BJP TODAY

May 16--31, 2003 - Vol. 12, No. 10

India’s most admired politician
Vir Sanghvi

Foreigners and first-time visitors to India sometimes ask me what it is about Atal Bihari Vajpayee that makes him India’s most popular politician — respected even by those, like myself, who have never voted for his party.

It is not an easy question to answer. A foreigner — used to the TV-friendly youthful politicians of the West — may well be justified in regarding Vajpayee’s popularity as mystifying. Whatever else Vajpayee is, he is not TV-star material. He rarely gives interviews; when he is asked for a soundbyte he never comes up with the glib phrases that TV loves; and certainly, he lacks the bubbling energy that Western politicians always try and exude.

Until he got accustomed to his new knees — and this has only happened recently — he walked slowly and awkwardly. In conversation, he is rarely enthusiastic or effervescent; in fact, he can be so uncommunicative and the encounters so full of awkward pauses that you sometimes feel trapped in a Harold Pinter play.

Moreover, he manages sometimes, in his efforts to walk the tightrope between following his own instincts and pleasing his constituency, to disappoint everybody. On Gujarat, for instance, he left both Narendra Modi and the VHP dissatisfied by being silently disapproving (while trying to sack Modi from behind the scenes), and then angered India’s liberals by making ill-chosen and badly-timed remarks about “jehadi Muslims”.

And yet, no Indian politician in the last decade has been as loved and as admired.
Even when the media have written him off — and this happens every two years or so — he bounces back, stronger than ever. Most recently, when L.K. Advani was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, the press ignored Advani’s own protests that nothing had changed and wrote about “the end of the Vajpayee-raj.” The Prime Minister said nothing but, within two months, it became clear how wrong the media were. Nobody makes the mistake of writing that Vajapyee’s grip is slipping these days.

Certainly, there is no doubt that the current attempt to improve relations with Pakistan is a result of Vajpayee’s own determination to bring peace to the sub-continent. In pushing ahead with this policy, he has gone against the national mood, against what a section of the Sangh parivar perceives as its electoral interests, and against the advice of at least one important cabinet colleague (though not the Foreign Minister, whatever you may read to the contrary).
It is a measure of Vajpayee’s own stature and our confidence in his leadership that he has been able to neutralise such powerful opposition and push ahead.

I imagine the Prime Minister knows how big a risk he is taking. The language he used in Parliament on Friday was uncharacteristic. “Now whatever happens will be decisive and this will be my third and final effort. Even for me, it is a decisive and conclusive step”. Or “I see brightness and I have the courage of my convictions.” And most poignantly, “I know that I am in the dock.”

It is easy to see where the opposition to Vajpayee is coming from. Elections are due in at least two states (Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) where the BJP hopes to do well. (It is less confident about Delhi largely because Sheila Dixit is so popular). The parivar hopes to fight these elections, not just on state issues, but also on the basis of the Pakistan threat.
As Gujarat demonstrated, repeated references to Miyan Musharraf, ‘jehad’ and the threat to all Hindus from Islamic terrorism can sometimes yield electoral dividends. The BJP hopes that by playing on Hindu insecurities, it can generate a communal wave in its favour. And if this effort succeeds, then the general election could be held ahead of schedule.

By talking the language of peace, Vajpayee is effectively destroying this platform. You can’t portray the BJP as the defender of Hindus from the evil designs of jehadi Pakistan if, at that very moment, you are busy trying to make pals with that same jehadi Pakistan.

Nor is there any guarantee that Vajpayee’s efforts will be successful. When he went to Lahore, he had the country behind him. But because Lahore was followed by Kargil, his critics (within the parivar) were able to portray him as a gullible peacenik. When the Agra summit was announced, there was another flurry of hope and excitement. But the failure of that summit further strengthened the view of Vajpayee as a incurable optimist whose naïve desire for peace was always doomed to fail.

It was this image that Vajpayee referred to when he told Parliament, “Some people say, this fellow is a poet. But sometimes a poet can do what many others can’t.”

This time too, the government has painted itself into a corner. While nobody is ready to talk about the next steps in the peace process (after the posting of High Commissioners), my guess is that we will go the SAARC route. We will focus on trade and push for the establishment of a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) , which Pakistan had earlier opposed.

When these measures yield some response, we will open a bilateral dialogue, probably at the official level with the promise of upgrading the talks to Foreign Minister level if both sides feel that the dialogue is getting somewhere. There will be no grandstanding, and no Agra-style summits before the groundwork has been done.

But even this is an extremely risky exercise. In formal terms, our position has not changed: we will not talk to Pakistan till there is an end to cross-border terrorism. The problem with this is: how do you know that cross-border terrorism has stopped?

Nobody disputes that the terrorist groups in Kashmir operate with Pakistani finance and backing. But equally, nobody believes that each and every terrorist in the Valley does exactly what Musharraf wants. Even within Pakistan, there are elements who control terrorist organisations (ISI hardliners, retired generals etc.) who do not necessarily support Musharraf. And many terrorists whom Pakistan infiltrated into the Valley oppose the peace process.

It is relatively easy for any disaffected element or organisation which wishes to sabotage the peace process — and why should any professional terrorist support a process that will put him out of work? — to stage a dramatic strike: an assassination, a suicide bombing or an attack on a Hindu temple, for instance.

The moment this happens, our hardliners (including much of the parivar) will claim that this is proof that Pakistan is not sincere about peace, that cross-border terrorism has not stopped, that Vajpayee has been a gullible as always etc. etc.

I imagine that Vajpayee recognises these dangers. So why is he walking across this minefield, risking his own reputation, alienating his parivar and damaging his party’s electoral prospects?
The answer to that question is really the answer to the question that foreigners always ask me: what makes Vajpayee India’s most admired politician?

It is precisely because Vajpayee is willing to forsake immediate electoral benefit, go against the mood of his party and the nation and stake his personal credibility on what he regards as the national interest, that we respect and admire him. In a political scene dominated by small men with narrow interests, he has the wisdom, the guts and the integrity to do what is right, not what is popular.

I made the case for opening a dialogue with Pakistan on this page last week so I won’t make it again. Vajpayee, like most sensible people in this country — whether hawks or doves — recognises that foreign policy cannot proceed when there is a stalemate. It may be domestically popular to say that we will have nothing to do with Pakistan but this is not a position that India can sustain for any length of time.

Certainly, now that there has been a sea-change in Kashmir with the installation of a popular government, there is a new mood of hope among the people. No further progress is possible unless we make some attempt to talk to Pakistan. My guess is that Vajpayee recognised this during his historic visit to the Valley last month. And that his current determination to re-open the dialogue process emerged from what he saw in Srinagar.

As a hawk on Pakistan, I am always unwilling to be optimistic about the immediate results of any dialogue: it will take years for there to be any lasting improvement.

But nobody can dispute that we must talk. And fortunately, we have a leader with the vision and the courage to not only recognise that but to also put his own future on the line in the pursuit of peace.

BJP TODAY does not necessarily agree with everything Shri Sanghvi wrote. But we, nevertheless are publishing the full text of his piece in the Hindustan Times of May 4.
Editor