His silence is golden: Everyone wants a piece of Atal Bihari Vajpayee

And to our dear friend Banquo whom we miss;
Would he were here! To all, and him, we thirst,
And all to all.

Like Shakespeare's Banquo's ghost, Atal Bihari Vajpayee sits at our election table, a silent almost spectral presence, invoked by all, sometimes in lamentation, sometimes in accusation, and sometimes as inspiration. Whereas his deputy LK Advani has with age calcified into a grumpy King Lear complaining of thankless children, Vajpayee's illness-enforced silence makes him the ideal campaign prop.

Everyone, irrespective of party colours, can take Vajpayee's name and not fear that the old man will contradict them with a statement, post a blog, or just refuse to play along. His silence is golden and his party hopes will be their Midas touch.

File photo of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. AFP

For the BJP, Vajpayee, the only non-Congress prime minister who completed five years in office, is the obvious exemplar. Of course the irony is Vajpayee also led his party to defeat in 2004 in an election he had been widely predicted to win. But that's an inconvenient truth to be glossed over. It also does not matter whether this current incarnation of the BJP is a party Vajpayee would have approved of.

When Narendra Modi had a rally in Lucknow the party decided to crank up the Atal Bihari nostalgia. "Since Lucknow is the karmbhoomi of Atalji, the stage will be dedicated to him and we will have his photograph in the backdrop," Rajeev Mishra, the BJP's Awadh region secretary and in-charge for state preparation told Indian Express.

Rajnath Singh, the BJP candidate from Lucknow is invoking Vajpayee's name like a magic charm. The Daily Bhaskar reports that when he kicked off his electoral campaign in Lucknow, Singh took Vajpayee's name eleven times. He positioned himself as the man to fulfil Vajpayee's dreams.

"Atalji had dreamt of linking all the rivers and if elected from Lucknow, I would make efforts for linking Gomti and Sharda rivers for ensuring a cleaner Gomti," he told the crowd. To add to the Yesterday-Once-More-feeling, Singh took along for good measure, Vajpayee's aide of four decades, Shiv Kumar.

Radhika Ramaseshan's report in The Telegraph that Singh is trying to evoke comparisons with Vajpayee by his "manao aur jodo" (mollify and unite) line as he tries to hold all the bruised egos in the BJP together. But Ramaseshan points out that the gentle Vajpayee being trotted out by all sides is also an airbrushed version of a canny politician with a long innings.

Vajpayee was a pugnancious fighter. In his first election in 1957 he ran from three constituencies – won Balrampur, came runner-up in Lucknow and forfeited his deposit in Mathura. And when push came to shove he could be quite ruthless.

Ramaseshan writes:
In 1998, in a surgical manoeuvre he had ordered that K.N. Govindacharya, a former ideologue and an RSS favourite, be thrown out of the BJP because he had described Vajpayee as a "mask" and L.K. Advani as the "real power" in a conversation with a diplomat. Govindacharya disappeared into near-oblivion.

But the real Vajpayee and his complexities is not convenient for electioneering. Instead there is a sort of golden mythologized Vajpayee who has become the object of a rather unprecedented tug-o-war where everyone wants a piece of him.

The BJP's opposition invokes Vajpayee's name as admonition to Modi. He, rather than Rahul Gandhi, is the un-Modi. Mamata Banerjee excuses her NDA stint as being all about the "imandar" Atal-ji rather than BJP though she caused him plenty of headaches. Sharad Pawar tells a rally that Atal-ji never asked votes for himself but for the party which he always held supreme, whereas Modi as a leader is all out to break the country. Vajpayee's own niece, Karuna Shukla joins the Congress complaining "The kind of degradation that has happened in the BJP since last 7-8 years is unparalleled. After Atal Bihari Vajpayee fell sick, a group has in a way captured the BJP." The Congress gleefully exhibits her as their prized catch in the race to be more Vajpayee-than-thou.

Not to be outdone, Modi is also dropping Vajpayee's name more and more. DNA reports that at a rally in Jammu, Modi said if the Vajpayee government had got another five years, it would have changed the face of Kashmir and problems would have ended. When Modi's comments in Silchar about minorities in Bangladesh ruffled feathers, BJP MP Tarun Vijay quickly pulled out the magical Vajpayee stain-remover.
"Of course, Modi is a great follower of Vajpayee. The government will be tolerant, will follow the Vajpayee legacy and make all our neighbours happy," he said according to the Times of India.

The real Atal Bihari Vajpayee meanwhile sits in his wheelchair at his home in Delhi firmly out of sight. The Times of India's Akshay Mukul had a poignant glimpse into the life of the BJP's Miracle Man rendered silent by a stroke, watching snatches of television, passing his days in a blur of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists.

Mukul writes:
Unlike the good old days, no one comes calling on him with complaints about the party or to listen to his poetry. The only regular visitors are NM Ghatate, Vajpayee's friend of nearly six decades, LK Advani and BC Khanduri (the general-turned-politician who was chief minister of Uttarakhand), who come to sit by his side or ask daughter Namita about his health… He understands everything but cannot have a conversation.

There is one other person who makes regular enquiries about Vajpayee's health, Ghatate tells Mukul. That person is the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

Amidst the sound and fury of an election, surrounded by the head-splitting cacophony of bombastic politicians, there is something rather touching about that image of a prime minister silenced by illness joined in quiet companionship in his twilight years with a prime minister often derided for being silent.

Prithee, see there. Behold! Look! Lo!
How say you?
Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.