Happy Birthday Vajpayee!

Happy Birthday Vajpayee!
published youthejournalist.com on December 26 and December 282007 By : Premchand Sahajwala
After listening to the discourse of Krishna in the battle of Mahabharata, Arjuna finally told Krishna: Na Dainyam Na Palayanam (I shall neither fear nor escape.) This is the title of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s collection of poems first published in Nov. 1998 when he had completed just 8 months as prime minister after the mid-term elections that year.

While any BJP leader or ordinary worker may proudly say that Vajpayee is the only non-Congress PM to complete a full five years term, it will be better to talk about Vajpayee without binding him into any party frame, the more suitable way being, to see him as the leader of the masses, nay matinee idol. His ‘Sinh Garjana’ (Lion’s roar) and his spotless pure poetry, both rule over the hearts of Indians; it may be difficult which one to chose, the roaring lion or the nationalistic poet!

In the title poem ‘Na Dainyam Na Palayanam’, he says very proudly that we have given the drops of our sweat to the path of duty but we never stopped in the journey to our destiny nor bowed before any challenge! He describes India in these lines and India only rules his heart.

In 1996 when Vajpayee first took oath as prime minister, the newspapers reported that when he was a newly elected member of Lok Sabha in the 50s, Pandit Nehru introduced him to a foreign dignitary, saying ‘Meet the future prime minister of India’! In one of his articles, Mani Shankar Aiyyar, currently a minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, too wrote pleasantly that while Aiyyar himself was new in the parliament, he would at times rush excitedly to the house on hearing that Atal Behari Vajpayee was soon going to begin his speech there.

Vajpayee was first elected to Lok Sabha in 1957 from Balrampur constituency after an earlier defeat in a 1955 bye-election and by virtue of his oratory he won the hearts of even his adversaries. The people of India were happy to learn that this young man began his political career as an assistant to Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookherji, the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS). Vajpayee would soon become a craze for his fans, anxious always to hear his ‘Sinh Garjana’ at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground or in other cities mainly of UP or MP. His sense of humour would add to the charm of the speech focusing on the current problems of India and failures of the Congress. The posters informing about his public meeting at any place would show his photograph punching his fist forcefully into the sky with the caption reading – Atal ji ki Sinh Garjana’ (Atal’s Lion’s roar). People would leave all necessary work and excitedly rush to the venue of the speech by whichever conveyance available. Those were the years when democracy in India was still at a fledgling level with India’s defeat at the hands of China in 1962 war coming like a rude shock to the people.

Indians learnt for the first time what a ‘No Confidence Motion’ meant and the talk of first such motion by Acharya Kripalani, Minoo Masani and Dr Lohia against the government after debacle in the China war was the first hot talk of democracy, which the Indian educated masses enjoyed. After defeat from Congress’s Subhadra Joshi in 1962 Lok Sabha elections, Vajpayee was elected to the Rajya Sabha and any one in the Rajya Sabha could enjoy hearing a cool, attacking and confident Vajpayee saying firmly to Nehru that your non-alignment policy is a fiasco, you should, as such, refuse to go to attend the forthcoming international disarmament meet! Making Violet Alva, the then Deputy Chairperson in Rajya Sabha, smile while she was in control of the house, he would jokingly say, I shall just speak another five minutes when Alva would point out to him that his time was already over.

Once, many years later, as PM, Vajpayee said in New Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium on an International Literacy Day that he was not habitual of delivering a small speech. This made the audience burst laughs with love for their loved leader Vajpayee. The fact of the matter is that when people heard Vajpayee, they never wanted him to end the speech and would rather enjoy an endless humorous speech throwing light on India’s current situation in his own fantastic way.

Vajpayee’s real political journey began when Indira Gandhi became India’s PM in 1966. Two leaders were always at Indira Gandhi’s centre of nerves, Dr Lohia and Atal Behari Vajpayee. While Dr Lohia would question Indira Gandhi even as she left the parliament in between his speech, Indira Gandhi would explain nervously that some foreign dignitary had arrived, she had to leave on getting a slip message. Vajpayee would suddenly make the house laugh by drawing Indira Gandhi’s attention to the fact that two women members Maitreyi Devi and Tarakeshwari Sinha had abruptly got up during his speech and started brick batting words at each other, now who would hear his speech, a novice Indira Gandhi would simply smile at such a friendly way of seeking her help. Lohia was the one to point out to Indira Gandhi that her car had violated red light signal at a certain point on a road, Indira Gandhi would humbly request Lohia to see reason and realize that a prime minister’s position was peculiar when she was short of time. Lohia once even questioned Indira Gandhi why she deposited in the Reserve Bank, a necklace gifted to her at Saudi Arabia after three weeks instead of the constitutionally permitted two weeks! Those were the days of oratory and unlike today’s unpleasant scenario of rushing to the speaker’s well, the members concentrated on substance as well as humour, to maintain dignity of the house as well as a friendly atmosphere. Lohia died tragically on 12 Oct 1967 after a life and death battle in New Delhi, the nation lost a strong parliamentarian hereafter.

