminals with such brazenness in order to just win votes.
Today’s political and social landscape is a far cry from the one under Vajpayee’s watch, a world he had possibly feared might come to pass, and warned against when he had gently reminded the present incumbent about following “Rajdharma” all those years ago in 2002 as Gujarat burned.
As Chandra Kumar Bose, West Bengal BJP vice president, repeatedly emphasised in his commentary recently on a channel, as Vajpayee’s funeral was taking place, the late PM not only stood for sane discourse in politics, but created an exemplary benchmark example himself in his Parliament speeches. “He believed that even if you oppose a political party, civility must be maintained” is how Bose put it in a nutshell.
For Vajpayee there were no dark sarcasms in Parliament, no mocking jibes and dog whistle ad hominems that appealed to coarse populism, no infantile wordplay, and no pantomime gestures accompanied by grotesque facial expressions that would devalue the august chair of a Prime Minister of India.
Some of the most fulsome tributes have, in fact, come from the opposition parties.
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary quoted one of Vajpayee's poems to paraphrase the fight against the present avatar of the BJP.
"Baadhaein aati hain aayein, Ghire pralaya ki ghor ghataein, Paanv ke neeche angaare, Sir par barsen yadi jwalaaein, niz haathon mein hanste hanste, aag lagakar jalna hoga, Kadam milakar chalna hoga
(There may be obstacles on the way, the dark clouds cover the sky, fire beneath the feet, flames raining on the head, with a smile we have to walk with fire in the hand.)
"Like Vajpayee said we all have to walk together to save our legacy and culture from the BJP," pointed out Chaudhary.
Vajpayee who had a sense of humour would probably have chuckled.
Many might speculate, how could Vajpayee belong to the Sangh Parivaar at all, given not only his democratic spirit, his pluralist beliefs, his loyalty to India’s secular traditions, but also, his personal life. An exuberant non-vegetarian, a drinker, and to all accounts, a lover? Quite an anachronism to the run-of-the-mill orthodox, repressed, and cheerless rank and file of the RSS and its various sister organisations that purportedly upholds the values of Spartan lifestyle and (heteronormative) celibacy. The cosmopolitan Vajpayee was the closest thing to Nehru they can ever lay claim to, at least on the hedonistic scale of things.
The niggling feeling that he was the right man in the wrong party is reinforced when one goes through this recent interview with K N Govindacharya, RSS ideologue, who highlights five key points of difference the RSS had with Vajpayee. And those key points are crucial because the rejection of those are exactly why India finds itself in the position it is in today. It is as if a more hardened, radical, and extremist section of the BJP that Vajpayee had held off at bay, was just chafing at the bit and waiting to occupy centre space all these years. “Firstly, Atal ji believed 'yes, we need power but not at all cost,' he never had the no-holds-barred approach towards power and never compromised with that pedestal," Govindacharya said. “Vajpayee believed good politics should be people-centric, and not power-centric… politics should reach and benefit people, it should not be about grabbing the power."
If that is a “point of difference”, between Vajpayee and the RSS, then it would appear that Vajpayee certainly did not believe in the amoral principle of “saam-dand-bhed” that Amit Shah practises as he makes convenient alliances with separatist parties, and gives tickets to criminals (like the Bellary mining scam Reddy brothers for example, among many others.)
However, Govindacharya says that Vajapyee had always remained true to his Sangh background and that is also true.
Yet, in many ways Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the tallest leader BJP has ever had, and among the most respected Indian prime ministers both here and abroad, for his sagacity, his bus diplomacy, his nuclear programme that put India on the nuclear map of empowered nations, the Golden Quadrilateral that connected India’s metropolitan hubs, remains an enigma, a study in contradictions.
The gentle, soft-spoken, cultured, Vajpayee is the first, and perhaps the last Sangh Parivar leader to have common appeal across this divide India finds itself in – between the so-called secular liberals and the Hindutva rightwing. But the past does cast long shadows and the things we say and do in our lives are magnified and examined in great detail after we are gone, no matter how hagiographic a narrative may be created for us by our admirers.
Following the dictum, de mortuis nil nisi bonum it would be socially inappropriate to speak ill of the departed. However, social media which enables people to speak without inhibitions in these matters has been exploding – as opposed to the mainstream media – with old video clips of ABV haranguing and cheerleading kar sevaks prior to the Babri Masjid demolition, his “who lit the fire?” speech after the 2002 Gujarat riots, as well as posts on his speech before the Nellie massacre.
ABV was among the first to communalise the Taj Mahal by propagating the myth that Shah Jahan got the hands of 22,000 workers who worked on Taj amputated. He wrote about it in his book as if this was fact. That was long before PN Oak or Batra came into the limelight.
Examples of violently exclusionary speeches giving lie to the inclusive soft-spoken and cultured gentleman poet, acceptable to the elite class across the political spectrum — these are all available in the public domain and playing out ad infinitum for the last couple of days on social media, and it is not necessary to reproduce them here.
For many of his detractors, Vajpayee and Advani were the architects of today’s mayhem. Theirs was the pebble that started the avalanche that India finds itself swamped under today. If there had been no Ram Janmabhoomi issue, if there had been no Babri Masjid demolition, there would not have been a BJP of any consequence it is not unreasonable to presume that there would not have been a Vajpayee or an Advani in the positions they found themselves.
After the assassination of Gandhi by her bodyguards in 1984, the Congress party won a landslide victory in the general election and the BJP that Vajpayee and Advani formed on April 6, 1980, was reduced to two seats in Parliament. Vajpayee, once a foreign minister during the Janata party government, was practically out of the political scenario, no longer a leader of consequence, nor even a member of Parliament.
