The man who cobbled an impossible alliance

One thing common in the political thoughts of BJP/RSS ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya and veteran radical socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia was that "India's foreign policy should not be guided by love for democracy or hatred for Communism. India's national interests should be the guiding principle of its foreign policy."

How best to serve India's national interests was the doctrine around which the foreign policy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee revolved during his stint as the country's tenth Prime Minister.

Vajpayee's foreign policy initiatives focused on improving bilateral relations with India's immediate neighbours, including Pakistan, by adopting non-military confidence-building measures and people-to-people contacts through the promotion of economic, cultural, social and sporting ties in the true spirit of the SAARC Charter.

After the successful Pokhran nuclear test with the help of indigenous nuclear devices aimed at giving India civil and military nuclear applications, Vajpayee's foreign policy doctrine shifted to promoting friendly ties with the US, Russia, China, the European Union and, at the same time, cementing relations with ASEAN.

Quite a lot has been said about Vajpayee's Lahore bus initiative where he signed The Lahore Declaration with the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

But one significant feature of The Lahore Declaration was that Pakistan agreed, for the first time, to include a joint commitment to fight terrorism in all its manifestations. This, perhaps, was unacceptable to the Pakistani military establishment and the ISI and could be one of the reasons that Nawaz Sharif was deposed by the then army chief General Pervez Musharraf who was already hatching the Kargil intrusion of Pakistani troops.

India won the limited Kargil war in 1999 and that, too, at a time when Vajpayee was heading a caretaker government and the country was pushed into a mid-term Lok Sabha election in the aftermath of the 18-month-old NDA government's defeat on the floor of the House by just one vote.

Vajpayee's statesmanship was at its best in deftly handling such a delicate situation. Not a single voice of dissent was raised either by the NDA partners or by the Opposition against a caretaker Prime Minister leading the nation to war.

Vajpayee's Jammu and Kashmir doctrine of finding a solution to the vexed issue of Jammu and Kashmir in the spirit of jamhuriat (democracy), insaniayat (humanity) and Kashmiriat (Kashmiri identity) continues to be the consensus formula acceptable to all shades of political opinion in the valley.

As a three-time Prime Minister , first for 13 days, then for 13 months and finally for a full five-year term, Vajpayee's tenure was a test of coalition politics which he successfully handled, cobbling together a team of diverse political interests.

From a politically untouchable entity till 1996 when the BJP failed to muster support from any non-BJP political outfit to survive the floor test during the 13-day government, Vajpayee brought about a historic turnaround and surprised political pundits by roping in veteran socialist leaders like George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, BJD leader Naveen Patnaik, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, besides leaders of either the AIDMK or the DMK and ran a full term, the first by a non-Congress PM.

A visionary par excellence, Vajpayee led India on the road to sustained economic growth by controlling and reducing the fiscal deficit by rationalising the fuel subsidy and bringing fuel prices at market pricing levels.

Born on December 25, 1924 in a middle-class family in the princely state of Gwalior where his father Krishna Bihari Vajpayee was a schoolteacher, Atal Bihari Vajpayee imbibed his father's love for Hindi poetry. Though not a practising poet, Vajpayee penned 51 poems which reflect his vision of the socio-economic dimensions of life.

A graduate with a distinction in Hindi, English and Sanskrit, Vajpayee did his post-graduation in political science from Kanpur while participating in the Quit India Movement in 1942.

Starting his career as a journalist editing several nationalist Hindi newspapers and journals, Vajpayee came in touch with the RSS and later became one of the founding members of the Jana Sangh floated by Syama Prasad Mookerjee in 1951.

As political secretary to Mookerjee, he accompanied him to Jammu and Kashmir in 1954 where the founder of the Jana Sangh died under mysterious circumstances.

His parliamentary career spanned more than five decades, both as a member of the Lok Sabha as well as the Rajya Sabha, where his mesmerising eloquence was appreciated even by his political adversaries. Vajpayee first entered the lower house of Indian parliament in 1957 at the age of 33 from Balrampur in UP. Later he contested Lok Sabha elections from Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat. 

He was president of the Jana Sangh when on the call of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan, Vajpayee convinced his party to merge its identity with the newly formed Janata Party which came to power in the 1977 elections in the wake of the emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. Vajpayee was the external affairs minister in the short-lived Morarji Desai government and earned the distinction of delivering his maiden speech at the UN in Hindi.

Vajpayee was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan by the PV Narasimha Rao government and another Congress PM, Manmohan Singh, hailed him as the ‘Bhishma Pitamaha’ of Indian politics.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi bestowed upon Vajpayee the highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

Vajpayee, who always believed that "Democracy is the best guarantee for peace and cooperation among nations", retired from active politics after the BJP under his stewardship lost power in the 2004 General Election. 

He had been unwell and remained bed-ridden most of the time at his 6A Krishna Menon Marg in New Delhi, in the past few years. But he yet continued to rule the hearts of millions of Indians home and abroad.