Reality behind Glorified Image of Vajpayee By: Praful Bidwai Navhind Times, Friday February 27, 2004 - Editorial Page "COMMENTARY"
FOR some months now, it has been impossible to open an Indian newspaper or switch on a TV Channel without being forced to see one face that of the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee. Whether it is the ministry of communications that's advertising its achievements, or the ministry of finance and the Planning Commission that are trying to paper over the serious problems that afflict the economy, Mr. Vajpayee's face is everywhere. In the campaign, Mr. Vajpayee always stands taller than ordinary mortals. He is invariably shown as leading the nation by theatrically raising his right hand and exhorting the people to rise and shine. Mr. Vajpayee is the inspiration not just behind the Golden Quadrilateral highway project, but behind such wondrously varied range of subjects as cellular telephones, helicopters, textbooks, science laboratories, new railway lines.. The government's Rs. 450-crore publicity blitz to disseminate "lies, damned lies and statistics" has only one unifying theme - Mr. Vajpayee - and only one purpose - to build a personality cult around him in the hope that his supposedly "soft" image will bring the ruling coalition votes. So desperate is the NDA to exploit the image that it got him to "inaugurate" some projects like "new" railway lines months after they had already started operating! The official advertisements are not more than the NDA's campaign brochures. They involve a massive diversion of public money. Now, Mr. Vajpayee is everywhere -glorified as a superman, a kindly demigod, a miracle-maker, not just someone who heads a 19 party coalition government, but a "visionary", a "statesman", a special person in whose hands lies India 's destiny. Senior BJP leaders obsequiously vie with one another in showering the most glamorous accolades upon Mr. Vajpayee. This spectacle of sycophancy around an individual is only slightly less crude than the personality cult around Adolph Hitler - who too gave Germany the autobahm (high-speed motorway)- and Mussolini, or Stalin and Mao Dzedong. Short of showing Mr. Vajpayee swimming across the Ganga or Yamuna, as the Chinese did with Mao, his publicists in the Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity have done everything! Their material is of the same admiring, adoring quality as Nazi sympathiser Leni Riefenstahl's spectacular films on Hitler. At this rate, Mr. Vajpayee will soon rise above criticism or scrutiny; he can't be questioned. The reality behind the magnified, glorified image is rather prosaic. Mr. Vajpayee is a mediocre leader without a coherent, leave alone grand, vision. His political career is chequered. His record as a young man is shabby. He played no role in the great social-political movement of his time, the freedom struggle. Indeed during the Quit India agitation, when tens of thousands went to jail, Mr. Vajpayee sough amnesty for himself by swearing to the colonial authorities that "I have done no damage" (to the state). Mr Vajpayee was a loyal swayamsevak, who served as a secretary to another mediocre, confused Hindutva leader, Deendayal Upadhyay. His own Jana Sangh-RSS work did not go much beyond editing Panchajanya. The Jana Sangh got a break thanks to the Emergency, during which many Sangh leaders were arrested - although they were not particularly active in the protests against the suspension of civil and political rights. The Janata regime collapsed on the "dual membership" issue: the former Jana Sanghis were not prepared to swear exclusive loyalty to the Janata Party. Mr. Vajpayee, their topmost leader, refused to cut the umbilical cord with the Sangh. The refusal was hardly "visionary". The Jana Sangh's role achievement during the Janata period was to plant men like Mr. Ashok Tandon in key positions in the media and the information and broadcasting ministry. Some of them are now in the Prime Minister's Office. As soon as he became the Prime Minister in 1998, Mr. Vajpayee pursued a highly personalized style of governance, creating the PMO as a parallel power-centre. His first important decision , to conduct the nuclear tests, was taken outside the Cabinet, in dark secrecy - at RSS's behest. The PMO has since become as an unaccountable source of power which interferes in decisions about bureaucratic appointments and postings, especially in the economic ministries. It has increasingly come under the not-so-benign influence of Mr.Vajpayee's adopted son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharjee, and certain well-known powerful Big Business houses. When Outlook magazine exposed the PMO's role in some highway projects, its proprietor's offices were promptly raided! The personality cult proves the BJP's political bankruptcy. Mr. Vajpayee has consistently failed to rise above narrow, partisan Hindutva. He has elevated opportunism ad duplicity into art-form. During the 1998 election campaign, he declared he won't contest another election after five years. He is doing just that. He said the BJP would never split other parties. It did just that with the Janata Dal, te Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Lok Dal. The BJP promised to be "the party with a difference",. But it is mired deeper in corruption than any other party. Mr. Vajpayee's September 2000 "always-a- swayamsevak" speech in New York was only the most obvious manifestation of his RSS-centred orientation. He follows double standards by preference, and seemingly distances himself from Hindutva hard-liners only when under pressure. Take Gujarat's decision to allow government employees to join the RSS. When this caused a furore, Mr. Vajpayee had the move withdrawn. In the recent past, Mr. Vajpayee faced crucial tests on two issues; The Tehelka expose and the Gujarat pogrom. He faild both. He re-inducted Mr. George Fernandes into the Cabinet when he was not cleared by an inquiry. And he refused to bring Mr. Narendra Modi to heel, even to set up a parliamentary inquiry into Independent India's worst communal massacre. He first made some dis-approving noises about Mr. Modi's rajdharma. But within days, at Goa, he was back at Muslim-bashing. A man who refuses to take a stand against the state sponsored butchery of his fellow-citizens cannot be "liberal' or " secular", leave alone a "statesman" Mr. Vajpayee's image is a grotesque distortion of reality. COMMENTS: It is a well known fact that a good, sensible, intelligent leader who commands respect from others at all time will not allow himself to be used by sycophants. He will, at most, use the sycophants until they bleed and run for safety. And a leader of any stature and wisdom must surely look like a village idiot when projected thus as in the "India Shining" newspaper and TV blitz. It clearly shows that Vajpayee never had it. He does not have it and he never will. It does not show the greatness of a leader. It shows he is wanting and how he is being used. It is a matter of weakness in the knees. A leader that buckles down under pressure is no leader at all. Mr. Praful Bidwai has said it all and just as well. And literally speaking, it does make sense for Vajpayee to have an American made knee in one of his legs. Today we see Vajpayee and his sycophant gang wooing Muslims of this country for whom they do not have an iota of respect. And those Muslims like Arif Khan who have changed sides and joined the BJP are nothing more than opportunists who will sell their own mothers, wifes and daughters to stay in office. The Indian Muslim at large must not be bothered by such acts of opportunism. They will be better off sans these Judases. They must rejoice by chanting the mantra of "Good riddance to bad rubbish" and must stay on guard never to accept them back in their fold, no matter what. Goans, especially, will remember Vajpayee for a long long time for: Rs. 350 crores worth of Sky-Bus as a Christmas gift. which got lost in the sky. Having to pick up the tag for Rs. 21 lakhs for letting him have his(BJP) convention in Goa in 2001. Giving us a CM who brushes the dirt under the mat and claims that all is clean. Cheers Floriano Lobo goasuraj ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
