Why RSS never trusted Atal Bihari Vajpayee :Vivekanand Jha

 Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: For me, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was nothing short of a demi God of this country. I was simply fascinated by his oratory, his burning passion for nationalism, his love for India’s democracy and his going all out to ensure the protection of institutions of credibility that keep India’s democracy vibrant. In 1996, when Vajpayee was seeking the vote on the Confidence Motion, for his government that pathetically lasted for just thirteen days, his defeat in the floor of the House, when he failed to seek the mandate and boldly announced his resignation, the personal grief that his resignation had triggered was simply humongous, for i had skipped my supper as well as the morning breakfast. Incidentally,  I recall having participated in a RSS’ members holding a private celebration in the then Calcutta. Further, with the then President, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, inviting Ataljee to form the government on the basis of BJP emerging as the single largest party, invoked an instant ecstasy in me, triggering my offering sweets to my parents and my students that i taught at my residence then. Small wonder then, later in Delhi, when the Hindu newspaper, in its editorial, had damned Ataljee and Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, for their apparent collusion to disgrace the Indian constitution, my indignation simply had transcended all its limits–fired by the bulls rage I had called the editorial office of Hindu and locked horns with them. My point of argument was simple: Pray, tell me what the president, given the constitutional ambiguity, rather a complete silence in the given situation, would have done to break the constitutional impasse to pave the formation of a new government? So many earlier precedents that guided the President, who himself was some sort of an authority on law, including  the famous S.R. Bomai’s case, where the apex court had laid down its own guidelines: The president is empowered to invite the leader of the single largest party to form the government if there is no clarity of mandate given in favour of any single party or coalition. Moreover, the judgment emphatically provides that President should assure himself that the leader of the single largest party, should be in the position to form the government. Now, the crux of the whole issue comes to this: Was the president Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma did make a prudent investigation into the whole issue that the leader of the single largest party was definitively in a position to prove his majority in the House?

This is a vague concept where the constitution empowers the president to exercise his own discretion and sheer prudence to decide. No wonder, Harkishan Surjeet, the then stalwart leader of CPIM, questioning the president and consequently got a befitting answer: ‘You all are the students of the college of which I am the Principal’, signifying the fact that he was already teaching the Constitutional law and, therefore, no Tom, Dick and Harry could question him where Constitution gives him the freedom. Later when Ataljee returned as India’s constitutionally mandated Prime Minister, his relationship with RSS, barring the tenure of Dr Rajendra Singh, was marred with mistrust and suspicion. With Sudarshan, assuming the mantle of Sangh leadership, the mistrust became more eloquent. In fact, Ataljee had already deployed Brajesh Mishra, the then National Security Adviser, to put his foot down and not to allow  Sangh to cross the Lakshman Rekha.           In fact, the bitterness between Ataljee and Sangh leadership had started brewing when Guru Golwalkar had landed at Jhandelalan office of RSS, straight from Nagpur to meet Ataljee to persuade him to snap his relations with Rajkumari Kaul, who later was referred to as Mrs Kaul, a college classmate of Ataljee. Such was the bonding between the two that, despite both of them getting separated after their college, and meeting later after sixteen years, rekindled the bond between the both. Later Mrs Kaul, who was a close relative of Indira Gandhi, had begun influencing Ataljee’s decisions. This was the main bone of contention between the RSS leadership and Ataljee. Guru Golwalkar, if the upcoming book based on Jugalbandi of Atal-Advani is to be believed, had asked Ataljee to marry Rajkumari or walk out of the relationship, Ataljee bluntly refused to do so. This was the cause behind the simmering tensions underneath in the relationship between the two. RSS never trusted Atal Bihari Vajpayee the way it trusted Advani and others. Later, the son-in -law of Ataljee, Ranjan Bhattacharya, whose interference in the affairs of the government, also caused heart burn among many BJP leaders, resulted in Ataljee’s visit to Advanijee’s house where all these personal differences were sorted out. Ataljee had purportedly brought to Advani’s attention how his camp was involved in maligning his family members.         In 2018 when I had visited ailing Ataljee, the first shock that virtually shook me up was: Whether the man that lay on bed was Ataljee or someone else. The face of the the man lying in the bed was the man who shook the national polity for decades, the Bhisma Pitamaha of Indian politics, for the face of the man lying unconscious was starkly different from the man the world knew was the nation’s beloved, Ataljee. But then as Bhagvatam says,’ Avashya meb bhoktavyam Kriti karma subha Subham'(None ever, be he the king or the mendicants on the street, are one and the same when it comes to be adjudged for his or her karma.

Vivekanand Jha is an author of Yes, I am Bihari, The Living Legends of Mithila. He is an author and a Public Intellectual.