From Red Fort with hope

These are certainly not the best of times. The chronicler will be constrained to frame the year so far in bleak images — beginning from the resolute mobilisation of our troops at the border after the terrorist outrage in Parliament last December, to the carnage in Gujarat, to the aborted debate in the House of the People. It was a troubled nation, then, that waited to hear the prime minister’s Independence Day address from the ramparts of Red Fort in the capital on Thursday. Atal Bihari Vajpayee didn’t disappoint. He touched upon all the raging issues with forthrightness and trademark restraint. Most crucially, he refused to get bogged down by the blame games and the could-have-beens as he nudged Indians towards imagining a better future. If there was one motif in the prime minister’s speech, then, it was the insistence on seizing the openings in all the current deadlocks. This I-Day speech resonated with a very welcome no-matter-what determination to look ahead to a happier, more peaceful, future.

Pictures from Independence day 2002

When Vajpayee mounted the podium on the morning of August 15, General Musharraf’s speech the previous day in Pakistan must surely have echoed for more than a moment. There was rancour there, and an ominous bluster, as the dictator next door hastened to dub the upcoming elections in Kashmir a ‘farce’, while absolving his country of any responsibility for any violence during the polls. But Vajpayee refused to be drawn into a slanging match. He struck the right chord, firm in his rejection of any threat to disrupt the electoral process in J&K and in his criticism of Pakistan’s ‘double standards’, and yet, at the end of it all, magnanimous. Pointing out that European nations have sunk their differences, he asked ‘‘why can’t we solve our problems through dialogue…’’. What is needed most in South Asia, he pointed out, was a united fight against the main enemy — poverty, ‘‘this is a major challenge before us’’. For the people of J&K, the prime minister had a courageous admission of mistakes made in the past, and a disarming promise for the future, ‘‘we will correct them’’. He also promised a dialogue with elected representatives and organisations on more autonomy to the beleaguered state.

The prime minister’s comments on the other problems were tinged with the same forward-looking resoluteness — be it the reiteration that incidents like Gujarat have no place in a civilised society, or his exhortation for more probity in public life. On the drought, too, the emphasis was on an effective, long term strategy to protect the country from the curse. The prime minister spoke with wisdom and vision. Listening to him, the nation felt a little freer of the recent tumult, a little freer to dream.