This article originally appeared in the issue of THE WEEK dated February 4, 1996
Both are lonely men at a private level—Atal Bihari Vajpayee being a bachelor and P.V. Narasimha Rao being a widower for long. But the final lap to the elections and the hawala racket have brought out the killer instinct in both men, who admire each other's scholarly qualities and literary outpourings.
Atalji mere haal kaal ke guru hain (Atalji was the guru during my bad times), P.V. Narasimha Rao said while receiving a collection of poems penned by Vajpayee.
Hawala kaal main guru nahin (not a guru during hawala period), retorted Vajpayee!
Sometimes, it used to be a mutual admiration session especially when prime minister Rao and Vajpayee, the principal claimant to that job, met each other on non-political sessions. It was not Vajpayee, though, but his predecessor as leader of the opposition, L.K. Advani, who called Rao "the best Indian prime minister since Lal Bahadur Shastri."
But, now, Vajpayee has Rao in his sights, as the two friends on either side of the political fence lurch towards the campaign for the decisive Lok Sabha elections. The hawala scandal, which has claimed many political scalps, is being used by Vajpayee in his speeches across the country to demolish Rao's chances of repeating the feat of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi of winning a second term.
Vajpayee gave impetus to the allegation made by hawala kingpin Surendra Kumar Jain that a total of Rs 3.55 crore was paid to Rao when he was Congress president and later prime minister in 1991.
Picking up the allegation after the Central Bureau of Investigation charge-sheeted BJP president Advani, the BJP's prime ministerial nominee has made it the main theme in his speeches made during a parivartan yatra that marked the start of his election campaign.
The demolition job against Rao has become the principal weapon in Vajpayee's electoral armoury. He confidently asserts that he has the whole confidential file of the CBI in the hawala case to blast apart the prime minister on charges of corruption, cover-up, obstruction of investigation and shielding criminals. The file, which contains the interrogation statements of the accused and the witnesses as well as internal notings of the CBI officials, is described by a BJP office-bearer close to Advani as "dynamite which can blast Rao from his chair."
For Vajpayee, the chance may never come again if he does not seize the opportunity to project himself as the anti-corruption alternative to a corrupt incumbent. Already, Vajpayee's admirers say his crusade against corruption is sure to pay rich political dividends, just as it did for Vishwanath Pratap Singh against Rajiv Gandhi in 1989; they gleefully recall the way he led the blockade of Parliament over the telecom scandal in December. The fact that Vajpayee's name does not figure either in the Jain diaries or in the interrogation statement means he can bash the hawala crowd with impunity.
But his one-time literary friend, Rao, is not keeping quiet at this direct assault by Vajpayee. Already Rao's aides and followers are seething with indignation at the way Vajpayee has been taken for a ride by Jain's statement recorded by "a disgruntled IPS officer related to one of the accused in the hawala case".
Urban Development Minister R.K. Dhawan, one of Rao's closest supporters in the government and the party, and who was accused of being the go-between, has drawn up a list of material objections to Jain's version of the bribe-giving. The BJP, however, has been crying itself hoarse about why the CBI did not follow the 'all-important lead' provided by Jain.
Vajpayee thinks 'hawalagate' could do to Rao what Watergate did to American president Richard Nixon. "We are talking about how the CBI has been prevented from investigating the payments made to Rao and three of his closest persons, and there is a massive cover-up," thundered Vajpayee at his public meetings in Punjab, obviously aghast that the CBI could take Jain's dairies seriously but not his oral statement.
In the absence of a convincing prime ministerial name from the third front (V.P. Singh and Jyoti Basu are unwilling, Mulayam and Lalu have limited appeal and evoke sharp hostilities, and nobody is serious about Chandra Shekhar), Vajpayee and his party know that the Indian electorate prefers a known alternative: it had opted for the Jayaprakash Narayan-led movement in 1977 and V.P. Singh in 1989.
Though corruption charges have been there against Rao ever since Harshad Mehta's allegation that he gave Rs 1 crore to Rao (incidentally, copies of his affidavit released in Bombay were being distributed the same day at the BJP's national executive meeting in Bangalore), the BJP thinks Vajpayee is the right person to project the issue close to the elections.
But Congressmen close to Rao laughed off the suggestion. "BJP leaders Advani, Madan Lal Khurana, Yashwant Sinha and Vijay Kumar Malhotra are neck-deep in the hawala scandal. The tirade against Rao is only an attempt to divert public attention," they kept saying in their statements. They even said names of more BJP leaders, especially from Madhya Pradesh which was the operational base of the Jain brothers, would crop up.
Khurana, for one, is squirming because BJP dissidents in New Delhi see a golden opportunity to drive the knife into his career. According to the CBI, Khurana not only received money, but even took the Jains to Advani for paying Rs 50 lakh. Khurana has apparently escaped on a technicality: he was not a public servant on the day the Jains allegedly paid him. Sinha, on the other hand, resigned his membership of the Bihar Assembly. In private, BJP leaders say Sinha was in the Janata Dal and later in the Samajwadi Janata Party during the period he is said to have received hawala money.
The BJP insists that its leaders have been framed to prevent the party from using corruption as an election issue and also divert public attention from the huge pile of garbage in the Congress camp. "The case has been filed to prevent the BJP's march to power," bemoaned Advani, whose decline has continued in the new year. After being charge-sheeted in the hawala case (he insists that they are "trumped up, baseless charges"), Advani had the mortification of being booed by party workers in his own constituency of Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The bitterness that came out during the struggle between Shankersinh Vaghela's khajuhas (mercenaries) and Keshubhai Patel's hajurias (loyalists) has not ended.
