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Journalism of Courage
My inner voice has been giving me a hard time. In the two weeks since the Vajpayee government found itself dumped abruptly in history’s garbage bin, I have been so absorbed with expressing disapproval of outsourced prime ministers I have not found time to pay my respects to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Respects are due from all of us, but public memory is short and Vajpayee appears already to have been forgotten, left alone to recite sad poems away from the glare of flashbulbs and TV cameras. As another poet and ruler Bahadurshah Zafar once wrote, Thodi hi der mein kya ho gaya zamaney ko.
So what were the Vajpayee government’s achievements that I should consider it worth writing this belated obituary when I should be writing instead about the Common Minimum Programme of the new government? Politically, I think his biggest achievement was that he took the BJP out of the hands of those tired old men in their old-fashioned khaki knickers and turned it into a modern, political party that dared to be different to the ‘‘secular, socialist’’ variety which was the only kind we had before. He did this with the RSS and its various swadeshi, Hindutva offshoots snapping at his heels at every step, but so successful was he in shaking them off that in the election just gone by, we hardly saw the RSS.
Sorry, I did come across it occasionally, as in the Alwar parliamentary constituency where the BJP candidate was a mahant facing a murder charge. When I asked why the BJP would want to put up so disreputable a candidate, I discovered that he had the backing of the RSS. And, yes, there were other candidates in other states that had clearly been chosen for their Hindutva credentials, not to mention the doomed wooing of Jayalalithaa because some RSS ‘‘intellectuals’’ believed her law banning religious conversions made her the great Hindu warrior queen.
It’s hard to shake off an organisation that you have belonged to since you were, quite literally, in short (khaki) pants but Vajpayee did and it would be very sad if the party, instead of building on this foundation, reverts to its roots. Those who seek a return to Hindutva are mostly fools who must be ignored.
Politically, the Vajpayee government also provided us with a period of desperately needed stability and one of the benefits of this was the relative peace in Kashmir. Violence and terrorism have not ended completely but we saw a free election and by last summer there was more normalcy than there has been in years. Kashmir, alas, is no longer just a domestic problem and here we saw the Vajpayee government attempt to tackle the international dimension as well. If it did not fully succeed it has more to do with Pakistani perfidy than with Vajpayee’s lack of sincerity. He was courageous enough to try again and again and we finally have a sort of fragile detente.
Where foreign policy was concerned, we also saw the first acknowledgement by an Indian government that the Cold War ended a long time ago and it was no longer in our national interest to continue pretending that our foreign policy did not need to change direction. We now have a relationship with the United States that is based on trade and economic considerations as much as political, and it would be unfortunate if our new ‘‘progressive’’ government is persuaded by its Marxist allies to, once more, replace national interest with ideology as the basis of foreign relations. Marxist ideologues have already gone on record to express disapproval of the last government’s closeness to America.
On the economic front, the Vajpayee government’s main achievements, in the view of your humble columnist, was the emphasis on building infrastructure and loosening government controls. Much more could have been done in the power sector and in improving our ports, airports and railways, but since this piece is about achievements, I am not going to go into failures.
It would be wrong, though, not to mention the terrible violence in Gujarat, and Vajpayee’s seeming inability to speak out unambiguously against it. This was the worst blot on his government’s record. What happened in Gujarat was sickening and barbaric, but those who describe it as the worst violence since Partition either have very short memories or are deliberately lying.
On a personal level I have to say that for those of us who cover politics and government in Delhi, it was a huge relief to have a proper government instead of a durbar. If Vajpayee had a fault, it was in allowing access to even those fixers and hacks who were well-known Congress supporters. They have now moved back to where they always belonged and courtiers and sycophants who had faded away have returned not just to political circles but drawing rooms.
They speak for Sonia and of Sonia wherever they go and turn ugly if someone dares mention her foreignness. A Westerner, at a Delhi dinner party, who innocently asked if India would not be better off with an Indian prime minister found himself viciously attacked by one of Signora’s closest friends. It’s too early to tell if she is going to become an alternative centre of power or not but there is no question that the courtiers are back in full measure. We can only hope and pray for the sake of our poor servile, colonised land that the Prime Minister remembers that he represents India and she only a political party. Meanwhile, goodbye Atalji and thank you.
