Atal’s healing touch helped ease bitterness of ’80s : The Tribune India

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Atal’s healing touch helped ease bitterness of ’80s

SELDOM has the stunning diversity of our country found a signature fully matching the richness and the indefinable colourfulness of its character. It has often been as difficult to reduce India to the definition of a nation-state as it would be to fit the dynamism of a living landscape into a static frame.

Atal’s healing touch helped ease bitterness of ’80s

Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal honours Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at a function to lay the foundation stone of an oil refinery at Phulokhari village in Bathinda district.



Harcharan Bains

SELDOM has the stunning diversity of our country found a signature fully matching the richness and the indefinable colourfulness of its character. It has often been as difficult to reduce India to the definition of a nation-state as it would be to fit the dynamism of a living landscape into a static frame. But one man often seemed to do just this with an ease which was as effortless as it was amazing. 

It was Punjab’s good luck in the late 90s that it had in Atal Bihari Vajpayee a friend who could love and rebuke it in the same breath and yet be loved and respected for it. As things stood towards the end of 1996, a Congress government which had been celebrating its glorious blunders had left the state almost headless. And yet it claimed to have “brought peace back to the blood-spattered fields of Punjab”. The claim was as false as it was provocative. 

The fact was that though the security forces had accounted for a large number of militant groups, many of them allegedly the progeny of the state itself, the fact was that the social landscape of the state still hung below a tense sky in which tempers were on a dangerously short fuse. The two sisterly communities, which had been made the victim of sinister conspiracies of petty squabblers in Delhi, were still ominously wary of each other and peace was still a distant dream. 

Peace in Punjab is nothing if it is not accompanied by the celebratory bonhomie, ungainly big hugs, and laughter, loud and lusty enough to be puzzling to the uninitiated. The people of the state had witnessed and experienced that kind of mirth and bonhomie as their signature tune in the past. But up until the middle of 1996, the spirit of the state was still suffering the bruises of 1984 and what preceded it. The spirit of the state was crying aloud for a messiah — or at least someone who could put his gentle hand on its weary and wounded shoulders.

To be sure, Vajpayee was not that messiah. But he came as close to it as was humanly possible. As he assumed office as the Prime Minister, Punjab heard a language from the national capital which it had not been used for quite some time now. Suddenly, there was talk of a healing touch, of understanding the hurt psyche of the patriotic people. Instead of the harsh prose of the 80s and the early and mid-90s, suddenly there was a poetic refrain in the words emanating from Delhi towards Punjab. And no one loves poetry like Punjab and Punjabis do. 

Vajpayee came to Punjab and reminded them of their own heart full of love. In sharp contrast to the ominous tones of “teaching Punjabis a lesson,” Vajpayee said in Ludhiana, “The country has nothing that it can teach you and there is a lot it needs to learn from you.” More than Chandigarh, more than the Punjabi speaking areas lost during the reorganisation, what Punjab craved for was love, understanding and a restoration of its patriotic pride.

The poet in Vajpayee was quick to understand this sensitivity, and even quicker to respond to it. And suddenly, by Ferurary 1996, much of the bitterness of the 80s and 90s was already on its way out, though not completely gone yet. 

Today, when Vajpayee, whom his friend and colleague Parkash Singh Badal describes as “the tallest statesman of his era and a sage statesman”, is no longer with us, it is not just Punjab which will be feeling a little lost and a bit like an orphan. The spirit of the nation which takes pride in its secular cosmopolitanism will also be desperately searching for the smiling, affectionate and statesman-like figure of the poet-politician. 

Vajpayee symbolised India like few leaders of his generation did, and almost no one today does with a completeness which is so desperately required. One hopes that the countrymen do not forget that the only way to pay tribute to the spirit of Vajpayee is to respect the secular and cosmopolitan spirit of India as it has stood down the centuries. The country will miss the fragrant innocence which he so richly exuded.

(The writer is former media adviser to ex-Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal)


Leaders pay tributes to former PM

A towering personality

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a towering personality who will always remain a beacon to inspire young politicians to tread the path of value-based politics. He was a multifaceted personality and a fine human being. Capt Amarinder Singh, Chief minister

Tallest indian statesman on world stage

Vajpayee was the tallest Indian I have worked with. India will forever remember him as a symbol of peace and communal harmony. He was a hero and even his opponents found hard to not admire him. Parkash Singh Badal, former CM

Served nation without any vested interest

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a farsighted personality. His vision and contribution to prosper the nation can never be ignored. He was humble, yet firm by nature who served the nation without any vested interest. Gobind Singh Longowal, SGPC President 

Stayed in touch with all workers

Vajpayee’s sincerity on staying in touch with all his workers and his humility in carrying out his role, including that of Prime Minister, came from his incomparable strength. Avinash Rai Khanna, National Vice-president of the BJP

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