But Vajpayee kept the show going on. He delivered a lion’s roar after furious riots in Bhiwandi saying that the riots had taken place on petty insignificant excuses. He was perhaps at that time too, one of the very few secularists of his communal party but he told an audience of not less than five lakh people at Delhi’s Ramlila ground that some beetle leaf eating Hindu passers by had spitted on the outer side of the mosque walls. But when he visited the said mosque after the riots along with some Muslim devotees, he went inside the mosque with them. He questioned the devotees that there were red spit marks even on the inner side of the mosque walls. The devotees would tell him at this point that some Muslim devotees too ate beetle leaves and spitted on the walls inside! Vajpayee would not raise such points to pinpoint only the Muslim tendency to dispute the Hindus. He would rather make it clear that being a Hindu was no license for being secular or a peace loving Indian.

In the later decades when his party took an unfortunate turn through LK Advani’s ill-conceived Rath-Yatra, he would visit Gujarat and shame those Hindus who would chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’ bursting their throats but not concentrate on any genuine work of the nation. Perhaps Vajpayee would be wondering how the Hindu pride could have a stronger bearing on a person than the pride of being an Indian!

Vajpayee was a close friend of Morarji Desai and some say that when Morarji Desai’s government fell, in which Vajpayee was the minister of external affairs, he was inspired by the name Janata Party and named his new party the Bharatiya Janata Party. The close friendship between Vajpayee and Morarji would also create humorous situations when once the duo visited Russia together. Morarji Desai was the strict disciplinarian, strictly against drinking and as such would deliver a lecture to Indian students in Moscow preaching them not to drink under any circumstances. The students after the speech and during a refreshment interval would ask Vajpayee that in such cold environs, how could they help drinking, Vajpayee would wink friendly at the students and say – piyo, piyo. khoob piyo (drink drink. As much you like).

Once Vajpayee said in an interview to the Hindi weekly Dharmayuga, that he had said somewhere in a lighter vein that he was fond of ‘Rasgullas’ (a sweet), and the effect was that at one place where he went to deliver a speech, a full room was packed with baskets containing ‘Rasgullas’. His fans and workers would not miss a chance to please their favorite leader.

Vajpayee formed his new party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 6 Apr. 1980. He did away with communalism for which his party was off and on cursed. When the Morarji government was on the verge of falling, he moved heaven-earth as a leader to save the falling government. He entered spirited discussions with leaders of all parties and in the process of working day and night to save the government from falling, he himself fell on the floor of parliament’s central hall, became unconscious for sometime! He had offered to Morarji Desai that if his government was being questioned for the communal credentials of the Janata Party’s BJS faction, all BJS members would resign immediately from the government and support it from outside. Sacrifice is the jewel of all nationalistic leaders and Vajpayee could not be an exception. The government could somehow not be saved and Chowdhry Charan Singh was lured by Indira Gandhi to topple Morarji, though at an opportune time, Indira Gandhi toppled Chowdhry Charan Singh too!

Vajpayee never strayed from national interests. When Indira Gandhi liberated Bangladesh from the brutal Pakistani Army and ambitious politician Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Vajpayee was the first to greet her despite being an opposition leader. He congratulated her saying – Aap ne mujh se kaha tha ki aap jo karma chahti hain use kar dikhaati hain aur sachmuch, aap ne kar ke dikkhaya (You had told me that whatever you decide to do, you do, and really you did it!).

Once, Vajpayee was roaring in the parliament and this time interestingly, not against Indira Gandhi, but in favor of her on a peculiar issue. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had said in an interview to some foreign journal that at Oxford, Indira Gandhi had the record of just being a mediocre and at times she would nervously seek notes from others. Vajpayee took exception to such an interview winning admiration from all in the house, irrespective of party affiliations, by saying that leaders of our country may oppose their prime minister democratically, but under no circumstances could they bear another country’s leader casting aspersions on India’s prime minister; she should immediately send a protest note to Pakistan government. But Indira Gandhi herself said friendly to him that she had decided to better ignore such utterances by outside leaders!

