It is ironical that amid calls for social harmony and religious unity in keeping with the spirit of Christmas, bigotry and revanchism are raising their ugly heads in India as fundamentalist Hindu religious leaders assert in relation to the growing list of mosque-temple disputes - "what is our historic property should definitely be ours; we should take it, no matter how".

The sharp retort of Hindu spiritual leader Jagadguru Rambhadracharaya was in response to the reported statement of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who recently expressed concern over the resurgence of several temple-mosque disputes in the country and said raking up of old religious disputes "is not acceptable" and "India needs to show that we can live together." 

As the country embarks on the centenary celebrations of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a three-time prime minister who was liked and respected across the ideological spectrum, it is instructive to recall his thoughts on Hindu-Muslim relations. In an interview to IANS news agency in May 2004, just before the national elections, Vajpayee expressed the wish to see "a new chapter in Hindu-Muslim relations" that will strengthen national unity and enable India to develop its full potential.

Saying he is glad to see that his call for Hindu-Muslim unity is being widely appreciated, Vajpayee asserted that conditions in the country are now "ripe for its fructification".  Underlining that extremism of any kind was bad for India, Vajpayee pointedly stated: "Indian society has never held that there is only one faith and one path to realise God.     

"This is why discrimination on religious grounds is repugnant to our national ethos. Indeed, secularism in this sense is so much of an inherent part of our society and culture that the founders of our constitution did not even consider it necessary to explicitly mention the word 'secularism' in its preamble.It was a later addition during the emergency (rule of former prime minister Indira Gandhi 1975-76), when no debate on it was possible."

"The Congress party added it purely for narrow political gains. Since then the Congress and the communists have been propagating a perverted meaning of secularism with the sole aim of isolating the BJP. However, they have failed in their objective," Vajpayee added prophetically. 

Asked to comment about the reported remarks of the BJP candidate in Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath, now Uttar Pradesh chief minister that he would accept Muslim votes only if they were "cleaned" with water from the Ganga,  Vajpayee said: "I strongly disapprove of the statement attributed to a BJP MP that you have referred to. If he has said it, then it is wrong."

Man who bridged political differences

Over six years after his death,  the present government is seeking to appropriate his legacy by hailing him as an icon of good governance.  There is little doubt that Vajpayee was one of the country's most popular and effective leaders, acceptable to parties across the ideological spectrum who did not hesitate to reach out to his political and ideological foes and strategic rivals if the larger good warranted it, a far cry from the extreme political polarisation one witnesses today. 

His three-term prime ministership -- in 1996 and between 1998 and 2004 -- gave him the longest tenure for a non-Congress leader and etched his name in history for his ability to defy the dominant West-led global regimes to become a nuclear power and mark India's presence at the global high table.

 He gave stability to Indian politics, gave respectability to political coalitions - "Coalition governments have their own dignity" -- by demonstrating their ability to subsume ideological differences for a larger cause, reached out to Pakistan, rebuilt bridges with the US and other world powers despite their withering criticism of India's nuclear tests, and put moderation in politics as a foundational principle above political adventurism.

But what would go down in history -- and this is often glossed over by his legacy-stealers -- is the way he sought to distance himself from the BJP's radicalism, when he termed the party's Ayodhya action in demolishing the Babri Masjid as the "worst miscalculation" and a "misadventure" and conceded that moderates like him had been overruled by the hardliners.

In the days since the momentous interview to IANS (given to me and my colleague Mayank Chhaya) was published widely in Indian newspapers and abroad on December 13, 1992, the BJP headquarters was flooded with calls from state leaders who were confused with the BJP line after the interview. The state leaders were told it was difficult to either publicly disown the statements or to be critical of a leader who commanded considerable admiration and popular base in the party.

In the interview, Vajpayee revealed he had warned his senior colleague L.K. Advani not to collect large crowds at Ayodhya in December 1992, an advice that Advani did not heed. He was for condemnation of the Ayodhya happenings but was overruled -- as he had been a few times when it came to the decision on sidelining then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi after the Gujarat riots of 2002.

In the interview, Vajpayee regretted that "moderates had no place" in the party, asking meaningfully: "Who's going to listen to the voice of sanity?" What particularly irked the party leadership was Vajpayee virtually giving a clean chit to then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao over his handling of the Ayodhya crisis and blaming his own party for going back on the "solemn assurances" given to Rao and the Supreme Court to protect the mosque. This was at odds with the remarks of other BJP leaders who sought to lay the blame for the Ayodhya disaster at Rao's door.

Had to wrestle with his dilemmas

 As the then opposition leader, Vajpayee did move the no-confidence motion against the Rao government in parliament on December 8. But he was as much self-censoring as condemning the government which compelled former socialist prime minister Chandra Shekhar to suggest that Vajpayee could team up with him if he was disillusioned in his party. 

Vajpayee, according to those who knew him, was in a dilemma over his future options after the Babri demolition. While he felt increasingly stifled in a party that was turning more and more dogmatic and theocratic, his umbilical links with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist outfit that is a mother organisation to the BJP, prevented him from snapping ties with the party. His anguished cries "kya karenge? Kahan le jaenge?" (What should I do? Where are we headed?) in the IANS interview were seen as indicative of his dilemma.

Vajpayee was known to speak slowly, sometimes with long pauses, because he chose his words with utmost care. But in those pithy but strong words lay Vajpayee's innate convictions about his 'idea of India'. Those seeking to claim his political inheritance would do well to re-read his speeches and statements for there seems quite a gulf between what the NDA, and its leader, stood for then, and what the present leadership's beliefs and practices are.

(The author is the former Chief Editor & Director of IANS who interviewed Vajpayee many times and travelled extensively with him. Views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at tarunbasu.sps@gmail.com)