The Bofors scandal saw Vajpayee at his mocking, sarcastic best in Parliament. Blasting a parliamentary committee on the Bofors deal, he snapped: ‘I am sorry that the committee spent more time than necessary proving that Bofors guns are good. Even if the guns are good, does it mean the scandal associated with them is also good? . . . The gun fires in Sweden and the boom is heard in India. It fires on the border of Rajasthan and shakes up Delhi . . . these guns will remain hot.’
Bofors was hot, but VP Singh was cool towards the BJP. In the Opposition unity moves against Rajiv that VP Singh initiated, he kept the BJP firmly out. For its part, the Advani-led BJP remained aloof too. With general elections just a year away, 1988 was a year of hectic politicking. The BJP launched a ‘satyagraha’ across India demanding the resignation of Rajiv Gandhi. Vajpayee was on the streets of Delhi, leading BJP workers on a march. Advani led a similar march in Lucknow.
The BJP may have been left out of VP Singh’s ‘secular’ front, but its championing of the VHP and the Ram Janmabhoomi movement brought it a new crucial ally – the other bellicose Hindutva party, the Shiv Sena. Advani was re-elected BJP president in March 1988, and under his leadership the party reached out to the Sena. The Sena responded, and in October 1988, at a rally in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, Sena chief Bal Thackeray openly invited the BJP for an alliance. With a ‘secular’ club coalescing on the one side, a ‘Hindu’ alliance took shape on the other. The Janata Party’s Mrinal Gore wondered out aloud: ‘How will a fine man like Vajpayee feel sitting next to Bal Thackeray?’
{{/usCountry}}The BJP may have been left out of VP Singh’s ‘secular’ front, but its championing of the VHP and the Ram Janmabhoomi movement brought it a new crucial ally – the other bellicose Hindutva party, the Shiv Sena. Advani was re-elected BJP president in March 1988, and under his leadership the party reached out to the Sena. The Sena responded, and in October 1988, at a rally in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, Sena chief Bal Thackeray openly invited the BJP for an alliance. With a ‘secular’ club coalescing on the one side, a ‘Hindu’ alliance took shape on the other. The Janata Party’s Mrinal Gore wondered out aloud: ‘How will a fine man like Vajpayee feel sitting next to Bal Thackeray?’
{{/usCountry}}But ‘fine man’ Vajpayee was unlikely to raise any objections not only because he always fell in with the party line, but because ultimately Hindu nationalism was still an essential part of his core identity. The party was supreme, and if it had decided to embrace Hindutva, he would not lag behind. Tenacity and patience are the strengths of the long-distance runner. He may have become the discredited leader, but he would not stop running the long race he had joined while still a schoolboy, in a movement with which his ties were emotional and laden with boyhood memories.
The BJP continued in its new ‘ideological’ direction. ‘The Hindu vote is going to be politically important in the coming decade,’ wrote the Organiser approvingly. ‘The BJP should have no shyness complex to organise its idea of Hindu renaissance.’ As greater links began to develop between the Ayodhya agitation and the BJP, the party’s upper-caste profile began to change, with an influx of backward castes and communities from the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Vajpayee’s Brahmin–Bania-dominated party started to give way to broader groups as boisterous kar sevaks and sadhvis, preachers and prelates, took the place of the ascetic RSS pracharaks and Jana Sangh notables. Backward caste leaders like Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh, the latter having been in the Jana Sangh, now rose to prominence. The Ram movement hurled the BJP to the shikhara (tower top) of power, but changed its character forever.
On 1 February 1989, crowds of pilgrims, sadhus and members of temple organizations gathered on the banks of the Ganga at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. The VHP gave the twin calls for ‘shila pujan’ and ‘shila yatra’ – bricks with ‘Shri Ram’ embossed on them would be ‘consecrated’ in villages and then brought to Ayodhya from thousands of villages and towns across India, and in November there would be a grand shilanyas at Ayodhya. The response was immediate: a steady stream of ‘shila’ bricks began to arrive in Ayodhya, the process organized by units of the Ramjanmabhoomi activists and Hindutva cadres which had fanned out across the country.
