http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/renaissance-man-3.html
The matter is presented here as is.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.B. VAJPAYEE — FORMER PRIME MINISTER, 1924
Even in his autumnal stillness, Atal Bihari Vajpayee defies definition. With a mischievous glint in his eyes, the man—who is now beyond the grasp of predatory headlines—doesn’t fit into the neat categorisations of leadership and greatness.
There has always been a bit of mystery, a teasing element of the unknown, about India’s first right-wing prime minister who has taken permanent residency in popular conscience.
Come to think of it, and be intrigued by the enduring enigma of Vajpayee. His party may not have a pan-Indian presence—or won an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha.
But Vajpayee, defying gravity, soars above his party, larger than its collective leadership, unblemished by its sins and transgressions.
In a party whose defining image of assertion is demolition, his name alone rhymes with moderation and consolidation. There may not be a Vajpayee cult, but Vision Vajpayee is an inspiration for true believers on the right.
In a polity characterised by the culture of personal vendetta and pettiness, he is the last custodian of dignity and decency.
And his instincts have redeemed the ideology of his political parivar.
Oh yes, his patented pause. Does it reflect an innate passivity? No, it brings out the power of silence in a country where the sloganeer’s stentorian showmanship is celebrated as politics of social justice.
His updated version of passive resistance has been a cultivated strategy, and it has worked at a time when his hyperactive colleagues could only divide.
The first genuine non-Congress prime minister to complete his full term in office, he is the original reconciler. I still remember one of my many enlightening encounters with him during his six years in office.
Once I provoked him by saying that many of his colleagues felt he was soft and not pushing his investigative agencies to go after the Gandhi dynasty.
“If I do to them what they did to their political enemies, tell me, how are we going to be different from the Congress?” he asked, looking straight into my eyes. I didn’t have anything more to say. I was sitting across from the trueconviction politician.
He has always strived to connect with even the seemingly incompatible. Connectivity for him has been an article of faith. It has been political, philosophical and, of course,geographical. It has gone beyond the realms of telecommunications and civil aviation.
Quick take Q: How many states has he been elected from? Q: How many times has he been elected to the Lok Sabha? Q: Which publications did he edit? Q: When was he jailed? |
“We see that as India adjusts to globalisation, the globe is adjusting to a quiet Indianisation,” he said at the India Today Conclave in 2004. The eldest statesman of India would become the wisest of the East as well.
Today, four years after his exit from South Block, Vajpayee is not an active presence in politics. But for India, as successive opinion polls show, he is still the ideal prime minister— and the most beloved politician. Why? He doesn’t colonise media space.
He hasn’t written a bestseller. Why does he still concentrate the mind of India? The answer is his political dharma. He has singularly redefined power with a kind of sagely detachment. He withdraws to conquer; he confounds his adversaries with, well, a couplet; and he renounces only to return.
All the while, his moral universe remains intact, beyond the whirl of realpolitik, beyond the exigencies of his own party. There is a terrifying sense of calm about the man, an individual solidity that has only ensured political stability. He has changed the syntax of leadership.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee embodies the renaissance of the right, and as the only compassionate conservative India has produced, he continues to reaffirm the virtues of reconciliation in the age of confrontation.
URL for this article : http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/content_mail.php?option=com_content&name=print&id=6876
No comments:
Post a Comment