What can JP do for Vajpayee?

That JP is a Bharat Ratna and deserved the honour a long time ago goes without saying. The decision was made by the Prime Minister himself, in the face of pressure from the BJP8217;s allies for the honour to go to others. N.T Rama Rao and Biju Patnaik were two such names suggested. JP was the hero of the Quit India movement and fired the imagination of the youth of his time, particularly by his daring escape from jail in 1942. More than thirty years later, in the evening of hislife, he inspired the youth again with his call for total revolution. They asked him to lead the Bihar movement in 1974 against political corruption,unemployment and state violence,which triggered off the Emergency in 1975 and ultimately devoured the government of Indira Gandhi. It was the magic of his moral stature which could weld together diverse elements like the Jan Sangh, the CongressO, Socialist Party and the BJD into the Janata Party which took on the Congress.

He had turned down offers of joining the government after freedom but chose to stay out of power politics and worked with Vinoba Bhave to bring about land reform through bhoodan and the Sar-vodaya movement.

For all his political differences with Indira Gandhi 8212; his incarceration during the Emergency damaged his kidneys irreparably, making him dependent on dialysis till the endand earlier with Jawaharlal Nehru, he enjoyed a relationship with the Nehru family which would be incomprehensible today.

Before he died, he returned to IndiraGandhi all the letters her mother Kamla Nehru had written to his wife Prabhavati in confidence about the Nehru family because he did not want them to fall into the wrong hands.

Both Vajpayee and Advani have had a reverence for JP and bestowing an honour on him would be an issue on which both would agree. It is also no secret that the BJP is looking for new icons.

But implicit in Vajpayee8217;s decision are the possibilities of his future politics. There is possibly no greater symbol of liberalism in India than JP, and by taking on the RSS, Atal Behari Vajpayee is trying to identify himself with the liberal stream.

JP did not consider the RSS as untouchable and brought the BJP into mainstream politics in the mid-seventies. He had his differences with them. He wanted the RSS to dissolve itself and merge with the Janata Party. Ironically, the issue of the then Jan Sangh8217;s dual membership8217;, which broke the Janata Party in 1979, is agitating the BJP today as many question why an elected BJP leadership shouldbe accountable to the RSS.

Besides the causes he espoused, like the release of Sheikh Abdullah which provoked the Sangh to dub him as pro-Pakistani, he also called for the shedding of the janeus, sacred threads symbolising upper caste identity, during the Bihar movement.

There was an incident in early December 1994. The Bihar movement was at its peak. At the meetings JP addressed all over the state, he spoke against the practice of dowry and of janeus. At Begusarai station a student perched on the roof of a railway bogey asked, quot;What,give them up now?quot; JP responded, quot;Why not?quot; Before he knew it, 50 youth had broken their threads and thrown them at his feet. JP picked them up and said a social revolution had begun, and activist Janaki Pandey sang as she used to at all his meetings: Jayaprakash ka bigul baja tho jaag uthi tarunai hai, tilak lagaane tumhe jawano kranti dwar par aayi hai.

If the Prime Minister were to take his present fight with the RSS to its logical conclusion and go to thecountry, new and hitherto unimaginable political alignments could come about. It is not unforeseen for the likes of Laloo, Mulayam and the entire Third force, including regional parties, and the minorities, to support such a Vajpayee. With the emergence of Sonia Gandhi as a political leader, which will inevitably block the ambitions of other Congress leaders, it might not leave the Congress untouched.

Is Vajpayee keeping an open option for such a course which could help him hijack the centrist space and leave on the sidelines a hawkish Hindutva brigade and a resurgent Congress? Will Atal Behari Vajpayee have the nerve 8212; and health 8212; to take such a plunge at this stage in his life?

For all his differences with a hard Hindutva line, Vajpayee has so far fought shy of breaking with the RSS, with which he has had deep affinities as well as differences. Yet a moderate image has got stuck to him. Even Advani conceded recently that Vajpayee was opposed to the Rath Yatra. Unlike JP, who espoused even quot;lostquot;causes, Vajpayee has so far not ploughed the lone furrow. But having achieved the country8217;s top position, he has everything to gain from a public display of the courage of his convictions. The honouring of JP and not, say, Guru Golwalkar is an example of this articulation.