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| Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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I'd have been a communist: Vajpayee Between the Lines by Kuldip Nayar "I WOULD have been in the Communist Party if there had been no partition," says Atal Behari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister, who led the BJP coalition for six years at the Centre. "I was a member of the Students' Federation which had leftist leanings. The communists' support to the demand for partition disillusioned me and I parted company with them." Vajpayee believes that the Congress and the BJP would have come together if Mahatma Gandhi had not been assassinated. He thinks that it would have been "best for the country," to sort out certain basic problems. "The Congress is so hostile to us these days that it believes we are out to destroy the country." When the NDA was in power, Vajpayee says, they had good relations with the Congress. It opposed them but considered them desh bakht (patriots). "If I were to compare them with us, we were more circumspect and responsive in our attitude towards them than they are towards us." Vajpayee does not blame Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but puts the onus on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, without naming her. He praises the PM but wonders how much power he has. Vajpayee is unhappy to find "all types of people becoming ministers." To his particular dislike are those who were associated with the emergency and its excesses. Vajpayee thinks that at one time the Congress looked like having a mid-term poll. It felt it could do better and improve its strength in parliament. But the reverses in state elections, particularly Bihar, made the party change its mind. "Now I do not know," he says. However, he has no faith in the emergence of the third front. Even if it does, he has poor opinion about some of those heading regional parties. About his own party, he says that "young lack in idealism and are in a hurry to get positions." But then he adds: "Come to think of it, this is true of nearly all political parties. The youth is not willing to wait. Nor does it want to go through the fire of idealism." My purpose of meeting Vajpayee was to assess the person who represented an era which came to an end with his retirement from active politics. I found him still in harness, although he acts more like a fatherly figure. He postponed the meeting with me twice because the BJP leadership met at his home - once to discuss the state-funding in elections and the second time to formulate views on Iran. On Iran, Vajpayee is not categorical. He welcomes good relations with the US but avoids any direct comments on Iran. In reply to my query whether the Government of India is pursuing the right policy, Vajpayee replies: "The government does not know what to do. It is confused." Elucidating his remarks, he says that there are three parties involved in processing a concerted response: Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and the Left. They have different points of view. Power does not lie with one of them. Who will prevail when and where is not clear. But he avows faith in the foreign policy that Jawaharlal Nehru had formulated. His faith is basically in non-alignment. He claims himself to be a Nehruvite. I recall after he was sworn in as foreign minister in the Janata government in 1977, he told me how he felt privileged to sit in the chair that Nehru had occupied once. He still has his picture at his residence. On Pakistan, Vajpayee is not happy with what New Delhi is doing. He favours progress but doesn't suggest anything concrete. Yet he has no doubt that there would have been "an advance" if he had been the Prime Minister. When I drew his attention to President General Pervez Musharraf's contention that he had intervened to include Kashmir in the joint statement at Lahore, Vajpayee says, "we wanted to keep Kashmir separate." My whole exercise for an hour was to find out where Vajpayee stood. Was he a liberal, the impression he tried to create despite being a swayam sevak of the RSS - an extremist Hindu organization which has now given the call of "Indianising" Muslims and Christians because, as RSS chief Sudharshan, says, "we cannot throw them into the sea," a phrase used by some Arab countries for the Jews in Israel. I found Vajpayee as reticent as he had always been when it came to the criticism of the RSS. Vajpayee is not happy over Sudharshan's remark. But he seldom minces words when it comes to the RSS chief. Vajapyee does not want to be drawn into - anti or pro - issue. But he does not deny the stress and strain between the BJP and the RSS. "Not much," he says. He recalls a long discussion on Hindutva once. What it meant and why it could not be Bhartiya? "They have no answer. Some of them are frozen in old concepts, conveying little," he says. When it came to the demolition of the Babri masjid, Vajpayee says that the whole thing happened so quickly and so suddenly. "I did not know anything about it. If they had a prior plan, they did not tell me," says Vajpayee. "Morarji (Desai) was right that the crowd should not have been allowed to assemble." Vajpayee leaves me in no doubt that he was sorry about the demolition. (I recall meeting him one day after the demolition. He told me then that the temple should be allowed to be built.) He makes it clear that people wanted the temple to come up but did not want the masjid to go down. We both recall the time when the locks were opened with political gains in view. There was no such need. At least you, as prime minister, should have done something about chief minister Narendra Modi. He planned the killing. This was my allegation. "There is no evidence," says Vajpayee. However, he adds that at the Goa session of the BJP, following the Gujarat massacre there was a serious discussion not to give the assembly ticket to Modi. The majority in the parliamentary board supported him but two members opposed him. He does not say that he was one of the two but mentions that Shanta Kumar from Himachal Pradesh opposed Modi. We discuss Gujarat at length. He does not defend Modi and, at times, gives the impression as if he should have done something to upbraid Modi. But Vajpayee wishes that Godhara - the burning of a railway compartment with some passengers - had not taken place. Vajpayee may have an explanation why he could not dismiss the Modi government. But posterity will find him wanting on this count. |
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