National

Metamorphosis

Once he was a man who, everyone said, erred on the side of propriety and decorum. But elections '99 has wrought a sea-change,the poet-politician now breathes war

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Metamorphosis
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PG. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle may have been overrun with impostors as other houses are with mice, but it would have taken a quantum leap of faith to slot Atal Behari Vajpayee in that category. Yet, that's exactly how it seems as the prime minister begins his campaign for the '99 Lok Sabha elections. Gone is the poet-politician of the significant pause, the extravagant flourish. In place of the impish charm, there's unmitigated gravitas. The underlying joie de vivre has given way to a minimalist,almost machiavellian,approach of doing what it takes to win the polls. And if that means using,figuratively, at the very least,the imagery of war and the deaths of those in uniform in the icy barrenness of Kargil, so be it.

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Harsh? Sample this: For the first time (in an Indo-Pak war) not an inch of territory was retained by the enemy. Our jawans paid a heavy price but threw out the last of the Pakistanis; Kargil is free. In fact, our jawans were fighting each other to be the first to rout the intruders and unfurl the tricolour on the occupied heights. To kill or be killed; only victory mattered. Also for the first time, the bodies of our fallen soldiers were sent to their homes with respect and recognition. The Pakistanis were so scared that they didn't dare collect their dead. This was Vajpayee, the hero of Kargil, on August 9. At Lucknow's Begum Hazrat Mahal park on what was billed as his first trip to his constituency after winning Kargil. A mere taster of the Vajpayee campaign.

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Nothing wrong in what he said? Perhaps. For, technically, he was being felicitated at a function organised by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (which falls under the jurisdiction of UP minister and Vajpayee-loyalist Lalji Tandon) and the Lucknow Citizens' Forum. Osten-sibly to commemorate: (i) Shaurya Diwas in memory of the Kargil martyrs; (ii) the victory at Kargil; (iii) the Quit India movement,angrezon Bharat chodo, said posters on the park wall. (Or, as the more forthright Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had said at Ludhiana,where the PM kicked off his campaign,in a speech preceding Vajpayee's on August 7: Vajpayeeji has led India to a great victory in Kargil. And we fought to throw out the gora (white man) and win our independence; 50 years later, we aren't going to let the gora, or gori in this case, rule us.) Where once there was honour, a deference to sensibility and an instinctive feel for the appropriate, the Vajpayee campaign,from Ludhiana through Delhi to Lucknow,has been geared to winning in the time of war.

Speakers preceding him talk of the great victory won at Kargil under the awe-inspiring leadership of 'Atalji', compare Kargil to the previous wars fought by India to the bjp's advantage and inist the martyrs and their families never had it better. Some invitees to the dais spout poetry extolling the sacrifice of the jawan,(at Lucknow) Kargil mein kheli hai khoon ki Holi (We played Holi with blood at Kargil) and shower praise on Vajpayee's leadership during Kargil (at Ludhiana), Aap to khuda lagte hain (You're god),thereby establishing the connection.

Vajpayee himself implies the same by giving out emotionally-charged accounts of the war, its conduct and result. For example: I've read letters Pakistani jawans wrote home found on their bodies, in which they say 'our officers tell us to advance but stay back themselves'. Indian officers, on the other hand, led from the front in the face of enemy firing from the heights. Perfectly true. But it also establishes what can only be called the perfect bond between the war and the man who would be PM again; reflected, if not real glory. Remembering to mention piously each time that it has been the nation's victory. Some people are saying they will question us over Kargil for political ends but there is no place here for party politics.

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The PM's aides get apoplectic at the mere mention of this tactic of playing on Kargil to tug at the heartstrings: It's the Opposition which is indulging in the politics of dead bodies. Vajpayee has only reacted to unfair questions and even then he hasn't named anybody. As the leader of a country which has emerged the victor, he surely can't be denied the right of talking about the war. The refrain: if the Opposition had been in power, it would have been worse, for they lack Vajpayee's sense of responsibility. Possibly. But hardly an answer for those looking for a politician with a conscience; and one who led the appeals to prevent the war's politicisation at that. Much of the media, having sung paeans to the government-of-the-day in the national interest during the conflict, is distinctly uncomfortable in pointing out that the war is being flogged for all its worth in the Vajpayee campaign. Rightly so, feels a bjp leader, because they know that others like Indira Gandhi in '71 have done it in the past.

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But the Congress simile can be extended; to the truckloads of supporters carted in for Vajpayee's rallies and the internecine squabbling within the state units organising the show. Just like it was when the Congress dominated most of north India. The start to his campaign lends credence to the view of some analysts that Vajpayee may have admired Nehru and been a protege of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, but his role model as an electorally viable leader for contemporary India is Indira. The focus on an issue that looks like catching fire combined with the leader's personality, pitted against the nearest challenger (touching lightly upon the economy, stability, progress, development et al) bears the hallmark of the former PM.

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The oratorial skills are still there, of course, but now deployed almost exclusively in the name of what Harish Khare writing in The Hindu terms a new, Kargilised nationalism. Vajpayee reminded his audience at all venues that Indians are still shanti ke pujari (votaries of peace) but the temptation to launch into an evil hub of Islamic terrorism called Pakistan has proven to be too much for the hero of Kargil. The point isn't whether this is a correct assessment or whether there are domestic reverberations,some see a link with the clashes in Ahmedabad where the Kargil high was taken as a licence by some to settle scores with the minority community. That may be debatable; what isn't is that the PM has deemed it fit to go to town with it as a poll issue.

Careful man that he is, Vajpayee has made sure during the initial phase of the campaign on insisting that the Kargil war has moved the nation to stand united. Differences of class, caste and religion have disappeared. There was no communal tension during the war as in the past, no shortages as a result of hoarding and the economy grew stronger. He isn't, of course, prescribing war as a solution to some of the country's ills though it certainly sounds like that. Only an acoustic distortion caused, perhaps, by the impending polls.

Vajpayee's spin doctors believe that post-Kargil, he doesn't need the props of before in his interaction with the people. That he has acquired a pan-Indian image; he's no longer the challenger but the accepted face of the establishment. At all three meetings over the past week, it has been the PM holding forth, not Vajpayee using wit and rustic homilies to disarm the audience and demolish his adversaries. The fizz of earlier campaigns is missing. So also, what used to be a palpable sense of expectation when he rose to speak. Possibly because those preceding him have done the dirty on Sonia and her foreign origins, praised his leadership, lauded the development schemes he has launched, proclaimed that the Bomb and Kargil have given India back her lost self-respect and given him a suitably Churchillian aura. The Vajpayee-centric bjp campaign is beginning to show Kargil-centric contours, because that's all he seems really interested in.

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Vajpayee sympathisers say the national mood and the bjp feedback are that this is what the people want. But then he needs to remember that he can't throw his hands up in despair if this campaign is taken to a conclusion he may not want, once he's got the bjp back in power. For the moment, winning in the time of war and using the responses Kargil has spawned may seem a brilliant electoral strategy. But there is going to be a price. And India may end up paying it.

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