BJP and the personality cult: The Vajpayee image myth

Here, he's playing with children or entertaining Adivasis in traditional headgear. There, he's handling a computer mouse to inaugurate a new project.

In the ads, Mr Vajpayee always stands taller than ordinary mortals. He is invariably shown "leading the nation" by theatrically raising his right hand high. Going by this publicity, he is the inspiration not just behind the India's biggest highway project, but behind such wondrous things as cellular telephones, helicopters, textbooks, tractors, call-centres, missiles, women's cricket, happy pensioners, new railway lines . . .

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Our school classrooms may not have a blackboard, sometimes even a ceiling, but they must display posters with larger-than-life pictures of Education Minister Joshi and Mr Vajpayee. The message? It's to Mr Vajpayee that India's schoolchildren owe their education--never mind that primary education eludes a third of them.

The government's Rs. 450-crore publicity blitz has only one unifying theme--Mr Vajpayee--, and one purpose--to build a personality cult. So desperate is the NDA that it got Mr Vajpayee to "inaugurate" "new" railway lines months after they started operating!

The official advertisements are NDA campaign brochures, paid for with public money. No other government has done this so brazenly or ostentatiously. The sum represents half of what it costs to conduct Lok Sabha elections!

India has an unfortunate recent history of hero-worship. After the Bangladesh War, D.K. Barooah sycophantically declared, "Indira is India!" Mr Vajpayee did one better. He elevated her to goddess Durga!

His own deification today surpasses this. Indira Gandhi's cult was largely confined to the Indian News Reels mandatorily shown with feature films. Mr Vajpayee is everywhere--glorified as a superman, not just the head of a 19-party (or has it dwindled to 17?) coalition.

He's called a "visionary" and a "statesman". BJP leaders vie with one another in showering glamorous accolades upon him.

This sycophancy is only slightly less

crude than the personality cult around Hitler--who gave Germany the autobahn (high-speed motorway)--or Stalin and Mao. Short of showing Mr Vajpayee swimming across the Ganga, the Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity has done everything! The material has the same admiring quality as pro-Nazi films on Hitler.

The reality behind the glorified image is prosaic. Mr Vajpayee is a mediocre leader without a coherent, leave alone grand, vision. Unlike, say, Nehru, or even Rajiv Gandhi, he has lost elections. He played no role in the greatest social-political movement of his time, the Freedom Struggle. During the Quit India agitation, he sought amnesty by swearing to the colonial authorities, "I have done no damage" (to the state).

Mr Vajpayee, a loyal swayamsevak, served as a secretary to another mediocre Hindutva leader, Deendayal Upadhyay. The Jana Sangh was a minor party until 1977, tied to feudal interests, with around 30 Lok Sabha seats.

It got a break in the Emergency, during which Sangh leaders were arrested-- despite their lack of opposition to political rights suspension. They merged with the Janata Party, which romped to victory.

Mr Vajpayee became Foreign Minister. The only notable features of his tenure were the secret India visit by Israel's Moshe Dayan and the rebuff from China during Mr Vajpayee's 1979 visit there--through launching an attack on Vietnam.

The Janata collapsed on "dual membership". The former Jana Sanghis weren't prepared to swear exclusive loyalty to it. Mr Vajpayee refused to cut the umbilical cord with the sangh. This was hardly "visionary".

On becoming Prime Minister in 1998, Mr Vajpayee pursued a personalised style, running the Prime Minister's Office as a parallel power-centre. His first important decision, to conduct nuclear tests, was taken outside the Cabinet--at the RSS's behest. The Defence Minister got to know about the tests the day they happened.

The PMO has become an unaccountable source of power, which interferes in appointments, postings and contracts. It works under the not-so-benign influence of Mr Vajpayee's adopted son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharjee, and certain Big Business houses. When Outlook magazine exposed the PMO's role in some projects, its proprietors were raided!

The Vajpayee cult proves the BJP's political bankruptcy. Mr Vajpayee continues to practise duplicity. During the 1998 campaign, he declared he won't contest an election after five years. He is doing just that. He said the BJP would never split other parties. It has split the Janata Dal, Congress, BSP, JMM and Lok Dal.

"The party with a difference" is mired deeper in corruption than any other. It has entered into thoroughly unprincipled alliances.

Mr Vajpayee has never disowned classic-Hindutva issues like the temple, Article 370 or Uniform Civil Code. He declared the temple agitation a "national movement". His September 2000 "always-a-swayamsevak" speech in New York conformed to this pattern.

Mr Vajpayee distances himself from hardliners only under pressure. Take Gujarat's decision to allow government employees to join the RSS. When this created a furore, Mr Vajpayee had the move withdrawn. But he kept silent when Chhattisgarh did the same thing.

Mr Vajpayee harbours personal insecurity as regards his Lucknow seat. He also reacted peevishly to his characterisation as "Vikas-Purush" and that of Mr Advani as "Loh-Purush".

Recently, Mr Vajpayee faced crucial tests on two issues: Tehelka and the Gujarat pogrom. He failed both. He reinducted Mr George Fernandes into the Cabinet when he wasn't cleared by an inquiry. And he refused to bring Mr Narendra Modi to heel. He first made some disapproving noises about rajdharma. But within days, he was back at Muslim-bashing.

A man who refuses to take a stand against the state-sponsored butchery of his fellow-citizens cannot be "liberal" "secular", or a "statesman".

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.