Samajwadi Party leader and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to share his wedding photograph on Twitter with the departed former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has to be seen as part of the subtle, yet perceptible, political messaging by both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition parties. From those at the opposed ends of the political firmament, to the ones who occupy more centrist positions with tilt on either side, each party tried to utilise Vajpayee’s memory, the images he conjures and the political ethos he evoked, to their advantage.स्व. अटल जी ने राजनीति को दलगत राजनीति से ऊपर उठाया, सदैव अपने दल के सिद्धांतों व अपने दर्शन पर अडिग रहना सिखाया, जब भी राजनीति भटकी उसको सही मार्ग दिखाया, विदेशों से मित्रता का पाठ पढ़ाया. अटल जी का जाना भारतीय राजनीति एवं साहित्यिक जगत के मुखरित स्वर का मौन हो जाना है. मौन नमन! pic.twitter.com/1w4EOgr9qG— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) August 17, 2018The challenge has been greater for the BJP because tributes from opposition, their leaders and analysts critical of the politics of the Sangh parivar, sought to appropriate Vajpayee into a more inclusive polity. They have repeatedly underscored Vajpayee’s bifocal political approach which while promoting Hindutva, remained chiefly, barring a few incidents, within the constitutional framework. Every opinion mentioning Vajpayee’s past fondness for Nehruvian ethos and consensual politics was in fact an unstated reference to the present regime politics of exclusion and strong-arm tactics with other parties.In contrast, the BJP attempted to claim undivided rights to his legacy by stressing mainly on its political lineage and how this connected it with the multi-layered deceased former premier’s political vision. Not surprisingly, the BJP has emphasised ‘appropriate’ aspects of Vajpayee’s decisions while leaving it to the opposition to highlight those features that are unambiguously at variance with the BJP’s present-day credo.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to walk along with the funeral path from the party office has to be seen in this context. It would be analytically naive to view the events following the hospitalisation of Vajpayee from a purely emotional angle and consider that every act and each utterance of political players and opinion influencers across the spectrum was devoid of political intent.Although no leader would accept the fact out of fear of accusations of ‘playing politics on a dead body’, it would be immature to disregard that the deceased was first a politician and ‘poet’ later – of so questionable a quality that Nirmal Verma refused Vinod Mehta’s request to review a volume of his verses for Outlook. It is perfectly understandable that responses to his passing were mainly in the political realm.What Yadav stated in his Tweet is telling: “The late Atal ji elevated politics beyond party lines, taught how to remain true to one’s party’s principles and personal philosophy, restored politics to the correct path whenever it strayed and gave the lesson of friendship with other nations.” Although he, like others, did not disregard the swayamsevak core of Vajpayee, accepting that he had been “true to one’s party’s principles” the other part of the tweet cannot be ignored. Sentiments articulated by Yadav’s two phrases, “elevated politics beyond party lines” and “restored politics to the correct path whenever it strayed”, was voiced repeatedly by almost every opposition leader and critical voice, albeit differently.Every time these sentiments were articulated in the course of wall-to-wall television debate that ran for almost two days, politically non-aligned viewers could not have escaped the extent to which today’s BJP has deviated from being the party steered by Vajpayee.Sonia Gandhi’s words condoling Vajpayee too carried the unstated message of demise of a political culture within BJP. She stressed the departed leader’s “democratic values”, that he was “a man with a very large heart and a real spirit of magnanimity” and how Vajpayee treated all, even coalition partners with “respect and courtesy.” Former Union minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram termed him a person who “resolutely anchored the BJP close to the middle and did not allow the party to swing to the extreme right of the political spectrum.”Another former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda recalled the premier who preceded and followed him, as believer in India’s “diverse culture” who “did not allow the House to be disturbed during my tenure as the prime minister for the 11 months.” Even communist parties recalled Vajpayee’s steadfastness in promoting “multi-party democracy” and recalled how he had ‘advised’ the two parties to escalate protests against proposed Indian military participation in the US-led war in Iraq in 2003. Even former President, Pranab Mukherjee used words which categorically brought out his distinctiveness form the present BJP regime terming him a “reasoned critique in opposition and a seeker of consensus as PM, Atal ji was a democrat to the core.”The contest between the BJP and opposition to utilise Vajpayee’s memory and image as a political tactic was evident from mid-June, immediately after his condition deteriorated and required hospitalisation. After visiting the ailing former premier, Rahul Gandhi had said that Narendra Modi talked about Hindu religion although he felt scant necessity to adhere to its teachings of respecting gurus. Rahul pointed out, many felt unnecessarily, that he was the first to visit the hospital but explained he called to enquire about the Vajpayee’s health because “he had contributed to the country.”It wasn’t lost on anyone that when Gandhi spoke about Modi cold-shouldering his elders in the party, he was mentioning not just Vajpayee, but others too like L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and even Jaswant Singh who was denied a party nomination in 2014. Almost each assertion of opposition leaders of all hues and critical analysts underscored, that in the Vajpayee era, disagreements were voiced in the backdrop of civility, a far cry from today’s political ethos where an example of name-calling has been set from the top.In contrast, BJP president Amit Shah’s statement did not contain any element of Vajpayee’s politics that were discomforting to the party and its larger political fraternity. He limited himself to laudatory centrally-posited phrases like Vajpayee nursing the party and being someone who “led a spotless political life without compromising on national interest.” In contrast to the party’s official line, Advani emphasised on his colleague-friend’s “sterling humane qualities like compassion, humility and his remarkable ability to win over adversaries despite ideological differences.”But, besides talking out his multi-faceted qualities, Modi highlighted Vajpayee’s commitment to democracy in the context of his opposition to Emergency. The prime minister did not highlight Vajpayee’s major achievement of successfully creating a template for coalition politics because possibly this dharma is not to his preference. Not unexpectedly, Modi highlighted one of the debatable decisions of Vajpayee because this suited Modi: of not just agreeing to replace Keshubhai Patel with Modi as Gujarat chief minister in October 2001 but also inform him personally about this decision.After having spent more than one-and-a-half decades against certain principles that Vajpayee espoused, Modi wants to be seen as the only bearer of his legacy. The BJP has already planned to take out in Uttar Pradesh several Kalash Yatras with Vajpayee’s ashes. This was not unexpected because of the tradition from Nehru’s time although many would argue that the purpose has evolved in a political direction. The BJP will never accept that in Vajpayee’s death it senses an opportunity but in its embrace of Vajpayee, its withering hold on the electorate becomes all too evident.