Rao himself has not reacted in a big way or taken any retaliatory steps against Vajpayee in the one week since the poet-politician made the most serious charge against his 'favourite' reader. Weeks earlier, Vajpayee had been thrilled that Rao had selected to recite two of the lines in his poetry Vajpayee himself considered the best. In that mutual admiration festival, Rao called Vajpayee a person whom none will find revolting. "There is no aspect of Atalji's personality which repels a person. His entire personality attracts like a magnet," Rao had eulogised the man who wants to displace him now.
Obviously, Vajpayee does not find everything about Rao attractive.
Vajpayee saw Rao as an assassin who had to be stopped in his tracks immediately. While accusing Rao of trying to "eliminate all those who would have been a challenge to him for the prime minister's post", Vajpayee was not surprised that he, the most important mascot of the BJP, had not been touched—the Jain brothers had not thought it fit to approach him in 1989-91, a period when Advani's was the face of the BJP, having successfully increased the BJP's tally in Parliament and having ridden the Ayodhya rath.
But long before the hawala charge-sheets, Advani had declared that Vajpayee would be the prime minister; he retreated completely from the race once the Gujarat imbroglio robbed him of the presidential authority in the party and Vaghela accused him of encouraging 'groupism'.
The 'assassin', meanwhile, has stuck to his style. Rao has not uttered one word against his rival, following the tradition of not being provoked into a verbal duel by his acid-tongued critics. He also advised those who were rebutting Vajpayee's charge to be careful; eight Congress MPs drafted a statement saying that they had the highest regard for Vajpayee but were shocked by his allegation. The official spokesman S. Narendra stuck to rebutting the actual charges by Jain in his brief statement on Rao's innocence.
Rao even told his partymen that it is better to attack the BJP as a party, which is striking out against the prime minister in its hour of distress, rather than bad-mouth any leader.
Congress spokesman V.N. Gadgil cryptically remarked that "regarding Vajpayee, I leave it to Subramanian Swamy." The Janata Party president, who has been a bitter critic of Vajpayee ever since their Bharatiya Jana Sangh and then Janata Party days, jumped with glee, alleging that Vajpayee had got a Rs 6 crore kickback in US dollars from Enron for reviving the Dabhol power project. He also produced his old allegation that Vajpayee was a British collaborator during the freedom struggle.
But BJP men are sure that Rao, despite his open fascination for Vajpayee, would strike and try to undermine the BJP leader's popularity. The party was desperate that the courts should direct the CBI to investigate Jain's allegations against Rao, so that it could force a major crisis for the prime minister. That is why the party kept declaring that it would approach the courts in the matter.
There are hard-boiled critics of Rao who allege that he had struck at Advani and his own rivals in the Congress to smoothen the way for a takeover of the country by Vajpayee either heading a full BJP government or a BJP government supported by the Congress from outside.
According to Arjun Singh, working president of the Indira Congress, this blueprint had been worked out long ago and was being enacted only now. Arjun, a long-term foe of the BJP and of the prime minister, wants Congressmen to unite to fob off the Rao-Vajpayee alliance.
In fact, Indira Congress general secretary K.N. Singh even alleged that Vajpayee had agreed to make Rao the president in 1997 (in place of Shankar Dayal Sharma) if he helped make Vajpayee the prime minister in 1996.
K.N. Singh said that was the reason why Advani had been 'fixed' in the hawala case. But both Vajpayee and Advani insist that the case is an attempt to destroy the BJP's chances and not of any one leader. "However hard people may try, they cannot drive a wedge between me and Atalji," declared Advani, a point he has made many times before whenever reports appeared that there were differences.
Prior to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, it was Advani who was perceived to be more closer to Rao, especially the way the BJP joined other opposition parties in ensuring the minority government did not have any trouble in the Lok Sabha.
Advani, as leader of the opposition, had been so relieved by the end of the Nehru dynasty that he had even called Rao the best Indian prime minister since Shastri. He thought Rao's continuance as prime minister would help the BJP, even while Rao encouraged Advani.
But the demolition also began the decline of Advani who resigned as the leader of the opposition and the post went to Vajpayee.
In fact, the only two persons who never went to see the disputed complex in Ayodhya in 1991-92 were Rao and Vajpayee. Vajpayee did not like the idea of unilaterally demolishing the masjid and always harped on persuading the Muslims to hand over the structure voluntarily to the Hindus. He was extremely shocked at the demolition and felt it was a folly.
On his part, Rao had an excellent relationship with Vajpayee, which bloomed in 1994 when he chose the BJP leader to head the Indian delegation to the UN human rights convention in Geneva; Vajpayee used his brilliant oratory and diplomatic skills to defeat a Pakistani motion on Kashmir censuring India.
Thus when Arjun Singh and later N.D. Tiwari fell out with Rao, they could not enthuse Rao's critics to make any move against the prime minister because the MPs felt Rao would use his rapport with Vajpayee, the CPI(M)'s Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu, apart from the defectors within the Janata Dal, to foil any toppling effort.
The BJP thinks Rao has had the "first strike" in the daggers match by mortally wounding Advani and retiring him out of at least this election. (BJP men describe Advani's vow not to contest any election till he is cleared of the hawala charge as Bhishma pratijna, which may backfire given the long delays in the Indian courts). But Vajpayee, who had heard his general secretary Pramod Mahajan advocate the use of killer instinct at a recent national executive, struck back immediately, though Rao claims to have glanced off the intended body blow.
Now, the fight will get tougher and perhaps uglier in the next couple of weeks, as the two prime ministerial candidates fight each other off. Vajpayee has not only to destroy Rao, who has acquired some sort of a difficult-to-destruct image, but also ensure that the anti-Rao votes come to BJP and not go to the third front, which has many prime ministerial candidates. And he has already hit the road, kicking up dust and dirt in Rao's face.