NEW DELHI: Former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, remembered for his bold peace initiatives with Pakistan and defiant nuclear tests, died here on Thursday at a government-run hospital where he was admitted two months ago for kidney infection.
He was 93.
Reclusive and ailing after his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) shock defeat in 2004, Vajpayee’s absence from active politics weighed heavy on those who missed him as the man who alone could rein in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his socially divisive policies.
In his message on Vajpayee’s passing, Mr Modi said he regarded the late leader as his father.
Vajpayee was idolised in Pakistan as a sincere peacemaker and wooed by rivals at home as the right man in the wrong party.
“Suppose I am that — a nice man in the wrong party — what would you want me to do?”
Typical of how he ribbed his doting opponents, on this occasion, shortly before resigning from a 13-day stint as prime minister in May 1996. In 1998, he had another short innings, but which he packed with game-changing nuclear tests, and a landmark visit to Lahore by bus.
A glimpse of Vajpayee’s diplomatic preferences can be seen from the fact that he favoured “genuine non-alignment”, an implied criticism of the movement founded by Jawaharlal Nehru. His pro-West politics was derived from the staunchly anti-communist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), of which he was a lifelong member.
His three visits to Pakistan did not include any of the tenures of the PPP.
In fact, his first official visit to Pakistan came in Feb 1978, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was in jail under the Zia regime. Vajpayee met the military ruler and later pointedly refused to speak out against the death sentence passed on Bhutto, which Indira Gandhi had vociferously opposed. The favour won for prime minister Morarji Desai Pakistan’s highest civilian award from Zia.
Vajpayee’s 1999 visit to Lahore became so popular in Pakistan that his host and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif said he could win an election there.
Vajpayee had initially opposed Gen Pervez Musharraf’s coup, but he also became the first leader to greet him when Musharraf declared himself president. The 2001 Agra summit with the general also saw Vajpayee moving forward and rowing back on a peace deal, which many believe was on the cards.
By Dec 2001, bilateral relations soured irretrievably when militants attacked the Indian parliament and Delhi blamed Pakistan. Consequently, following a massive military build-up, it was under Vajpayee’s watch in April-May 2002 that the diplomatic enclave in Delhi was deserted with convoys of diplomatic families heading home over fears of a nuclear exchange with Pakistan.
Once again — the first time was during the 1999 Kargil war — international pressure came into play and war clouds dispersed. The Kargil war had seen Vajpayee winning the 1999 election, after he was voted out in 1998, but the margin was so thin that he didn’t see sour ties with Pakistan as an advantage in domestic politcs.