In May 1989, keenly aware of the growing strength of the BJP, VP Singh finally reached out to the saffron party for seat-sharing deals. He met Advani and Vajpayee at Advani’s residence in July 1989 for a four-hour dinner meeting where he conveyed that he wanted seatsharing arrangements in all states except Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for fear of alienating the Muslims. Advani disliked the ‘hypocrisy’ of this caveat, yet the BJP, conscious not to split the anti-Congress vote by being ideologically rigid, wanting to capitalize on the ‘anti-Rajiv wave’, and thirsty for an election win, was open to allies. Mindful not to alienate any Muslim support, VP Singh was clear: there would be no joint rallies with the BJP.
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Vajpayee, the universally liked bridge-builder with friends in every party, was needed to smoothen out the edges between ideological adversaries, but the nuts-and-bolts tough talking was done by Advani and ‘Advani man’ Govindacharya, in a clear indication of who the new BJP karta-dharta was. In an autobiographical collection of interviews, VP Singh says that at this time when Vajpayee was at a low point, some had even suggested to him that he join the Janata Dal. But Vajpayee denied that he ever even considered this.
He was never in any doubt about his RSS identity and he would never give up on the party he had co-founded or the Hindu nationalist identity it represented. In his essay ‘The Sangh Is My Soul’, he said: ‘I wrote “Rag Rag mein Hindu, Hindu Tan-man Hindu Jeevan” when I was studying in the tenth class. I had said koi batlaye Kabul mein jaakar kitni masjidein todin. (Can anyone tell me if a Hindu has ever gone to Kabul to destroy masjids?) I still stand by my words. But we [Hindus] did pull down the structure in Ayodhya. It was the first incident in history when we Hindus demolished their worship place themselves. It was a reaction to the Muslim vote bank. I wanted to solve this problem through negotiation and legislation.’
After the seat-adjustment pact with the Janata Dal was completed, Vajpayee hit the streets with enthusiasm at the same time as other National Front leaders such as VP Singh, Devi Lal and NTR, courting arrest, leading demonstrations and addressing meetings. In the course of the campaign, at a press conference attended by both VP Singh and Vajpayee, a reporter asked Vajpayee, ‘If the BJP emerges as the single largest party after the polls will you become a candidate for prime minister?’ Vajpayee replied with a resigned smile, ‘In this baraat, VP Singh is the bridegroom.’
The voice of his electioneering instinct, that uncannily accurate assessment he was always able to make of people’s hidden responses at election time told him that a surprise lay ahead. The atmosphere was uneasy, unpredictable. The face of Rajiv Gandhi, once glowingly handsome, was becoming shadowed with an unkempt stubble.
Vajpayee may no longer have been in his party’s driving seat, yet he was still his party’s most recognizable public face and committed above all to the party’s collective will. He brought his stature and credibility with rivals to staunchly defend his party’s ideological turn. In September 1989, Vajpayee had a famous exchange of letters with Hiren Mukherjee, his colleague in Parliament since the 1950s. Mukherjee wrote to him expressing his anguish about the growing communalism in the country and suggested a ‘national memorial’ at the disputed Ayodhya site. Mukherjee addressed Vajpayee as ‘My dear Atal’, and Vajpayee addressed Mukherjee as ‘Dear Hiren-da’, revealing the long friendship between committed parliamentarians that was possible in an India in which ideological opponents were unafraid of dialogue.
In a letter dated 24 September 1989, Vajpayee wrote:
Hiren-da! . . . I have never been in favour of destroying the Babri Masjid. Like you I want this matter to be settled peacefully . . . but in such sensitive matters which has touched the sentiments, and religious sentiments of a large number of people, a court decision will be difficult to implement . . . if there is to be a national memorial, the question arises, what kind of memorial will this be? What will it commemorate if not religious fanaticism – destroying a place of worship of one faith and building one of another faith in its place . . .
