Sorry, But People Won’t Remember Or Follow Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Ideals For Ages — They Are Lying

People including Modi who are saying Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his ideals would be remembered for ages to come are lying. No, they will not. For a decade or more now Vajpayee was inactive in politics but he was alive yet his ideals weren’t. Forget ideals, even his picture slowly disappeared from BJP’s billboards and made way for Modi and Amit Shah’s. His close confidant Advani was sidelined so much so that he is hardly ever given chance to speak in parliament now which he regularly attends, unlike our PM.

All these people who day in and day out spew hate against Nehru forget that although Vajpayee was Nehru’s opponent he wasn’t a bitter man. When he had become Foreign Minister, he noticed how Nehru’s portrait that was always visible in South Block was missing. He immediately inquired and had it restored. He opposed Nehru on his policies bitterly but not the man. Upon Nehru’s demise, speaking in parliament, Vajpayee rendered heartwarming elegy “a dream has remained half-fulfilled, a song has become silent, and a flame has vanished into the Unknown. The dream was of a world free of fear and hunger; the song a great epic resonant with the spirit of the Gita and as fragrant as a rose; the flame a candle which burnt all night long, showing us the way.”

Vajpayee, in power and out of it, never shied away from taking questions from the press. In fact, he encouraged them. There are instances where he would call reporters from a far-away crowd and entertain their questions. He would take hard and uncomfortable questions all with his authentic smile and lively humour. Contrast that with current PM who has not called a single Press Conference. Even the ‘silent’ PM Manmohan Singh had conducted Press Conferences during his tenure. Vajpayee never tagged journalists with anti-national or any tags for that matter who questioned him. But the people who claim his ideals do just that every day.

Vajpayee was unlike many in the party he help founded. Historian Ramachandra Guha said Vajpayee is judged fondly in part because his gentleness stands apart from the coarser political culture of today’s India. “Vajpayee had a certain humanity about him; he had relationships,” Guha said. “He fell in love, he had a child, he had friends, he wrote his own poetry. And I think we miss that.”

So people, just drop your mask. Stop painting yourself in saintly robes while holding a heart full of hate. Let the old man rest in peace.