It was perhaps not an accident that Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his last Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort when he referred to the troubled province of Jammu and Kashmir. Insaniyat–Jamhuriyat–Kashmiriyat (humanism, democracy and Kashmiri ethos) were once prescribed by Vajpayee as the contours within which the hope for resolving the bloody conflict in Kashmir rested. As he lay breathing his last at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Vajpayee was still a reference point, the pivot around whom the spirit of consensus and reconciliation rested.

Consensus, dialogue and democracy were really the essence of the man whose foremost achievement in public life has been to successfully end single-party predominance and create bipolar polity in India. For the first non-Congress Prime Minister who ran a difficult coalition with myriad partners for a full term, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has left his mark in India’s political history as the leader who provided a viable national alternative to the Grand Old Party. After the failed experiments of the Janata government in the 1970s to the collapse of two United Front governments between 1996-98, Vajpayee was the fulcrum around whom provincial players gathered between 1999-2004.

Vajpayee was a critical milestone in the BJP’s journey from the fringes to the mainstream. His redoubtable partner, LK Advani, may be credited with rebuilding the BJP on the contentious campaign created around Ramjanmabhoomi. But it is to the avuncular Vajpayee, with his natural charm and lightness, to whom the credit for political mainstreaming of the BJP must belong. To a political outcast after the demolition of the Babri mosque, Vajpayee provided the cloak of respectability and acceptance. For the hardened apparatchiks in the RSS, KN Govindacharya’s cynical characterisation of Vajpayee as a mere mukhauta (mask, a façade) in their core ideological pursuits was perhaps appropriate. But despite the ease with which he adapted the paradox of being a self-confessed swayamsevak (RSS activist) and pluralist in the Nehruvian mould, Vajpayee deserves admiration because his belief in a culturally diverse India was not just skin deep. In the days of the Ram mandir movement when the Sangh Parivar closed ranks behind Advani, Vajpayee was the lone national leader who stood out by refusing to participate in the demolition of the Babri mosque.

It is to Vajpayee’s credit and chagrin of the RSS that throughout his tenure, not only were their core ideological beliefs kept on the backburner, but serious efforts were made towards achieving lasting peace with Pakistan and solve the Kashmir crisis through a spirit of dialogue. Despite his famous bus ride and the Lahore Declaration in 1999 being disrupted by the Kargil war, commitment to peace with Pakistan and restoring tranquility in Kashmir remained a feature of Vajpayee’s political and diplomatic policy initiatives. He will also be remembered for taking India’s policy of ‘nuclear deterrence’ to its logical conclusion, by conducting the nuclear tests in Pokhran in May 1998. That invited global ire and sanctions on India’s technology sectors, but it also paved the way for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

In December 2001, the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba attacked the Indian Parliament. For any government to keep its sense of direction and purpose going amidst all this was no mean achievement. It is not surprising that, amidst the post 9/11 turbulence and the effects of the 1997 East Asian crisis, India’s growth rates were less than impressive. With the exception of 2003-04, which recorded a growth rate of 8.1 per cent, the average growth rates between 1997-98 and 2002-03 were in the region of 5 per cent. Manufacturing growth rates were still lower. Agriculture went through a hard phase, registering negative growth in three of these years, the worst being the 5.2 per cent decline in 2002-03, a year of severe drought. Yet, the Vajpayee government helped lay the foundations for high growth in the UPA years by launching the ₹60,000-crore national highways programme. Another outstanding achievement was the emergence of India as the leader of developing countries in the WTO, with the Doha Round agreeing to differential treatment for developed countries in critical areas such as medicines and agriculture.

Some of the lasting reforms undertaken by the government were the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, the creation of a contribution-based pension system, pushing public sector disinvestment and setting up the insurance regulator. Finally, as prime minister and parliamentarian, Vajpayee remained true to the tenets of constitutional and democratic processes. These qualities cannot be taken for granted today.

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