Atal Bihari Vajpayee had known, as much as did all those who had called the then President Shankar Dayal Sharma’s decision to invite him as Prime Minister wrong, that the BJP-led NDA was short of majority in the Lok Sabha on May 15, 1996.

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And even those who thought that the NDA had an outside chance to manage a majority stopped thinking so on May 23, 1998 when PA Sangma was elected, unanimously, as Speaker of the eleventh Lok Sabha.

On June 1, 1996, one speaker after another from the opposition benches (whose number added up more than those in the treasury side) would lament that how much ever they approved of Vajpayee they opposed the confidence motion because he was in wrong company – the BJP – Vajpayee himself waited until early evening to respond, and in his own inimical style asked if those in the opposition were alright with the idea of him crossing over to their side?

Well. Vajpayee had done nothing to present himself as a pigeon among the cats, as was the lament of those opposed to his party, the Bharathiya Janata Party, then. He had remained in the BJP through the party’s campaign, including the rath yatra that L.K.Advani rode leaving behind a trail of violence and destruction.

Vajpayee did not demur when the Babri Masjid was demolished by the cadre his party had mobilised on December 6, 1992. Vajpayee had iterated and re-iterated, time and again, that the sangh remained his soul. He had refused to sever his ties with the RSS even if it meant the disintegration of the Janata Party and having to cease to remain the Union Minister for External Affairs in 1979. And yet there was a section, I should say a chunk in the political class, who held that he was not as bad as his party was!

Vajpayee did what many others before him had refused to even think of; he rode the bus to Lahore. It is another matter that it did not lead to anything good in the relationship between the two nations. But then, it was a bold step that he took the bus ride to Lahore from Delhi on February 19, 1999. Vajpayee did not let the facility halt even while a battles were fought between India and Pakistan, the one we remember as the Kargil war!

Folklore is that Vajpayee had called Indira Gandhi Durga’s incarnate after the Indo-Pakistan war on December 1971 and the making of Bangladesh. Vajpayee insisted, many years later, that it was attributed to him in 1971 by newspapers and his clarification that his words were misinterpreted then was not published. But then many continue to insist that Vajpayee did say what was reported and some even add that Vajpayee had regretted comparing her with Goddess Durga during the Emergency. Well, many believe that he said that and do so to hold Vajpayee in esteem; as evidence of a certain sense of decency in him.

Vajpayee’s oratorical skills earned him the stature that he was his party’s natural choice in May 1996 and even if the ministry lasted a mere 13 days, the party rallied behind him in 1998 and again in 1999 although the first NDA ministry did not last more than 11 months. Vajpayee did not claim anytime and from anywhere that his term as Prime Minister marked a new beginning in the history of independent India. It may be argued that it was; he was the first non-Congress Prime Ministers of India, in the sense that he had not associated himself with the Congress, pre and post-independence.

Vajpayee began his public life with the RSS and this he did even while the Indian National Congress was the natural choice of many. He was among the handful that the RSS chose to be sent to work in the making of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1951 under the former Hindu Maha Sabha leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Vajpayee went on with the Jan Sangh even while the party won only three Lok Sabha seats in the first general elections. He remained there and was among those who entered the Lok Sabha in Jan Sangh colours along with the Socialist Party and the Swatantra Party – an alliance of parties without anything much in common – in 1967.

He was the natural choice of his party (the Jan Sangh) along with L.K.Advani, when the Janata party decided to have two members each from the parties that formed the Janata in making the Morarjee cabinet. And he spent a lot of his time, as Minister for External Affairs, in making a beginning in mending ties with China. Well. He may not have achieved much in the short while the Janata party survived. And he led the former Jan Sangh men out of the Janata Party in June 1980 to form the Bharathiya Janata Party. He did not go into oblivion after losing Gwallior, considered a citadel for his party, to Madhavrao Scindia; it may be recalled that Scindia had started his poltical career from the Jan Sangh to become MP in 1971 and turned to the Congress by 1980 after a brief interlude as an independent. Many veterans who lost the 1984 elections did not remain in the political mainstream for long after that. But Vajpayee remained, bounced back and ended up as the first non-Congress Prime Minister of India.

An orator par excellence, Vajpayee left his audience spell bound; more so if he spoke in Parliament after his short siesta in the afternoon. He did not care to make a secret of his habits like many in the political arena did and continue to do. I recall his parting shot when TV anchor Prannoy Roy persisted with the Prime Minister designate in 1998 and wanted to know from Vajpayee his strength and his weakness. After the anchor persisted and those of us watching the interview (indeed sober and decibel levels as low and as much was necessary) understood what Roy was asking for, Vajpayee, in his own way replied that his strength and his weakness were one and the same: I do not hit anyone below the belt.

History will wait for longer to locate Vajpayee where he belonged to. And until then, we could agree that he belonged to a generation, fast withering away, to whom politics did not mean power, riches and the arrogance that came with it. Vajpayee belonged to a generation in our polity to whom life went on whether it was a win or a defeat in electoral politics. And there are just a few others left in our midst from that generation.

V Krishna Ananth is Professor of History, SLABS, SRM University AP, Amaravati.

First Published:Aug 16, 2018 6:40 PM IST