Even in his last cogent moments, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pramod Mahajan proved he was made of a different mettle. Far from losing his nerve at the unexpected dastardly attack upon him, Mr. Mahajan kept his wits about him, directing his wife to call close relations and take him to the nearby Hinduja Hospital. Reports say he also wanted her not to involve the police and implicate his younger brother; it is possible he did not understand the seriousness of his injuries and expected to recover and hush up matters within the family.
In a sense, it was a perfect postscript to a life lived king-size – managing difficult, even painful, matters with leonine fortitude and rising above the mundane world and its puny people. So when he took his final call at the promising age of 56, Mahajan finally achieved the status of ‘hriday samrat,’ which had eluded him in an otherwise successful public career.
While we do not know the real motives or conspirators behind the attack on Mr. Mahajan, it seems unlikely to be as simple as suggested. BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra has hinted as much by comparing his departure with that of Shyama Prasad Mukerjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who too, were struck down in the prime of their political lives. For now, the identity of the assailant has thrown the spotlight upon the former Minister’s tender years, and these give us a rare insight into the real man behind the public persona.
Mahajan, the eldest of five siblings, had to cut short his career as a sub-editor when his father died and return home to Beed help his mother raise the family. He assumed the responsibility manfully, becoming a school teacher to provide for the family and joining the RSS out of an ideological affinity. The most striking aspect of this story is Mahajan’s utter lack of a sense of victimhood. Far from perceiving his family as a burden that crushed his youth, he retained the energy and individuality to pursue his own dreams without compromising his duties. Over the years, two sisters and two brothers were married and settled, and Mahajan found his own life partner in a youth festival.
The ability to shoulder responsibilities propelled Mahajan into public life. But he was no ordinary manager of men and money, no mere fund-raiser or smooth talker. He has been unfairly projected as the BJP’s laptop-mobile politician, a kind of political nouveau riche who knew how to traverse the treacherous terrain of the corporate world, when he was equally at home in the narrow gullies were votes are raked in. Above all, he belonged to that rare breed of politicians who did not shirk responsibility when things went wrong; the second in command who did not jump ship even if the captain did. This came out most starkly when he was blamed for the excessive slickness of the ‘India Shining’ campaign, which was indirectly blamed for the BJP’s defeat in 2004. Mahajan took the call, even though the topmost BJP leadership avoided a genuine introspection of the causes for the defeat, which surely lay in the multiple sins of omission and commission of the NDA regime.
Mahajan’s apparent brashness, his devil-may-care bravado when things went wrong, often concealed his deep ideological commitment to his parent organization, the RSS, and also his personal discipline and loyalty to the BJP. While the BJP teetered between ad hocism and incoherence in the aftermath of its defeat, he observed party discipline and accepted all public chastisement, taking the flak for the Maharashtra defeat and playing second fiddle in the Bihar elections. At the same time, he did not hesitate to organize the party’s national council or silver jubilee celebrations, where he received the cryptic sobriquet of ‘Laxman.’ I remember being asked what I thought of it as other colleagues scrambled to share the title; some dubbed themselves as ‘Hanuman.’ My response was spontaneous: none of these epic characters made it to the throne. Sadly, this was to be true of Pramod Mahajan, though like others, I had also envisaged him as a future leader.
During the unsavoury Jinnah controversy, Mahajan rallied quietly behind the RSS on the issue of ideological deviance. His statement that he was a long distance runner and was not among those squabbling for the top job helped the RSS clinch matters in favour of Mr. Rajnath Singh. It was also his finest hour – the surrender of position for an immeasurable elevation in stature.
More significantly, it signalled the return to roots and values by second rung leaders, the very persons whose outwardly affluent lifestyles were used by an influential section to proclaim the irrelevance of ideology. In this context, it may be pertinent to mention that if Pramod Mahajan was really killed because his brother wanted far more advantages from his position than were reasonable to expect, it follows that Mahajan had not indulged in excessive nepotism after initially helping his brothers to stand on their own feet. It is a sobering thought.
Pramod Mahajan’s myriad qualities were often submerged in the politicking by his fellow politicos. Yet even they could not deny him due credit – it was he who conceived the winning alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, breaking the Congress stranglehold over that crucial state. Indeed, he had the uncanny knack of forging winning political alliances, and helped sew up many of the deals that led to the formation of the NDA. In the days to come, the BJP will realize the true nature of its loss.
Organiser, 14 May 2006