Ullekh N.PThis could at once be an explosive revelation and a mighty disappointment for the newly rejuvenated proponents of Hindu pride.
A new book on the life of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the country's first BJP prime minister and the first non-Congress prime minister to complete his term, says he not only tried to compromise with Indira Gandhi during the Emergency but also tried to pressurize his party's student wing to apologize to the government.
Senior journalist and Delhi-based executive editor of Open magazine, Ullekh N.P., gives the information in his recently published book 'The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox'.
Vajpayee who was under house arrest in Delhi during the Emergency, Ullekh writes, had met Indira's powerful minister of state for home affairs Om Mehta.
When the then general secretary of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student organization affiliated to the RSS), Ram Bahadur Rai, heard of the meeting, he hurried to Vajpayee's home at 1 Feroze Shad Road on December 31, 1976.
There, Rai was stunned when Vajpayee confirmed the meeting and told him that the ABVP should "own up" for the arson and destruction of public property in many parts of the country.
Vajpayee did not stop there but asked Rai to tender an apology to the government so that Indira Gandhi can think of repealing the Emergency laws!
Rai, Ullekh writes, denied that ABVP workers were responsible for the violence and said "there is no question of us apologizing even if we have to go to jail."
At this, Vajpayee whispered that it is easy for young leaders like Rai to make such bold statements but older people like him "preferred" a democratic set-up.
Rai ended the meeting saying, "we also want elections and democracy."
It took another year for the Emergency – the most brutal assault yet on Indian democracy, and citizens' rights and freedom by a government -- to be revoked.
Vajpayee, ironically, became the external affairs minister in the new government of Morarji Desai that swept to power in the elections that followed.
Rai, a former journalist whose scoops include the Jain hawala papers, is now the chairman of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, a job offered to him by prime minister Narendra Modi.
Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat and Vajpayee the prime minister of the nation during the shameful Godhra riots and the fraught relationship both shared is well known. Rai himself recently stirred controversy by saying Dr B.R. Ambedkar's role in drafting the Constitution was a "myth."
Ullekh is the son of the late Pattiam Gopalan, a former Lok Sabha MP from Kerala, and a stalwart CPM leader who went underground during the Emergency to avoid arrest and torture. His earlier book 'War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 Win' was a best-seller.
'The Untold Vajpayee' lays bare the man behind Vajpayee's commonly perceived public persona, and this particular instance rips apart the mask of an uncompromising political fighter who took on Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. Rather, it shows Vajpayee as a shrewd politician who had kept communication channels with the Congress government open even as several RSS workers were arrested and beaten up across India.
Rai also reveals that Vajpayee was not afraid of using party organs to crush rivals within the party.
The former prime minister has lost his ability to speak after he suffered a series of strokes.
Watch this space for a full review of the book.
