Atal Bihari Vajpayee's health critical: Former PM has never known to give up, his illness is an extension of his fight

Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appears to have prophesied his current condition. Long ago in one of his poems, Vajpayee said, “Than gayee, maut se than gayee. Jujhne ka mere irada na tha, mod pe milenge iska wada na tha, rasta rok kar wo khadi ho gayee… Maut ki umra kya hai? do pal bhi nahi. Jindgi silsila, aaj kal ki nahi. (I am confronted, confronted with death. It was not my intention to fight, meet her at the turn, but she stood in my way… What is age of death? Not even two moments. Life is continuation, it’s not about today or tomorrow).” The ever optimist and eternal fighter in Vajpayee has been fighting for weeks with death at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. He has been fighting for decades, first to make his party Bharatiya Jana Sangh and then its later avatar, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he founded in 1980, to grow and acquire power at the Centre and in various states, and then with with his failing health for over a decade. [caption id=“attachment_4977311” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. PTI[/caption] At another point, he wrote: “Haar nahi manoonga… kal ke kapal par likhta mitata hoon. Geet naya gata hoon. (Will not give up… I write an erase on tomorrow’s forehead. I sing a new song.” But as the irony would have it, the leader revered by millions within and outside of his ideological family as a person, as a leader and as a statesman, whose sentences, loaded or straight, and trademark pauses were endlessly debated and interpreted has been completely silent for about a decade now. No one in the outside world has heard his voice at least since 2007. His written messages were used in the 2009 election or earlier, but later even his written messages died down. He has been termed ‘margdarshak’ for the BJP and rightly so, because for decades he carried that role for his party as well as sympathisers. Vajpayee showed the courage and conviction to state that the life of a prime minister is that of “a loner”. Though that didn’t impact his work and philosophy, but somewhere down the line, the people’s man in him felt the pinch. At a function in New Delhi when he was at the helm, leading the country, Vajpayee recited few lines of his poem in the presence of his predecessors PV Narasimha Rao and VP Singh, and friends like Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and LK Advani:

“Shunya me khada hona pahar ki mahanta nahi Majboori hai… Jo jitna uncha, utna ekaki hota hai… chehre pe muskan chipka man hi man rota hai. (Being idle is not the mountain’s greatness but helplessness… the higher one goes, the lonelier one gets… with a smile on his face, he cries in his heart).

The import of his narration of this poem was not lost to those present, and like any other of Vajpayee’s statements, this was interpreted in multitude forms. After all, he successfully ran a coalition of around two dozen parties at the Centre for six years. Though there was an agenda for governance and a formal forum for consultation among the NDA allies, his persona and interpersonal dealing with the leaders in the then-ruling coalition and across party lines kept the coalition going. One must remember that the BJP was considered a political untouchable. And even when BJP emerged as the single largest party in 1996 and Vajpayee was sworn-in as the Prime Minister of India, no political party, except for Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, were willing to support it. After being in office for 13 days, Vajpayee resigned on 1 June, 1996. By the time the next election took place in 1998, people were sympathetic to Vajpayee and wanted to give him and his party a chance to rule the country. The BJP went to the polls with the slogan “Abki Bari, Atal Bihari. (This time Atal Bihari)". Leaders of some other regional parties too sensed his growing popularity and all India impact, and they joined hands with him and the BJP to make him the prime minister. If he lost confidence motion in the Parliament in 1999 (after withdrawal of support by AIADMK) by one vote, the BJP would came out in the election with a slogan: “Kya Kasoor tha iss admi (Vajpayee) ka (What was this man’s fault)” and people would yet again repose their faith in him and make him the prime minister for another five years.

He not only successfully removed the untouchability tag from the BJP, but also made Indian politics bipolar where national politics and consequent alignment would revolve around two lead poles, the BJP and the Congress.

A leader who is about 90 seats short of the majority mark — and is running a coalition government with support from varied shade of parties — would be generally taken to be slightly weak in decision making, but the turn of events proved that Vajpayee is made of different metal. He surprised the world by conducting Pokhran II nuclear blasts or “Operation Shakti” as it was officially called. He didn’t care about American and Western sanctions and went ahead what he thought was best in national interest. Look at the timing — Vajpayee assumed office of Prime Minister on 19 March 1998 and Pokhran II nuclear blasts were conducted on 13 May 1998. He has an untiring resolve to fight and win. In the late 1950s, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh was in its early days, Vajpayee and his fellow traveler Advani were in their 30s, the party badly lost the Delhi Municipal Corporation election. The two wouldn’t rue over theirs or the party’s fate. They quietly moved to Connaught Place in New Delhi to watch a movie which Advani says was aptly named, Phir Subah Hogi. One of its songs written by Sahir Ludhianvi and sung by Mukesh and Asha Bhosle, Woh Subah Kabhi to Aayegi was internalised by the duo. Vajpayee later wrote Aao Phir Se Diya Jalayen…. The rest, as they say is history.