Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the master of metaphors.
In 1977, the former Prime Minister, whose death anniversary came this week, was in Delhi, stumping for the BJP after Indira Gandhi shut down the Emergency and declared elections. Vajpayee had spent some time in Tihar Jail in the company of friends like Chandra Shekhar, LK Advani, Arun Jaitley and Jayaprakash Narayan. With a flourish, he began to draw from the Mahabharata to illustrate the benefits of fortitude. He spoke of Yudhishthira, who passed Dharmaraj's test by a lake and brought his brothers back to life, choosing Sehdev's life first, for the sake of both his mothers.
It was classical Vajpayee, using the Mahabharata to illustrate the victory of justice and patience after over two dark years of dictatorship. That was Vajpayee's Hindutva. As he said at a party meeting about an impending Ram toofan, the problem with storms is that they can sweep everyone away. The Ram toofan did come in 2014 and swept the BJP to power twice, the last time with a massive Lok Sabha majority. But it has also swept away Vajpayee's legacy of convivial politics and hardcore patriotism.
The Vajpayee Era would be unthinkable and unrecognisable today. He was the quintessential Renaissance Hindu of ancient India. He made no bones about enjoying life's pleasures. He loved his whisky in the evening. He relished non-vegetarian food, especially Chinese. In spite of being a lifelong bachelor, he had a daughter who lived with him and cared for him; Vajpayee adored his granddaughter. He used wit to disarm his opponents towards whom he harboured no hate; after a harsh speech against Jawaharlal Nehru in Parliament, India's first Prime Minister predicted his young critic would one day be Prime Minister. Vajpayee gave respect and protection to Rajiv Gandhi’s widow and children, although it was Rajiv's mother who put him in jail and persecuted the RSS, which was his spiritual, political and personal paterfamilias.
But to consider Vajpayee a dove would be doing the statesman a disservice. When it came to India, he was as hawkish as hawks go. In May 1998, he ordered a series of five nuclear tests in Pokhran under the nose of CIA satellites and declared India a full-fledged nuclear state. The Americans imposed sanctions, but Vajpayee didn't care -- he knew the US needed India when Pakistan was fostering terrorists. It was also shrewd politics; in 1996, the BJP came to power in India for the first time under Vajpayee. In 1999, the Indian Army won a difficult war in Kargil when Vajpayee was the Prime Minister.
After Pakistani terrorists attacked Parliament in December 2001, he ordered Operation Parakram -- a full-scale mobilisation of the armed forces against the rogue neighbour. His first instinct had been to authorise a Balakot-type air strike with Mirage 2000s on a Pakistan-army-run terrorist training camp inside the PoK. Vajpayee refused to compromise on Kashmir: the Agra Summit in July 2001 with General Musharraf failed because he opposed the foxy Pakistani calling terrorism in Kashmir "people's battle for freedom".
If Narendra Modi is a hawk in a hawk’s guise, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a hawk in a dove’s clothing. All the jokes, liberal lifestyle, amiable demeanour, poetry and tandoori prawns cannot change that metaphor.
Ravi Shankar can be reached at ravi@newindianexpress.com.