Vajpayee introduced the phrase ‘Positive Secularism’ in the constitution of his newly formed party. He also took in the party, a secularist leader Ram Jethmalani and a Muslim leader Sikandar Bakht. The RSS, whose workers were on record of having indulged in rowdism at Sikandar Bakht’s marrying a Hindu woman, felt offended at this. But in fact these two leaders were the ones to pen down the constitution of BJP along with a traditional leader Sunder Singh Bhandari. The RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras was interestingly with Indira Gandhi in those days.

Indira Gandhi had suddenly found a new wisdom on becoming prime minister again in 1980. She felt that the Hindu vote bank of the country was always a force that sabotaged Congress’s chances under RSS influence. As such the best course for her second innings would be to go the Hindu way under Balasaheb Deoras’s tutelage. This meant that Indira Gandhi and Vajpayee in reality exchanged positions and treaded new roads. The friendship between Indira Gandhi and Deoras originated to days of Emergency when the RSS was banned and Deoras sent from jail a series of letters to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi requesting her to relieve the RSS workers jailed during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi relieved them and Deoras praised Indira Gandhi’s much-publicized 20-point programme on TV. Deoras therefore became a tutor of Indira Gandhi’s new incarnation, a politician treading Hindutva. Deoras condemned Bhindranwale for playing separatism in his so called ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and in the killing of Bhindranwale in the Operation Blue Star, Deoras’s morally supporting shadow was fully behind Indira Gandhi. This was also a way to humiliate Vajpayee who was now, according to him, a spoiled leader, who had gone secular.

But Indira Gandhi was unfortunately, assassinated on 31 Oct. 1984. North India saw indiscriminate killings of innocent Sikhs and some Congress leaders of Delhi were being suspected as the perpetrators of these deadly killings. But Deoras’s Hindu Rashtra’ sentiments and support for Congress continued to live even in the post-killing elections of 1984 and Vajpayee had virtually gone into oblivion. His BJP got only two seats in these elections! Deoras appealed to the voters on the eve of elections that they should vote for pro-Hindutva candidates irrespective of party affiliations and the country saw the RSS workers helping Congress candidates wherever they felt that the candidate had even slightly communal inclinations. In Rohtak, the RSS workers weighed a Congress candidate with coins and in Delhi’s Karol Bagh constituency; Congress’s Sundervati Naval Prabhakar got elected on the shoulders of the RSS workers. Vajpayee himself faced miserable defeat in Gwalior from Madhav Rao Scindia and had to wait for two years to become Rajya Sabha member.

Vajpayee’s tough days began actually when Advani, given newly the charge of the BJP by RSS, suddenly began his Rath Yatra. The nation came in the grip of hatred and Hindu-Muslim divide, and for once it appeared that India’s history was going to be re-written by Lal Krishna Advani, Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s post-independence Indian incarnation.

The secularist Vajpayee must have felt discomfiture in such a scenario and somehow, he must have existed in the party of discipline as he had himself christened it to be. Discipline was first and foremost in Vajpayee-founded BJP as it was in Mookherji-founded BJS. During the Rath Yatra, Vajpayee could have held in his possession with agony only, a letter of withdrawal of support to the new PM VP Singh which he was to hand over to president if LK Advani’s Rath of hatred was stopped or he was arrested. VP Singh, who became PM after 1989 elections was supported from outside by BJP.

Deoras ditched Rajiv this time, and discovered the new blue boy L K Advani, who within a year ditched VP Singh in the name of Hindu unity since the latter had raised the bogey of reservations to OBCs on the basis of Mandal recommendations. The nation was now reeling under a wave of hostilities when the Rath was running across ten states to reach Ayodhya, the birthplace of Hindu deity Rama, where the first Mughal king Babar had supposedly demolished a temple and built a mosque known as Babri mosque. But Advani was arrested in Bihar by the then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s government and Vajpayee had to hand over the letter of withdrawal of support to VP Singh’s government.

For some years the country had virtually forgotten Vajpayee and some sections of the Hindus especially the upper caste were cramming entirely a new language. They were talking of Hindu rights in this ’Hindu Rashtra’ which according to them was living in danger as there were Muslim countries all around India! The people knew for the first time the meaning of Uniform Civil Code, and that Article 370 was the sin which Congress had committed; that the Congress was appeasing the Muslims and so on.

