 "<b>Newsmaker:</b> Ved Pratap Vaidik")
It is also of some consequence that senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar defends Vaidik as a “nationalist”, while former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Sudheendra Kulkarni terms him a “patriot”.
Vaidik, as a prominent Hindi journalist of his times, has enjoyed access to many leading politicians across the political spectrum. The 69-year-old has also worn several hats in his nearly five-decade-long public career, that of a college lecturer, journalist, foreign policy expert and anti-English campaigner.
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It was in the fateful first week of April 2011 that Vaidik reinvented himself as an anti-corruption crusader. On April 3, 2011, the day India won the cricket World Cup, Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a New Delhi-based think tank, concluded a two-day seminar on black money and corruption. In a press statement after the seminar, the think tank announced the launch of an “anti-corruption front”. The front’s patron was Swami Ramdev with Sangh Parivar ideologue K N Govindacharya as its convener. Others in the front included current National Security Adviser (NSA) to the Prime Minister, Ajit Doval, economist and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch’s S Gurumurthy and Vaidik.
A couple of days later, social activist Anna Hazare, along with Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, sat at Jantar Mantar to demand the then United Progressive Alliance government (UPA) pass the Lokpal Bill. Ramdev announced his support to the Hazare-led campaign. Vaidik was the political adviser to Ramdev, and he represented him on news channel debates.
On Tuesday, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi insisted, possibly aware of this recent past, that Vaidik was an RSS member. VIF, being a think tank under the aegis of Vivekananda Kendra, an outfit founded by RSS leader Eknath Ranade in the 1970s, may have convinced the Congress leader of Vaidik's links with RSS. Doval was until recently the director of VIF.
Gandhi’s claims have been forcefully denied by former RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav. However, the opposition onslaught brought the government under enough pressure to not only claim it had nothing to do with the Vaidik-Saeed meeting, but it also “condemned” and “disapproved” of the meeting.
Vaidik, people close to him say, has had friends across the political spectrum. He has also denied ever having been a member of RSS. If anything, his friends say, Vaidik has been equally close to leaders in the Congress and Samajwadi Party.
Vaidik, who belongs to an Arya Samaj family in Indore, was initially influenced by socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia. Among many other influential people, he counts Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as a close friend. His acquaintances concede Vaidik is prone to name dropping and boasting about his “family relations” with many South Asian leaders.
Few, however, dispute his claims of being an expert on Afghanistan. His doctoral thesis from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University in early 1970s was on Afghanistan, and since then he has kept a close eye on the developments in that country. The thesis, writes Vaidik on his website, led to his being rusticated from the university because he wrote it in Hindi. He further claims that the issue reached Parliament. A two-year-long struggle later, Vaidik won the battle, not just for himself but for all those who wished to write their theses in Indian languages.
His work on Afghanistan and later his visits across South Asia helped him develop key contacts. That he had access to top politicians in India helped open the doors. In its latest issue, RSS mouthpiece Organiser has prominently covered Vaidik calling on Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his recent visit to Pakistan. Vaidik met Sharif on June 28, and followed it up with a meeting with Saeed on July 2.
All of this, along with his perceived proximity to the Modi-led government, sources say, could explain why he was able to get access to Saeed. But sources also claim that it was unlikely he was carrying a message from the government. According to people in the know, Vaidik on his return to India was disappointed that there was little appreciation in the government of his efforts at Track II diplomacy. This made him tweet his photograph with Saeed and give interviews to TV channels.
At present, Vaidik is the chairman of the Council for Indian Foreign Policy and also heads the Bharatiya Bhasha Sammelan. The Sammelan is an outfit that has in the past campaigned against the teaching of English language to primary school children, an issue that quickly found support in Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Vaidik started his career as a lecturer at Delhi’s Motilal Nehru College in the early 1970s, but soon exhibited his uncanny knack of finding access to the influential and powerful. He grew close P N Haksar, adviser to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and became the founding editor of news agency Press Trust of India’s Hindi wire service ‘Bhasha’. After a 10-year stint at PTI, Vaidik shifted to Hindi daily Navbharat Times. He was the newspaper’s opinion page editor. All this while, Vaidik continued to cultivate close ties with leading politicians. His claim that he could have been the deputy PM under P V Narasimha Rao or that Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanted him to mediate with the Taliban during the hijacking of IC 814 in 1999 may be outlandish. “But he did have access to Rao and Vajpayee as a leading Hindi journalist of his times,” says one of Vaidik's acquaintance.
Vaidik writes a weekly column in Hindi, which he claims, is published in over 200 newspapers. His columns over the past few months have been appreciative of Modi’s leadership. One of his columns in May 2009, just after UPA’s return to power, talks about how he was part of the then PM Manmohan Singh’s entourage to Kabul in 2005. During the visit, he spent four hours in discussion with Rahul Gandhi at former emperor Zahir Shah’s palace and found the young man deeply impressive.