It is about 1951-52. General elections were being held for the first time in independent India. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had gained fame as a Hindi speaker, a skill he had inherited from his teacher father. Hindi language juggernaut Atal Bihari Vajpayee was kept as a Hindi translator along with Syama Prasad Mukherjee in the election campaign. This was the reason that at the peak of the election campaign, Vajpayee boarded a train and reached Kota city of Rajasthan with Mukherjee. The campaigners coordinating the elections in the state arrived at the station to receive him. This moment was going to lay the foundation of a unique relationship between two personalities. A pair was about to be formed which would write many stories on the political scene of the country. Lal Krishna Advani met Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the first time in Kota and 25 year old Advani was deeply impressed by Atal's personality. Nearly 60 years later, Advani recalls Vajpayee's influence on himself and says, “A poet who was moving towards politics…something was burning within him and there was a glow on his face due to the fire within him.” Advani has mentioned this first meeting in his biography.
How did Vajpayee's association affect Advani?
The company of Vajpayee was beginning to affect the calm and serious Advani. Advani kept helping Vajpayee in researching speeches. Also kept working with the Delhi unit of Jan Sangh. He saw how the Hindu party had formed an alliance with the Left for the 1958 Delhi Municipal Corporation elections. Advani, accustomed to seeing politics in fixed moulds, was now learning to coordinate with others. After the defeat of that election, Atal-Advani went to watch Raj Kapoor and Mala Sinha's film 'Phir Subah Hogi'.
An unbreakable pair formed despite different temperaments
Vinay Sitapati writes in his book 'Jugalbandi', by the beginning of the 1970s the pair of Advani and Vajpayee had become unbreakable. The eloquent Vajpayee liked the company of the quiet Advani. They both watched movies together and enjoyed pani puri. Apart from mutual personal preference, Vajpayee had political intentions in grooming Advani. A Jan Sangh leader of that time says, Vajpayee chose Advani because he spoke good English and was reliable. Advani had told one of his colleagues that I was politically junior to many people and I was not even a speaker at public meetings. This is the most basic requirement for any public leader and party president, but Vajpayee ji told me that you will achieve it.
That morning of emergency of which Atal-Advani were unaware
Emergency has been imposed in the country, but when Vajpayee and Advani woke up on the morning of 26 June 1975, they had no information about the future developments. Both of them were in Bengaluru (then Bangalore) to join a parliamentary commission on anti-defection law. The month of June is the hottest in Delhi and hence it was a relief for them to be in the city of gardens. At 7.30 in the morning, Advani got a call from the local office of Jan Sangh that opposition leaders were being arrested in Delhi. The police will definitely come to arrest Atal ji and you. After an hour, Advani, who was roaming freely, suddenly heard the voice of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on the radio. He justified the Emergency by talking about saving the country 'from a deep and wide-ranging conspiracy that has been brewing ever since he started taking some progressive steps'. Then Vajpayee reached there and both of them proceeded towards the canteen for breakfast while waiting for the police. At 10 in the morning he was arrested and taken to Bangalore's Central Jail, where he was kept in a large rectangular room. Jail gave Vajpayee and Advani an opportunity to refresh their early intimacy, which had begun to fade into a sort of supportive partnership.
Advani sent a telegram to Appa Ghate and asked for Atal ji's woolen clothes in jail.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not accustomed to a simple life. In such a situation, Advani was worried that his friends would not be able to bear the conditions of jail. On July 1, 1975, just a week after the imposition of Emergency, Advani sent a telegram to Appa Ghate asking him to bring woolen clothes and Atalji's medical reports from Atalji's house. When Ghate reached Bangalore jail, he saw that Vajpayee was wearing warm clothes provided by the jail. He jokingly said that now only Indira Gandhi will give me food and only Indira will give me clothes.
Role of 'Jugalbandi' in the establishment of BJP
Jugalbandi is such music in which two musicians perform in such coordination that it is not known who is the main artist and who is providing accompaniment. Advani had been Vajpayee's subordinate for several decades, but by the 1980s their relationship had become more equal. Earlier Advani always needed Vajpayee, but now Vajpayee also needed Advani. This was the reason that while deciding the shape of the new BJP, Vajpayee ensured that Advani also joined him in learning lessons from the failed experiment of Janata government. Thinking together, both of them came to the conclusion that the Janata Government had presented a completely different ideology of civil liberties, socialism and decentralization. In the 1980 elections, voters rejected not the legacy of JP's ideology, but the infighting among the leaders who implemented it. Lal Krishna Advani announced the formation of a new party. Vajpayee, president of the new party, declared in his speech on 6 April that 'there was no flaw in the policies and programs of the Janata Party. In fact, people voted against the behavior of politicians. Even before the end of the day on 6 April 1980, the name of the party was announced. Instead of adopting the name Jan Sangh, the new party wanted to call itself the successor of the Janata Party, it was named Bharatiya Janata Party i.e. BJP.
Vajpayee was surrounded by diseases after 84
Lok Sabha elections were held in 1984 after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. After losing the election, it took more than a year for Vajpayee to be made a member of the Rajya Sabha. Since he was not needed in Delhi, he started going to America frequently for the treatment of his failing kidneys, where he lived in the house of his friend Dr. Mukund Modi in New York. He did not live with the Kaul couple's daughter Namrata, who was a doctor in America and was married to a software engineer. Vajpayee's biographer Vijay Trivedi says that he had a different relationship with Namrata than Namita. Foreign travel was expensive, so Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ensured that Vajpayee was included in government delegations to America and Vajpayee also accepted this.
Even professional distance could not spoil the relationship
The relationship between Vajpayee and Advani should have deteriorated during the period of professional distance, but they continued meeting and consulting. We agreed and disagreed on many issues. A person who was a friend of both said that when Advani mentioned the party president, he used to make extra efforts to make Vajpayee feel respected. There was a time when every leader of BJP and RSS did not want to have any relation with Vajpayee. Advani was the only person to ensure that Vajpayee did not become irrelevant in this political wilderness.
The pair succeeded in taking BJP from the ground to the heights.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani have played an important role in strengthening the Bharatiya Janata Party. After the formation of BJP in 1980, the party contested its first general election in 1984, when BJP was successful in only 2 seats. In 1989, BJP had reached 89 seats. In the 1996 elections, BJP emerged as the largest party in the Lok Sabha. Then the President of India invited BJP to form the government. However, the BJP government fell within a few days. In 1998, BJP again formed the government at the center with its allies. Atal Bihari Vajpayee became Prime Minister. BJP contested the Lok Sabha elections in 1999 by forming the National Democratic Alliance. More than 20 parties joined this alliance. In this, BJP had won 182 seats. Once again Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister.
