HVK Archives: After the fall
After the fall - Times of India
Jug suriaya
()
17 June 1996
Title : After the Fall
Mr Vajpayee and the Loss of Paradise
Author : Jug suriaya
Publication : Times of India
Date : June 17, 1996
Like Milton's Lucifer, Mr Atal Beehari Vajpayee has been
magnificent in his fall. In Paradise Lost, Lucifer se-
duced Milton's puritiancial muse and radically changed
the theme and content of the poet's magnum opus; the
man
who is being hailed as the once and future Prime
Minister
seems to have wooed and won the hearts of the
nation,
thereby perhaps irreversibly altering the future course
of the on-going epic of Indian democracy.
Nothing became the BJP more than Mr Vajapee's quitting
of
office as he snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by
turning necessity into a virtue. From being a `political
untouchable' as its detractors had labelled it, the party
was elevated to the pedestal of patriotic martyrdom.
Taking his exit bow, Mr Vajpayee showed his mettle as
the
country's most accomplished parctitioner of the
performing art of politics. Gracious, witty,
heartwarming, confidence inspiring, he could have
persuaded the most sceptical among his audience to
buy
life insurance from him without a qualam, secure in the
knowledge that even mortality was nothing more than
a
sound investment policy. In sharp contrast, his
adversaries were made to look like a rag-tag bunch of
shabby and spiteful opportunists, their victory tarnished
with the taint of vindictiveness.
Standing Ovation
It was a virtuoso performance and the spectators
respond-
ed by giving him a standing ovation. Like a guard of
honour lowering arms in tribute to the fallen hero, the
Sensex sank in sorrow. Business, big or small, has
long
been a reconginsed BJP constituency. But seldom have
CEOs
of corporations found such a congruence of sympathy
with
streetside hawkers as on the occasion of Mr
Vajpayee's
departure. Nor did the choral requiem preclude the
voices
of minority communities who seized upon the
opportunity
to demonstrate solidarity with their majority fellow
mourners.
In the cosmology of Christianity -- that minor and doubt-
ness temporary offshoot of Mr Vajpayee's all embracing
Hindu way of life-the universe was created in seven days.
With becoming modesty, Mr Vajpayee was less
grandiloquent
in his design. He sought merely to create in 13 days the
blueprint for a new nation, temporarily shelved but
within comfortable reach the next time around.
The answers to Mr Vajpayee's resounding success in
fai-
lure are to be found in the questions people asked
them-
selves after his exit. Why couldn't his government have
been given a chance to prove itself? Others, with more
suspect credentials, have been allowed to run the
country
in the past, and will do so once again; so what was
wrong
with the BJP? Anyway, didn't Atal Behari represent the
more reasonable, acceptable face of the BJP, and
wouldn't
he have been able to moderate the more hardline
elements
within the party if only he had been permitted to remain
in power? If only he hadn't belonged to the BJP, what a
fine Prime Minister he would make! If only we had been
allowed to have some stability. If only we didn't have
this inconvenient business of democracy to contend with.
Democratic Verdict
Like the veteran parliamentarian that he is, however, Mr
Vajpayee conducted himself with aplomb in the face of
the
democratic verdict. He pointed out that since his was a
minority government it had not sought to put on its
immediate agenda contentious issues such as a
common
civil code and abrogation of Article 370 for Jammu and
Kashmir. Such a reasonable statement of principles
and
proprieties would have been more reassuring had Mr
Vaj-
payee's government extended similar discretion to the
question of building a Ram temple at Ayodhya. The
inten-
tion to do this was officially expressed, as was that of
bringing forward a proposal to ban cow slaughter
through-
out the country. The message was clear. This was only
a
teaser trailer. The full, unexpurgated version would come
after the electorate gave his party the saffron sign: no
more water, the fire next time.
It is this fire next time that seems to have got over-
looked in the widespread emotionalism generated by
Mr
Vajpayee's going. In his brief avatar as Prime Minister,
Mr Vajpayee was imaged by many as a sort of
partyless
wonder, or a one-man party. Such a perception does a
signal disservice of both Mr Vajpayee and his party which
elected him leader. TO imply that the ex-Prime Minister
is not a strictly kosher adherent to the larger policies
and precepts of the BJP -- and of the other constituents
of the sangh parivar from which the party draws its
ideological sustenance -- is to call into question not
only the BJP's zealously enforced internal discipline but
also Mr Vajpayee's deserved reputation as an
honorable
man and politician who is true to the professed beliefs
of the organisation he represents. We can have the
BJP
without Mr Vajpayee. But we can't have Mr Vajpayee with-
out the BJP -- no matter how much we may wish to the
contrary.
During Mr Manmohan Singh's tenure as finance
minister
someone coined a phrase which gained popular
currency:
you can't be half pregnant. You were either for a market
economy, or you were against it; you couldn't be fence-
sitter. However, half-pregnancies are not only possible
but quite common in the realm of the economy. The
potato
chip-computer chip distinction -- formulated by the BJP,
among others -- is proof enough of this. Secularism --
Whereby religion is seen to pertain to the civic life of
society and not to its political dynamics -- is a
different issue. You can't be a half pregnant secularist.
For, secularism is not a science, not even a dismal one,
but an article of faith -- as much as the concept of
Hindutva is, or the belief in the necessity to build a
temple on a specific site. This is the Lakshman rekha
that those who indiscriminately rue the resistible fall
of Mr Vajpayee may pause to consider.
No Compromise
The BJP cannot compromise its central tenet of defining
politics as an inevitable extension of religion and still
remain the BJP, be it under the leadership of Mr
Vajpayee
or anyone else it chosses. Similarly, those who
disagree
with the BJP thesis must stand by their own beliefs. This
will not be easy, particularly in view of the political
uncertainties and upheavals that the country that the
country is likely to undergo in the foreseeable future
and which will intensify the desperate need for stabili-
ty. But it is for the sake of real, long-term stability
that all concerned should clearly demarcate and legiti-
mately defend their respective positions. For, the next
general election is likely to be in the nature of a
referendum which will determine whether the
Republic
becomes a Hindu nation, in fact if not in name, or con-
tinues to wear the swaddling clothes of secularism that
it was born with, torn and tattered though they have
become through cynical misuse. Should the BJP be
given
the people's mandate to re-lay the foundation-stones of
the Republic, those in opposition must continue to diss-
ent, in keeping with their conscience and mindful of the
laws of the land which then prevail.
The BJP need not be seen as the enemy of the people;
nor
need those who oppose it. The enemy is the demon
oppose
it. The enemy is the demon of self-destructiveness
which
seems to have gripped us. Can we exorcise it or will we
succumb to fatalism?
Caught in a flood a scorpion asked a frog to carry it to
safety on its back. If I do, you will sting me, answered
the frog. If I sting you, you and I will both drown and
die, replied the scorpion. So the frog took the scorpion
on its back, and the scorpion stung the frog. As they
were drowing me? And the scorpion replied: Because
that
is my nature.
What is our nature?
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