Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the affable, peripatetic BJP leader, who has only friends but no enemies and has acceptability among all sections of the society will be awarded Bharat Ratna. He is likely to be presented with the highest civilian award of India on his birthday on Thursday. Born in Gwalior in 1924, Atal Bihari Vajpayee came of age in the midst of a tumultuous campaign for India's independence. He spent his formative years contrasted against a national upheaval that eventually created one of the world's greatest freedom movements.  He joined the RSS at a very young age and became its Pracharak. He was one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the ideological parent of the present day BJP.  Vajpayee, drawing on his soul as a poet and inquisitiveness as a former journalist, developed a decidedly reasonable and moderate approach to public and private life.  In many ways, Vajpayee was profoundly influenced by the national sense of purpose that he saw and was very much a part of during the freedom movement even though he may have come to it from a position of someone like Savarkar. During his tenure as prime minister, he did manage to follow the philosophy of the state being nonpartisan. Vajpayee has always approached the idea of India, "Raj Dharma" as he calls it.  It was during his tenure as prime minister that India became a full-fledged nuclear power by ordering nuclear tests almost as the first order of business after taking over in 1998.  He led India to historic Kargil victory and contained Pakistan diplomatically. He had served to de-hyphenate India from Pakistan in the international arena. His five-year rule saw significant administrative reforms and has presented a model of good governance. Vajpayee's greater contribution to India's national life generally and politics specifically has been to steadfastly offer a competing but moral and righteous vision of the country as well as maintain very high standards of public discourse in service of true democracy.   Vajpayee, now a shadow of his former self, has straddled public life before and after India's independence since 1942. He is the last of the generation of leaders whose worldview is avowedly Indian and therefore universal. As Atal Bihari Vajpayee turns 90 on Dec 25, he remains one of the finest practitioners of India's enlightened pluralism as embedded in its ancient civilization rather than an obligation as mandated by the constitution of a young nation-state.