Vajpayee's true colours

Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1927-1977

Author: Abhishek Choudhary

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 401

Price: Rs 899

From the late 1980s when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was emerging as a major political party in its own right, not piggybacking on other non-Congress parties during the anti-Emergency movement, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was almost universally called the “right man in the wrong party”. He was considered a Nehruvian at heart trapped in a sectarian party and by then, it was too late for him to move — he had after all, become a Member of Parliament for the first time in 1957. After Lal Krishna Advani replaced him as party president in 1986 (warranted by the party constitution that few outsiders had read), many journalists asked Vajpayee if he intended exploring options elsewhere. Each time, he would laughingly hum: Jayein to jayein kahan... the Talat Mehmood song from Taxi Driver.

During the heyday of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, Vajpayee was seen as someone who disagreed with the Sangh Parivar’s decisions but was too marginalised to reverse them. His sidelining was considered complete after the 1991 Lok Sabha elections when Mr Advani was elected leader of the parliamentary party by virtue of which he became the Leader of Opposition and declared the BJP the “government in waiting” with himself as prime minister.

Vajpayee was pulled out of oblivion in late 1995 when Mr Advani declared he was stepping aside. To cut the long story short, this was seen as realisation by the party apparatchik that hardline Hindutva would not work beyond a point and the “more moderate” Vajpayee was required to run a coalition. The 1998 National Agenda of Governance made no mention of any of the contentious Hindutva-related issues — Ram temple, abrogation of Article 370 and legislation of a Uniform Civil Code. Reports that party general secretary K N Govindacharya called Vajpayee his party’s mukhota or mask furthered this belief. But several scholars, analysts and journalists writing on Hindu right-wing politics and organisations doubted this narrative.

In late 2000, when Vajpayee declared a unilateral ceasefire along the Line of Control and invited Pervez Musharraf for the Agra Summit in 2001, it appeared as though the prime minister was pursuing his “own” politics and using the BJP’s organisational network. But there were occasions when Vajpayee displayed his true colours. For instance, during a heated Lok Sabha debate ahead of the Babri Masjid’s demolition, Vajpayee referred to the agitation for a Ram temple at Ayodhya as “symbol of national aspirations”.

But the “real Vajpayee” remained an unexplored idea. Journalist and development researcher Abhishek Choudhary painstakingly establishes that Atal, as he refers to his subject, was no “right man in the wrong party”. Instead, he was among the best men in the Hindu right-wing party. He recapitulates Vajpayee’s actions, digging out statements, speeches and articles from the formative stages of his life and political career. The first volume concludes in the late 1970s by which time Vajpayee had emerged as an iconic personality in India’s political theatre.

This is one of the most well-researched recent works on the Hindu right-wing. It benefits immensely from the fact that the writer was not distracted by contemporary events that consolidated Hindutva sentiment. The only problem is the exhaustive detail; although never trivial, the average reader may find it tough to retain all the information.

The author does not limit himself to a narrow, linear personal narrative, but places the man within the story of the Hindu right-wing’s political evolution. Barring the 1920s and 1930s when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was trying to establish itself as a credible voice of Hindu nationalism, Vajpayee played a central role in the Sangh Parivar’s development till a couple of years after the parliamentary poll defeat in 2004. The book, thus, is also a story of how Hindu nationalist forces acquired a pivotal role. These organisations, especially the BJP came into their own from the mid-1980s with the Ayodhya agitation. So Volume 2 of the biography will be keenly awaited.

Little was known about Vajpayee’s early years, the time he spent in Gwalior, details about the village from where his father moved to a job as a teacher in a Scindia family-run school. Several episodes in his youth were not known well enough but still mentioned – for instance, his association with the CPI-affiliate All Indian Students Federation and his involvement in Quit India movement. The author provides detailed accounts of all this and a perspective of how Arya Samaji influence shaped his view of history, crucial to Hindutva’s emergence as an alternative ideology.

The book does not fundamentally alter the understanding of the Sangh Parivar. Several unknown minutiae provide insight into lack of coordination initially within the political fraternity. As Mr Choudhary writes, Vajpayee urging ideological brethren to accept the States Reorganisation Commission report recommending the formation of a Bilingual Bombay State “was suicidal”. That’s because Gujarati nationalists soon launched the agitation for a separate state. At that time the “heartland Brahmins (and leaders of his party and RSS) could not fathom the sub-national anxieties”.  This was the first possible occasion when Vajpayee was on the other side of a person who grew up to become India’s current Prime Minister: Narendra Modi. In 1956-57 when Vajpayee pressed for accepting the unitary Bombay State, the child Modi was enlisted to turn up for rallies and processions demanding a separate Gujarat. Over decades, Vajpayee and Mr Modi were on opposite sides of the playing field, most infamously in 2002. One looks forward to these details in the next part of this substantive book.

The reviewer’s latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India. @NilanjanUdwin