Vajpayee: The poet who ruled India three times

Atal Behari Vajpayee is an Indian right-wing statesman and famous Hindi poet, who held the post of prime minister three times. His first term lasted only 13 days in 1996, the second term was between 1998 and 1999 for 13 months and the third stint as a premier from March 19, 1998 until May 19, 2004.
His tenures were marked by significant events in Indian history including the hijack of an Air India passenger plane to Afghanistan, which thoroughly humiliated India and forced it to succumb to the demands of the hijackers; the nuclear tests, and Kargil war with Pakistan. Kargil war took place during the period of Pervez Musharaf who later became president of Pakistan and visited India. He irked the Indian leadership by refusing to carry out any talks while in Agra without the inclusion of Kashmir as the crux of all problems between India and Pakistan. Vajpayee’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was a front for the Indian extreme right-wing group RSS, which was said to be behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and is against the Muslims.
Vajpayee, born in 1924 in Gwalior, was 75 when I met him at his official residence in New Delhi. There was not much pomp and ceremony. He was very simply dressed and modest but looked tired after more than one bout of heart trouble. I was accompanied by two of his staff and told not to bring my own photographer and that the premier’s cameraman would take care of photographs.
Before I reached his house I was told to submit my questions so that he could prepare the answers in advance as he did not want any mistakes or misunderstanding. To my question on Kashmir his answer was disappointing. He said it was an old issue and there was nothing he could add to what has been said before. Pakistanis were amazed and disappointed by his answer and attitude because he simply slammed the door to any further discussion on the most important problem between the two countries. After that I was discouraged as the remaining questions and brief answers were not of much value.
The impression that I gathered from our meeting of about 20 minutes was that he was a tired old man who might have been considering a quiet exit from the premiership and active politics.
The political biography of Vajpayee will be closely intertwined with that of his colleague L.K. Advani also an RSS leader. He was the man who agitated for the demolition of the Babri Mosque that seriously upset Muslims in India and abroad and it was a completely unnecessary provocation of 200 million Muslims in India who are thoroughly patriotic citizens. The BJP never quite recovered from the backlash and I guess Vajpayee too was sorry for the insult caused to the Muslims of his country due to the provocative act.
Vajpayee, a veteran Indian statesman and a parliamentarian for over four decades, was elected a record nine times to the Lok Sabha and twice to the Rajya Sabha. He also served as the member of Parliament from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, until 2009, when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. He was among the founding members of erstwhile Jan Sangh and had been its president also. He was also the minister of external affairs in the Cabinet of Morarji Desai. When the Janata government collapsed, Vajpayee merged his party into a new party and named it Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A poet-politician Vajpayee has been the liberal face of the BJP.
During his tenure he was assisted by Brajesh Mishra, described as his right-hand man. Mishra was his national security adviser, a competent man who joined the BJP as head of its foreign policy unit in 1991 and resigned in 1998 on becoming principal secretary to the prime minister. The post became a very powerful one even more important than that of Cabinet ministers.
From November 1998 to May 2004 Mishra was the national security adviser and was instrumental in creating an institutional structure for national security management, according to his biodata. He was the key motivator of policies and principal spokesman for issues that included Pokhran2, Kashmir, Vajpayees’ visit to Pakistan, strategic talks with the United States and many other crucial topics.
Mishra was awarded India’s second highest civilian honor called the Padma Vibhushan in 2011. He died in September this year aged 84.
Vajpayee’s poetry is marked by nationalistic fervor and human values. He believes that poetry should awaken a sense of duty and social responsibility in people. He is inspired by mythology and his poetry is rich in religious symbolism. Simple in language and imagination, his poems extol the heritage, history and destiny of India. Ideas of cultural nationalism inform his vision of India. According to Bhagwat S. Goyal, the man who translated Vajpayee’s poems into English, Vajpayee believes that politics and literature do not belong to separate compartments. Rather they enrich and refine each other. When a litterateur gets involved in politics, his politics gets more refined. Similarly if a politician has a literary background he cannot ignore human feelings and emotions.
A lesser known but vitally important facet of Vajpayee’s nature is his deep love and appreciation for nature and his frequent need to be close to it, preferably in solitude. One of his favorite retreats is Manali in Himachal Pradesh. The theme of natural beauty does not occur very often in Vajpayee’s poetry, but when it does, it brings out clearly the lighter, mellower side of his nature with its appreciation of beauty and its unexpected touch of sharp humor. For instance, his poem on Manali starts with the wry observation that there is more electricity in the lightning-clad sky than in his house. Not that he feels any real resentment, because to him, Manali, with its snowy mountains, rivers, streams and forests, is an eternally enchanting fairyland. He calls this land, with its abundance of almond trees and invigorating hot sulfur springs, “a land of celestial beings.” That Manali, to him, is both a solace and a retreat is clear when he calls Manali “as much friend and comforter as a fragrant balmy breeze in inferno-like heat.”

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