Mrinal Pande’s tribute to a statesman and a gentleman

One by one they are all departing. Men and women my mother’s generation described as Izzatdaar Log. The Respectable Ones. People who lived their lives with dignity and grace. Atal ji was one such rarity in an increasingly treacherous, sycophantic, cacophonous and deceitful world of Indian politics.

In 1996, just before handing his resignation as PM to the President, he quoted Valmiki’s Ram in Parliament and declared, “I am not afraid of Death, only of a blot against my name…when I became a Prime Minister my heart didn’t jump up with joy. And now when I leave all this behind and tender my resignation, my heart is free of any sense of guilt.”

Atal ji lived life on his own terms, as he wished, guilt free, generous and warm to all who treasured their own privacy and others’. I knew him first as an admirer of my mother’s writings. He also remained a life-long friend of hers. As an editor I basked in the warmth of his generous affection, which forgave my ideological opposition to what the Right in India stood for. He sent me his poems from wherever he was, from New York, Delhi or Simla, and always with a little humorous note in his own hand.

Meeting Atal ji was like suddenly coming across a rare orchid in a dark forest, full of poisonous vines and thorny shrubs. Both as a tall leader of the Opposition and also as Prime Minister, he managed to achieve a rare harmony not only with the majority community of Hindus but also with the minority groups from Kashmir to the North East, because his style always remained non-confrontational and reasonable.

He realised as a well-read man and free thinker, that India as a country owes its population, such as it is, to huge movements in migration through the centuries. And because of that we Indians are a varied people whose identity as a nation cannot be propped up indefinitely on the basis of majoritarian politics.

While speaking during the memorable debate on the no-confidence motion against his government in May 1996, he had showed a generosity of heart which is rare today. He praised Nehru who, he said, had repeatedly and rightly spoken of our common inheritance, cultural inheritance.

“I have criticised (the earlier ruling party) for forty years,” he said and humourously added the injunction of Kabir to keep critics in a comfortable hut within your own courtyard…I categorically state here, that the BJP does not stand for uniformity. We recognise the (sic) India’s celebrated multi religious, multi lingual and multi ethnic character… my forty-year long public life remains an open book.”

A connoisseur of all fine things in life, from literature to good food, Atal ji was not just a polished statesman, but also a poet and above all a large hearted and noble citizen of India.

When the writer Heinrich Boll was laid to rest, there was a gypsy band that followed the pall bearers as per the wishes of the deceased. Perhaps because he felt, “We lag behind the very people we are afraid of, whom we meet out of hatred, which turns to violence: the Sintis, the Romanies, Gypseys,” one of the pall bearers, Gunter Grass recalled later.

Atal ji recognised this vital truth. There are links between our hatred for “The Other” and the violence we then unleash upon our society.

Let that chain of fear be broken so we may save ourselves yet. Atal ji, for facing this truth alone, India will always remember you with warmth and respect.