In another letter to Mukherjee, Vajpayee wrote, ‘I have never said that the masjid should be brought down, nor do I believe this nation can only be seen as a Hindu Rashtra.’
These letters written in September 1989 show that Vajpayee had made his peace with the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation that his party had embraced. Earlier that year, in June 1989, had come a defining moment for Vajpayee and for the BJP.
In Himachal Pradesh, surrounded by the Dhauladhar ranges, sits the hilltop town of Palampur. At its national executive meeting held here from 9 to 11 June 1989, the BJP’s alliance with the Shiv Sena was finalized and the BJP passed a resolution which it hoped would help it scale mountains. It was a resolution that committed the party to throwing itself into the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation. Dated 9–11 June 1989, the Palampur Resolution stated:
The National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party regards the current debate on the Ram Janma Bhoomi issue as one which has dramatically highlighted the callous unconcern which the Congress(I) party in particular, and the other political parties in general, betray towards the sentiments of the overwhelming majority in this country – the Hindus . . . the nature of this controversy is such that it just cannot be sorted out by a court of law . . . The sentiments of the people must be respected and the Ram Janmasthan must be handed over to the Hindus if possible through a negotiated settlement or else, by legislation.
This was the pivotal Palampur Resolution with its explicit words: Ram Janmasthan must be handed over to the Hindus.
Until now the Ram Janmabhoomi movement had been led by non-political outfits like the VHP and Bajrang Dal. With the BJP now joining the Hindu insurrection and giving it a political voice, the VHP-led movement gained saliency and clout. The Palampur resolution cast the BJP’s way forward in stone: the party had now officially adopted the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The Vajpayee line was officially dead. Vajpayee’s close friend and ex-military man, Jaswant Singh who had never been in the RSS, opposed the Palampur resolution and urged Vajpayee to speak up against it, but it was passed without objection. Subdued and mortified by election defeats, Vajpayee offered little resistance to his own marginalization. In September 1989, at the BJP’s national executive in Mumbai, the Hindutva alliance of BJP and Shiv Sena was formalized. At Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Hall, Shiv Sena President Bal Thackeray was invited to address the BJP in a packed hall ringing with slogans of Hindu unity.
Vajpayee’s Gandhian socialist party became Lord Ram’s party as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement gathered pace. ‘Ramshila’ processions and street demonstrations led to several bloody riots, one of the worst in Bhagalpur in Bihar where a procession had been taken out chanting, ‘Hindi, Hindu Hindustan, mullah bhago Pakistan [Hindustan is Hindu, let the Muslims go to Pakistan].’ The Bhagalpur riots were a bloodbath: over a thousand were killed, 900 of them Muslims. In September 1989, thirty died in communal riots in Badaun. The VHP stepped up Ramshila pujans across North India, and in the first week of November 1989 almost 1.5 lakh bricks arrived in Ayodhya. Desperately seeking to use the Hindu tide for his own ends, Rajiv Gandhi began his 1989 election campaign on 3 November from Faizabad, declaring Ayodhya–Faizabad as ‘the land of Ram, this holy land’. In another well publicized flourish of Hindutva by a mainstream politician, Rajiv also held a meeting with the Hindu mystic Devraha Baba at this time. On 9 November 1989, the Rajiv Gandhi government allowed the VHP to perform a shilanyas in front of the Babri Masjid. A pit, 7 feet long, 7 feet deep and 7 feet wide, was dug by the VHP, the first step towards mandir construction.
The Palampur Resolution brought the BJP to the front lines of the barricaded, sand-bagged, heavily policed streets of decrepit Ayodhya. The BJP now stood with the armies of Ram, raising fists, flags and trishuls against the Babri Masjid. The Palampur Resolution was the moment when the Advani-led BJP gave up all pretence of secularism and went to stand shoulder to shoulder with the VHP.
Golwalkar’s golden boy, the Jana Sangh’s unchallenged Parliament celebrity, was forced to take second place to someone who had once been his assistant and who now took centre stage.