It was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate body of the RSS, that was a godsend. That was the moment of the video clip doing the current rounds, as well as the “aur ek dhakka do” golden moment of Advani’s, his old friend of decades. (This was later claimed by then BJP Ayodhya MP Vilas Vedanti to be his deed, but that is another story.) Hindutva mobs tore down the 16 th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992, and the ensuing riots that killed nearly 2,000 people.
That was when the RSS realised that this fledgling party, the BJP, could win the next election with the acceptable face of a moderate leader holding the rudder and chose Vajpayee, who was running the party. After serving as a prime minister twice and failing to secure a majority to continue, he finally secured a five-year term in 1999. The rest, as they say is history.
Would there have been the graph of Vajpayee’s rise to power without a strident Advani at that juncture pushing the agenda forward on his gaudy rath, straight out of some Amar Chitra Katha imagination?
It is difficult to say.
But while Vajpayee has earned the Bharat Ratna and earned the designation of a “statesman”, Advani has not been so fortunate. Yet, it is he who has been the wind under Vajpayee’s wings and worked diligently and constantly to build his career.
In fact, he was the driving force behind the Bharat Ratna.
In an interview to NDTV, Advani termed Vajpayee a "great consensus builder" and that his legacy of consensus building was very important for all parties. Advani said he had written to then prime minister Manmohan Singh, saying Vajpayee deserves Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour, and that he would feel "grateful and happy" if the government acceded to his request. The letter listed 10 reasons for giving the honour to Vajpayee.
Speaking to CNN-IBN, Advani said, "In Vajpayee's entire tenure as PM there is not one single aspect which I can regard as been a blot on him in his career."
He also spoke about how he conceded being the prime ministerial candidate for Vajpayee. "Very often it is thought that I conceded the space, but it was his natural space. I always regarded him as my leader. I, in fact, have been saying now these days after these interviews that for me he was a role model. How should the leader of the country be like? Both in respect of his attitude to issues as well as in respect above all his absolute modesty and humility even when he could credit himself with many achievements".
Advani’s permanent impassive expression, (the subject of much hilarity on social media) whether it is sitting silently and immobile in the Lok Sabha while there is a no-confidence motion debate going on, or on some podium where Modi ignores him as he stands with hands folded, or on his old friend’s last journey as it happened on August 17, 2018, is the true “mukhauta” – the mask of a politician who has not only lost his self-respect, but been superseded by the vaulting ambition of a more aggressive version of himself, a one-time servitor, while giving up what he could have achieved, had he taken the tide that comes so rarely in the affairs of all men.
It is undeniable that Advani and Vajpayee were both complicit in the destruction of the Babri Masjid and instrumental in the rise of the Frankenstein’s monster that has run amok today.
Advani received the brunt of the brickbats while Vajpayee has been largely given a free pass and reinvented as a philosopher-poet-PM. But this narrative of duality, one the moderate urging restraint, and the other, the fire breathing radical appealing to the “fringe” elements, has been nurtured and accepted for all these years.
The BJP /RSS project is one of fascism and its philosophical and ideological founder is Guru Golwalkar. This is an incontrovertible truth, no matter how much it is diluted or obfuscated, but that is precisely what the Vajpayee- Advani good cop-bad cop partnership did. Today, the fulsome praises heaped upon Vajpayee from all sides is indicative of how we have normalised and accepted an entire universe of beliefs within 30 years.
What is alarming is how the so-called Liberals, normally quick to spot mendacity in leaders like Modi and Adityanath have responded with gushing tributes to this larger-than-life image. It reveals several uncomfortable truths about the self-serving character of liberalism in India, more than it does about any Sangh Parivar leader.
Liberals are quick to condemn those brutish and obviously loutish faces who talk against short skirts, non-vegetarian food, beef, and say crazy things about history and science, as well as minority communities.
They are horrified because many Muslims who are their friends and "secular" like them (read clothes, eating and drinking) and in their own social class, are "threatened." They cannot make out cause and effect in the larger sense, connect the dots, or relate a decent suave face to the bigotry and prejudice he stands for, and which is carried out by the far uglier foul speaking underlings. These are the ones passing glowing tributes today and talking about the difference between "good sanghi" and "bad sanghi."
This is a neoliberal privileged class who can afford to indulge in their lifestyles, eat what they want, go wherever they want, buy their children a good education outside the government system and within a margin of comfort when there is price rise. They worry because of the potential threats of Fascists to their creature comforts. Their liberalism is conditional to the status quo of their lifestyles and not their survival.
Many of them posting lavish compliments to ABV are also doing so hoping to "shame" the BJP by pointing out the difference between a "statesman" and the present lout.
What they fail to realise is that today's lout can become tomorrow's statesman due to the kind of normalisation that comes with the moral relativism and false equivocation trap they fall into, and that they will end up a few years hence saying that the present people in power are "better" than say, BJP MLA Gyandev Ahuja, the used condom-picker. Fascism mutates into progressively malevolent forms with every power dispensation.
And maybe one day as the creeping tide reaches even their doorsteps in their safe enclaves and gated communities, perhaps they too will learn the difference between condoning Fascism on relative scales, and the difference between lifestyles being threatened and the very survival of marginalised groups being threatened. Because, to the actual victims of Fascism, sweet words, kind faces, long oratory and witty poetry makes not a lot of difference when they are lynched for being on the wrong side of the tracks, religiously, caste wise, and economically.
Nor does being a "liberal."