NEW DELHI, 11 August — Here is the speech we may not quite hear on Thursday Aug. 15 when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee climbs up the ramparts of the Red Fort to start yet another birthday party India: Friends (in the BJP), Indians (in cities villages) and countrymen (across the world)!
You were kind enough to elect me, and support me if you could not vote, in a general election three years ago because I was prime minister of economic reform, Lahore peace initiative and Kargil.
Since then reform has tripped over uncertainty, while those old-fashioned rogues and sharks who hover over public money have continued to steal and loot thousands of crores with impunity, bribing their way through any problem, laughing their way through media and politicians, fattening the foreign accounts of men the head of financial institutions who sold their trust unit by unit and betrayed blue chip companies like IDBI chip by chip.
In self-defense I will say that I did not create this scum. I inherited this class from decades of misrule and corruption, of deals between money power and political authority at the cost of your development, your jobs, your schools, your hospitals, your roads, your hunger. Where my selfdefense collapses is in the fact that I too nothing to heal this corrosive cancer has gnawed at the heart and soul of country.
Our tryst with destiny was not meant to suffocate in sleaze. I am guilty of indifference. And I will tell you the reason for my indifference. Because my own party, which was born and nurtured in puritan zeal, has become a mob of sleaze bags. I know many of you — let’s make that most you — do not share the ideology and beliefs of men like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Deendayal Upadhyay. I mention these names because they were leaders when I was a young man with dream. I have become an old man now, and I not certain whether I have the courage dream any more... But even those who would not want Shyama Prasadji and Deendayalji to lead India will admit and accept that they did not enter public life to split the scum with hyenas.
They were honest men who died with in their bank accounts than they had inherited. What a tragedy therefore that lifetime colleague and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advaniji should be giving orders to BJP leaders to compete with the Congress in petty corruption. My petrol pump is smaller than yours! Your scam is bigger than mine! My Ram Naik is nothing compared to your S.M. Krishna and even watch out for this one, Manmohan Singh! Ha ha ha.
What a sight we must be to voters who thought that we were capable of their trust, who believed that we knew the meaning of faded word known as integrity. I am truly sorry. As prime minister of the country, as leader of the BJP, I know that the buck, even the corrupt buck, stops here.
You made me prime minister, as I said, because of reform, the promise of transparency, the hope of peace and a dream of prosperity. Instead, I have become prime minister of Tehelka, sleaze, scams, petrol pumps and Narendra Modi. I must say deliberate word about Tehelka, particularly since I have been re-reading my friend Advaniji’s prison diaries, written when we were in jail together. Normally people do not advertise prison terms. We are proud that we went to jail during Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1975 — I wonder how many of you even remember that blot of shame in our nation’s history. If you do not know about the Emergency, ask your parents, ask your teachers to drill that memory so deeply in your mind that it becomes an imperishable part of your consciousness.
We must never forget, if only to ensure that it never happens again. Advaniji has written so eloquently about those 19 months of dictatorship, censorship and terror. I remember when we won the elections in 1977 and Advaniji became minister for information and broadcasting in Morarji Desai’s government, he taunted all those journalists who had surrendered before Indira Gandhi, who had compromised.
Advaniji told them that when Indira Gandhi had asked such journalists to bend, they had crawled.
I cannot believe that it is the same Advaniji who is inflicting a reign of terror on selected journalists from Tehelka, whose only crime is that they exposed outrageous and scandalous corruption in defense deals. I cannot believe that I am keeping quiet while journalists are being arrested on whimsical excuses. I have always respected those who live by the pen.
Alas, I have not been able to live on my poetry, but I think my pen may have served my country as much as my politics, if not more. What further irony in the fact that we are being vengeful against journalists in order to protect a shining hero of the Emergency, my old colleague George Fernandes. How time makes dwarfs out of giants. As a collective gesture of atonement, I am asking the Home Ministry to drop all frivolous cases against Tehelka, and to end the harassment and persecution that has replaced accountability.
My colleagues in the BJP have made me prime minister of Narendra Modi as well.
I did not want this. As I said in Parliament I had made my mind up before that party conference in Goa, where everything went wrong, including my own speech, that Modi should be told to resign. I should have trusted my instincts instead of being cowed down by those who wanted victory at the cost of principle.
The BJP has been called a communal party. But till Gujarat I could hold my head high and claim that the BJP, when in power, had never permitted any largescale communal riots. Of course we could not stop communal incidents, including those engineered by members of our own party. But we ran responsible governments.
We did not use state power to encourage lynch mobs. That was a Congress specialty. I slipped on blood shed in Goa. After the contemptible barbarism of Godhra I should have ensured that a community was not punished for the wild misdeeds of a few. Revenge is no answer to barbarism.
We criticized Rajiv Gandhi after the massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. There was provocation then as well. But we took a moral position and I am proud we did so. I cannot reverse time but I do want to ensure an election that is held without the slightest hint of terror and fully participated by every citizen. Gujarat will be placed under president’s rule till a new elected government is sworn in.
As will be Kashmir.
The tensions generated over Kashmir constitute the gravest danger to our subcontinent. It is a crisis that is eating away our present and could destroy our future.
You, I hope, will agree I have done my best to find peace ever since I was fortunate enough to become prime minister of this great nation. Acting upon our commitment to the people as clearly outlined in our manifesto, we made India a nuclear power. The world tried to browbeat us; today it has accepted our nuclear status as a legitimate right of an important nation.
But we cannot be a true world power without being a powerhouse economy. And a great economy is impossible without the will to release our national wealth and energy for infrastructure, and capital for the biggest as well as the smallest.
Industry must hum with growth at every level, from the roar of heavy industry to the gentle tap of a master craftsman. I dream of the day when shops across the country and the world will be full of Made in India labels, because everything Indian will be both best in the world and best value in the world.
But I am not a cook of “khayali pilao.” I know that peace will not be easy. I wish we could live in peace with Pakistan. We did not seek war with Pakistan. Pakistan launched an unprovoked war within 10 weeks of Partition. If those raiders had not crossed into Jammu and Kashmir in October 1947, there would not be a Kashmir problem. Even today efforts continue to snatch by war what could not be got by peace. I would like to make it absolutely clear that India will never be held hostage at the point of a gun.
But we are a mature nation and a mature people. We know that problems can be resolved only through dialogue; to walk together we need to build bridges together.
We are committed to a peaceful resolution of all problems. I know that many of my fellow Indians in Jammu and Kashmir are angry with Delhi and its policies particularly over the last 15 years. There was joy and harmony in the province during the days of the great Sheikh Abdullah. He was elected in a free and fair election, through an expression of the people’s will. I am determined to ensure that the same free and fair spirit awaits the coming assembly elections. The elected representatives who emerge from such an election will find a place on the high table as together we chart a route map toward peace and prosperity.
I offered my hand of friendship to Pakistan at Lahore. I was saddened when Lahore became Kargil. That hand could also turn into steel if required. We have over the past year witnessed terrible acts of terror, on Dec. 13 and a number of times after that, but we have held our patience and prudence, sometimes at great cost. The world has appreciated such prudence.
I want to offer a hand of friendship again, because I know the difference between a dream and a nightmare. The first is life; the second is death.
