Atal ji, My Fellow-Traveller

In his autobiography My Country, My Life, veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani remembered Atal Behari Vajpayee as ‘A Statesman with a Poetic Soul’

That was a time when, after Dr Mookerjee, the person who mattered the most in the Jana Sangh was Deendayalji. He too thought highly of Atalji and gave him greater responsibility in the party and Parliament after Dr Mookerjee’s tragic demise in May 1953. Within a short time, Atalji established himself as the most charismatic leader of the party. Although the Jana Sangh was only a young sapling before a giant tree called the Congress, people thronged to listen to Atalji’s speeches, even in places where the party had no roots. Besides his oratory, they were also impressed by the alternative perspective he provided on national issues that distinguished our party from the Congress and the Communists. He thus showed, at a very young age, all signs of emerging as a mass leader with a nationwide appeal.

After Atalji was elected to Parliament in 1957, Deendayalji made another move-one concerning me. Deendayalji asked me to relocate from Rajasthan to Delhi and assist Atalji in his parliamentary work. Ever since then, Atalji and I have worked together in every phase of the evolution of the Jana Sangh and, later, the BJP. Soon after entering the Lok Sabha, he became the voice of the party in Parliament, commanding a reputation far in excess of its numerical presence. A decade later, after the tragic death of Deendayalji in February 1968, he also had to carry the responsibility of party presidentship. It was an extremely difficult period in the party’s history, but Atalji soon emerged as a capable leader, steering the Jana Sangh out of the deep morass. That was when the slogan Andhere mein ek chingaari, Atal Bihari Atal Bihari (Atal Behari is the ray of hope in this pervasive darkness) became widely popular with the workers and supporters of our party).

Five years later, in 1973, he entrusted the party’s organisational responsibility to me. The camaraderie that I enjoyed with Atalji, Nanaji Deshmukh, Kushabhau Thakre, Sundar Singh Bhandari and others while building the party together, remains a deeply cherished part of my political journey. By the time Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in June 1975 the Jana Sangh had already earned the reputation of the strongest and most organised opposition party. No wonder, it also earned the trust and confidence of Jayaprakash Narayan, and became the most spirited contingent of the phalanx of pro-democracy fighters that he mobilised on a common platform. Once again, Atalji and I fought together, went to prison together and, after the Emergency was lifted, worked together towards the formation of the Janata Party. We worked harder for the cohesion of Janata Party but could not save it.

Finally, we along with other colleagues, formed the BJP in 1980. True, the party’s debut performance in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections was dismal, we won only two seats. Even Atalji was defeated in Gwalior. However, this was entirely due to the extraordinary situation created by the assassination of Indira Gandhi. It wasn’t really a Lok Sabha poll; it was rather a ‘Shok Sabha’ poll, where the sympathies were bound to be with the bereaved.

The BJP’s subsequent trajectory of meteoric growth was due to the Ayodhya movement. It was the time when Atalji chose to remain relatively inactive. However, I have never had any doubt—that the party’s journey from the failure to form a stable government at the Centre in 1996 (when Atalji was Prime Minister for only thirteen days) to the success to do so again in 1998, was mainly due to his personal popularity that transcended the party’s support base. Once again, we both worked closely together to forge the NDA, breaking the shackles of political ‘untouchability’ that the Congress and the Communists had tried to create.

For a long time after I launched the Ram Rath Yatra in 1990, to mobilise support for the Ayodhya movement, a peculiar asymmetry arose in the media’s projection of Atalji and me. Whereas Atalji was seen as a liberal, I was labelled as a ‘Hindu hardliner’. It hurt me initially, as I knew that the reality was entirely contrary to the image that I had come to acquire. Conveying this feeling to friends in the media was an uphill task and it was then that some colleagues in my party, who were well aware of my sensitivity to my portrayal, advised me not to battle the image problem. They said, “Advaniji, in fact, it helps the BJP to have one leader who is projected as a liberal and another leader projected as a hardliner’.

In the wake of being falsely charged in the ‘hawala case’, I had announced that I would not re-enter the Lok Sabha until I was exonerated by the judiciary. Therefore, I had not offered myself as a candidate in the 1996 parliamentary elections. It was Atalji who contested from Gandhinagar in Gujarat, in addition to contesting from his own traditional constituency of Lucknow. Expectedly, he won with a huge margin from both constituencies, and although he later resigned from Gandhinagar to keep his membership in Lucknow, his gesture energised the party and gave to the people, at large, an unmistakable message about unity at the top in the BJP. It was the same message that had gone out from the party’s Maha Adhiveshan in Mumbai in 1995, when I, as party President, announced his name as BJP’s PM candidate in the parliamentary elections in the following years.

Why did I make that announcement? There was much idle speculation on this point at the time, and some of it, sadly, continues even today. Some people in the party and the Sangh had chided me then for making the announcement. ‘In our estimation,’ they said, ‘you would be a better person to lead the government if the party wins the people’s mandate’.

I replied, and did so with all the sincerity and conviction at my command that I disagreed with their opinion. ‘In the perspective of the people, I am more of an ideologue than a mass leader. It is true that the Ayodhya movement changed my profile in politics. But Atalji was our leader. He had a far higher stature and much greater acceptability among the masses. He had an appeal that transcends the BJP’s traditional ideological support base. He was acceptable not only to the allies of BJP but, far more importantly, to the people of India.’ Some of them insisted that I had made a big sacrifice by this announcement. However, I was steadfast. What I did was not an act of sacrifice. It was the outcome of a rational assessment of what was right and what was in the best interest of the party and nation.

Along with all our other colleagues, the two of us worked together to bring the BJP to power in 1998. I served as his deputy in the government. This relationship was formalised when I was appointed Deputy Prime Minister on June 29, 2002.