Hereafter, the course of events was very dangerous for India and on 6 December 1992 came the most shameful day of Indian history after independence. Babri mosque was demolished by RSS VHP and Shiv Sena and the division between Hindus and Muslims was virtually complete. But the nation soon saw the disillusionment that followed in the BJP circles especially after the 1993 elections in 4 states namely UP, MP, HP and Rajasthan. Communalism was virtually defeated and Advani’s BJP lost three states, UP MP and HP; in Rajasthan, a political look alike of Vajpayee, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat somehow managed to form a government with the help of some independents.

This disillusionment with the communal policies of the BJP also created dichotomy in the party, one secular faction being behind the back of Vajpayee and the other communal faction behind Advani though the latter posed to be a bridge between his party and the RSS, the self-styled ideological boss of the party as well as the cadre supplier.

Come elections 1991, and Vajpayee found a new political friend in the new PM PV Narasimha Rao who wanted to lead the country through economic reforms. Vajpayee’s first collection of poems ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ (My 51 poems) was interestingly inaugurated by Narasimha Rao in 1995 and Narasimha Rao’s political novel ‘The Insider’ was inaugurated by Vajpayee.

Vajpayee thus found more friends in other parties and lived like a stranger many times in his own party. He in fact never failed to rule the hearts of his political opponents so that Somnath Chatterji had to comment once that ‘Vajpayee is good, but his party is bad.’ In the inauguration of ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ Narasimha Rao commented that in politics, a Guru is always required and Vajpayee seems to be the right Guru. But Vajpayee wittingly said during his speech that a Guru is not required as much as a Guru Ghantaal (A clever Guru)!

Vajpayee is not only a friend of friends and enemies both, but at times, he displays excellent social culture in his political circle. This became evident when he, as an opposition leader was invited along with virtually all-political leaders, to the marriage ceremony of Madhav Rao Scindia’s daughter. Madhav Rao Scindia was then the Railway minister. The leaders greeted Madhav Rao in the ceremony, blessed the couple, rejoiced and left after dinner. But extremely busy Madhav Rao saw quite late that all leaders had gone but it was Vajpayee who was sitting peacefully somewhere on a sofa and chatting with someone. Madhav Rao was surprised. He rushed respectfully to Vajpayee and asked him whether he had his dinner. Vajpayee would humbly say with a smile that a bride’s relatives never take dinner so soon. I am from the bride’s side, so I shall have dinner at the end along with you the hosts! Madhav Rao could really not help embracing this nationalistic opponent friend who valued even customs of society as much as the political customs!

Narasimha Rao found an excellent political friend in Vajpayee, irrespective of the latter’s being an opposition leader. When Benazir Bhutto, the then prime minister of Pakistan, had suddenly raised in the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the question of human rights- violation in Kashmir proposing a resolution against India on the subject, Vajpayee went to the UNHRC as leader of the Indian delegation. He made clear to the world at large, that the Indian political system was a cohesive one on matters of national integrity. Vajpayee firmly asked the world dignitaries at the UNHRC meet ‘Which is the country that takes more care of the minorities than India. Ours is the country that has had Presidents, Vice Presidents, Army Chiefs and Chief Justices belonging to the minorities. So there was no reason to panic on the question of human rights and minorities in India. Benazir had to bite the dust and her resolution was miserably defeated, with hardly one or two countries supporting it.


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As Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao proved to be more a man of governance than a mass leader. The dynasty was virtually absent from politics as Sonia had ensconced herself into family life. But to Advani, in spite of the ruling Congress’s gradual weakening as a political party, power didn’t seem to be like a cakewalk for him.

The Vajpayee faction virtually started hating Advani who miraculously saved himself from hooting at a BJP session in Mumbai in 1995. He came to know that a section of Vajpayee fans were preparing to hoot him when his turn to speak came. He went to the stage on announcement of his name, the hooters readying their throats for the purpose, but Advani deftly gave them a happy shock by announcing in the first sentences of his speech that in the elections of 1996, BJP would project Vajpayee as prime ministerial candidate! The hooters felt bowled! But interestingly, some sections of media later reported that Advani’s projection of Vajpayee was his momentary attempt to save humiliation for himself and he did not mean what he said; some even felt that he had started repenting.

In the elections of 1996, BJP got about 161 seats and this increase could clearly be attributed to the appearance of Vajpayee as the new blue boy of the BJP and also disappearance of Narasimha Rao from politics.

Somehow, Vajpayee became prime minister in the style of ‘Uncle Podder hangs a picture!’ All corners of the political system were cursing his minority government as the one led by a communal party which had done the sin of alienating the Muslims, creating bloodshed and thus partitioning the country from inside.

