Opinion On Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birth anniversary: Let’s remember his commitment to unity and ideology

His first government at the Centre was for 13 days, and the second one for 13 months. When the 13-month government was falling, people sitting in the Opposition taunted Vajpayee saying he came to power by overlooking core elements of BJP’s ideology like Article 370, construction of the Ram temple, triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code, and compromised with NDA. As PM, Vajpayee replied in the House that being the largest party, when called by the President to form the government, they made a common minimum program so the country does not have to bear the burden of re-election and could have a good government. On the Opposition side, Vajpayee said that the day they came as a majority, they would neither leave Article 370, nor Ram Mandir, nor Triple Talaq, nor the Uniform Civil Code.

PM Modi single-handedly formed the majority government at the Centre in 2014. In 2019, history was created when the government came back to power. When the opportunity came to heed the manifesto promises and fulfill Vajpayee’s words, he did not delay at all.

At the first convention of the BJP held in Mumbai, Vajpayee had said, “andhera chatega, suraj niklega, kamal khilega”. Today, PM Modi, as the pradhan sevak of the country, has been able to realise this dream. Vajpayee was known for being a tireless worker, for his generosity, his intimacy and his many visits to different parts of the country, through his words, in the light of the lamp of the Jana Sangh and with the fragrance of the lotus flower. Wonderful efforts were made to attract people to BJP from the West, North and South.

He was born in a small courtyard of his ancestral home in Kamal Singh Bagh of Shinde’s cantonment in Gwalior. His father Pandit Krishna Bihari Vajpayee came to Gwalior from Bateshwar in Uttar Pradesh before independence and worked as a teacher at a school during the reign of the Scindias and supported the family. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had three brothers besides him, namely Awadh Bihari Vajpayee, Prem Bihari Vajpayee, and Sada Bihari Vajpayee. Atal came in contact with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak Narayan Rao Tarte ji in his childhood. From there, he became a swayamsevak of the RSS.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee studied at Victoria College in Gwalior, which is today Maharani Laxmibai Arts and Commerce College. One of the teachers who taught him was a great litterateur, Shivmangal Singh Suman. After that, he went to Kanpur to study law. Coincidentally, his father studied law with him. At the same time, the late Bhaurao Deoras, a very big official of the Sangh in Uttar Pradesh, was sent after his studies as a vistarak-pracharak of the Sangh to the Shandila area of Uttar Pradesh.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was vistarak-pracharak in his early life. PM Modi also came in contact with the Sangh during his student life and remained a pracharak for years. As a pracharak, he first became the organisational secretary of Gujarat BJP and later became the All India organisational secretary of BJP. It is a coincidence that till now both the Prime Ministers who have become Prime Ministers of national ideology with the values of Sangh, were swayamsevaks of the Sangh from the very beginning.

Vajpayee made Syama Prasad Mukherjee’s statement about Kashmir — “Kashmir is an inseparable part of India” — come true on the day it was passed unanimously in the Parliament on the 50th anniversary of Independence in the presence of the then Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma. His poem, ‘Mastak Nahin Jhukega’, makes it clear that this idea was already clear for Vajpayee. The day is not far when this dream of hoisting the tricolour in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir will be fulfilled.

I am not attempting to compare Vajpayee with PM Modi. But on the birth anniversary of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it is my duty to make people aware of the commitment to unity and ideology that was visible in both leaders. Even though he is not physically with us today, he will always be among us through his shadow. PM Modi honoured his service as a politician and prime minister by awarding him the Bharat Ratna and declaring his birthday, December 25, as Good Governance Day. He has also honoured every Indian by making Vajpayee’s samadhi Sadaiv Atal at Rajghat. Today, every citizen and karyakarta who comes to Delhi pays tribute to Sadaiv Atal and salutes the pioneer of his/her ideology.

The writer is former MP and former BJP National Vice President