The word ‘communal’ became a pet abuse for the BJP. Advani gasped for breath and begged support from every this and that party but after 13 days, Vajpayee voluntarily proceeded to submit his resignation to the president in the midst of a very hostile debate of seeking vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha. Vajpayee resigned even before waiting for the voting. But did Vajpayee pass these 13 days comfortably? Perhaps no. He appointed Jaswant Singh as finance minister and was shouted at by the so-called big brother, the RSS who dictated to him that Jaswant Singh could not become finance minister just because they didn’t want him to be!

Today the BJP leaders talk of a remote control in Sonia’s UPA government and keep calling names to Manmohan Singh that she is the one to controls him remotely. But there could not have been a more brazen example of RSS’ subjugating a prime minister who was respected by all sections of peoples in the country.

Vajpayee, as prime minister, was always pulled in different directions. When he became prime minister third time after the 1999 elections, his power minister Suresh Prabhu was a Shiv Sena member. Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray constantly pulled Suresh Prabhu to do some favor to Maharashtra which the latter could not have done as he was now a minister at centre. Now Balasaheb wanted Suresh Prabhu’s head. Vajpayee told him that the minister was doing commendable work in the power sector, but Balasaheb won’t listen. Vajpayee didn’t have the freedom to retain even a minister for his merits.

Conscientious judgment can only condemn the fact that a prime minister is summoned whenever required by to the Delhi office of the RSS at Jhandewalan! A prime minister waiting at Jhandewalan to be called in by the RSS chief for instructions! In the later years, the RSS started seeking the head of Vajpayee’s foreign affairs advisor Brijesh Mishra because the latter would not permit the RSS dignitaries many a time to meet Vajpayee in the PMO.

Vajpayee had to seek support from politically un-sensible women like J Jayalalitha. Many felt that the nuclear tests by Vajpayee’s NDA government in 1998 were preceded by tensions from Jayalalitha and it could easily be judged that these tests were a hysterically conceived political urgency to prepare for elections if Jayalalitha toppled the government. Interestingly when the ‘Buddha was smiling’, a ballet based on a Vajpayee poem against nuclear weapons was being staged at Delhi’s Mandi House. Some lines of one of his poems Hiroshima kee peeda’ (‘The Agony of Hiroshima’) from the collection ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ may not be out of context here:

Some night,
my sleep gets suddenly disturbed,
my eyes open,
and I start thinking,
how the scientists who invented the atomic weapons,
could sleep after hearing
the deadly news of the mass deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

One infers without mistake that the poet’s honest and innocuous heart felt broken even on re-living in imagination, the saga of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Vajpayee bequeathed an India in which, as prime minister he had to go to the Safdurjung Hospital of New Delhi to bless India’s billionth baby named Aastha. Holding the baby in his hands he had to express Aastha (hope) that the children of India would live a prosperous life. Once, during his initial years when he was beginning to be popular, some Welfare officers visited him for comments on family planning. Vajpayee laughed a hearty laugh and said, who could do better family planning than him. He never married!

Interestingly Vajpayee didn’t marry but when he became prime minister, unmarried women politicians like Uma Bharati, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamta Bannerji always put him to some sort of challenge or discomfiture!

Maverick Uma would suddenly decide to change her constituency from Khajuraho where many had started hating her, to Ujjain. She would put excuses in TV interviews that the roads of Khajuraho were bumpy-jumpy and she could not travel in jeeps to campaign there, due to backache. Mayawati ditched Vajpayee most when in 1999, in the ‘No Confidence Motion’ debate against Vajpayee’s government, she informed the house in her speech that her party would vote for neither side but later exhibiting a lot of delight, said on TV that Vajpayee’s government fell because her five MPs voted against his government. One remembers painfully that Vajpayee’s government lost the vote by just one!

Vajpayee’s biggest moment of embarrassment came when Pakistan’s comparatively modernized dictator President and Army Chief Gen. Parvez Musharraf visited India in 2001.

The nation saw that on 14 July 2001, when Musharraf and Vajpayee were on the verge of making a workable agreement at Agra on Kashmir and other issues, sabotaging signals suddenly came from what we call the hawks in the Indian political system. It is not necessary even to point out who exactly triggered this last minute failure, but Musharraf says with agony in his autobiography ‘In The Line of Fire’ that a final draft was ready, he had just sought interval to change dress and come back to sign it during the dinner, but alas, when he came, his foreign minister informed him that now everything was destroyed. Musharraf clearly names Advani as the hawk to sabotage the deal. Subsequently Vajpayee once again said very spiritedly in the Lok Sabha that he would make the sincerest efforts of his life to solve the Kashmir tangle and at least that would be the last effort of his own life. But during his premiership that didn’t happen.

Come 2002. A new name Narendra Modi suddenly started lurking in the sky. Muslims of Gujarat were massacred brutally and even women were not spared. A pregnant woman was stabbed and burning clothes were forced into her stabbed belly. The massacres followed an incident at Godhra railway stations on 27 Feb 2002, where 58 Kar Sevaks (religious workers) returning from Ayodhya in the Sabarmati Express were burnt alive by setting on fire their compartment following some dispute at the station.

Narendra Modi the chief minister of Gujarat became an internationally hated name even in the UN Assembly and the US Congress. The nation was virtually dumbstruck as TV channels were showing furious scenes of burning houses and men-women, by mobs carrying lathis, petroleum, kerosene, and other weapons.

Vajpayee must have been hurt as much as Gandhi used to be on such occasions. He summoned an urgent meeting of important leaders and called for removing Narendra Modi. But Advani wont let it be. Narendra Modi, as Advani recently said was like a Hitler whom perhaps many ideologues of the RSS and BJP worship. Narendra Modi had perhaps, for Advani, reincarnated the Babri demolition days when he had suddenly hoped to tread the corridors of power as prime minister of India.

The Ayodhya episode had virtually lived its share and when the famous saint of Ayodhya, Ramchandra Das Paramhans died later, the VHP brazenly cursed Vajpayee that a 90-year old saint had died due to the prime minister’s ignoring the saint’s desire for building a temple at the Babri site. Perhaps for Advani the destruction of the Muslims in Gujarat was a repeat of the destruction of the Babri mosque and also that Narendra Modi was the new symbol who would extend the so called Hindu Laboratory of Gujarat to the whole of India.

One cannot forget a virtually broken prime minister standing helplessly and in a state of shock at the Shah Alam Camp of Gujarat where riot victims were made to camp. Vajpayee in tears, asked every one around, how do we burn a living human being? How does our conscience permit us to do so? His tragic face was the tragic face of India at the time; people watching TV channels must have shed helpless tears for the hapless Muslims of Gujarat.

Vajpayee had to see the tragic attack on the parliament during his tenure, the hijacking of the plane and the release of dreaded terrorists as cost of release of the hijacked passengers. The present scenario of the world doesn’t really permit us to feel astonished in disbelief over such ghastly incidents in any country, but Vajpayee must have felt like doing something in such situations. Problems like attack on parliament became now the vicissitude of any country after 9/11.

On the governance side, he once said honestly in a press interview that difficulties in ruling the country were emerging due to BJP’s lack of experience. He kept advising his party members to learn governance more than politics. But his party members kept learning filthy politics and blaming the Congress for faults committed and not committed by it. They felt that Sonia was their sole enemy in the country and started calling her names. Her foreign origin became their mantra, they would not heed to Vajpayee’s advice not to attack her personally. Narendra Modi would utter nonsense in the Lok Sabha elections of 2004. He would say that he asked many people in Gujarat if they needed a steno named Sonia, but everyone refused. That he asked many people whether they would appoint a boy Rahul as driver and every one refused. Vajpayee’s hurt would be of no concern for him.

Vajpayee respects Sonia like a true Indian and Sonia too is sober enough to maintain necessary mannerism, aplomb and decency in her political career. On 13 December 2001 when the parliament was attacked, Vajpayee was starting from his residence to go to the parliament and Sonia had reached home back from the parliament. On getting the shocking news, the two immediately spoke on phone expressing shock and concern on the event and also inquiring about each other’s safety.

Once Salman Khurshid, a prominent Congress leader in UP, smilingly said in a TV interview that Vajpayee is a man of Congress’s secular thinking. It may not therefore be wrong to conclude that his own party has all along estranged this nationalistic leader and one can take the liberty to imagine too, if he had formed a secular party of his own, or been a leader in the Congress. But that is an imagination only. At least, in that case he would not have to give statements like he is first a true ‘Swayamsewak’ or he would not have to say some times that Ayodhya was a national sentiment but after some days criticize Narendra Modi again from some holiday resort. He would never have faced humiliation by his party on return and eat his own words!

The nation salutes Vajpayee for his constant right thinking in the politics of the country and wishes him a happy prosperous and long life on his 83rd birthday on 25 December 2007.