The consistency of inconsistency

Atal seems complex because he is a hybrid of two simple human beings. First, there is the poet, sentimental and sensitive and free as a human being. Then there is the politician, keen to be in the saddle but lacking the killer instinct.

An illusion of complexity results when Atal alternates between these two roles: the prime minister and the poet. Especially, when he tries to be a poet when he should be a prime minister.

Atal pays dearly for this apparent complexity. He pays with his name. To be Atal is to remain steadfast. It mandates Vajpayee to be consistent: to say the same thing today as well as tomorrow. The luxury that anyone who is atal on anything cannot afford is being a chameleon.

You can’t, for instance, claim to be an RSS swayamsevak in the United States and then, back in India, insist it means only that you are a swayamsevak of the nation; unless, of course, the intention is to equate the RSS with India.

It is a mark of a person’s simplicity that truth forces its way through the maze of his words. A simple person ends up speaking the truth, in spite of himself.

Here is an illustration from Atal’s speech in Chennai, on the 125th anniversary of The Hindu. ‘‘As a cornered citizen of India,’’ he said, and then corrected himself, ‘‘Sorry, concerned citizen of India.’’

We, who met Atal in the wake of the Gujarat genocide, feel that he could not have put the truth of his predicament more accurately than this.

We wonder if there is any significant statement he has not retracted within a few days. The detractors of Atal — and their tribe is increasing — see this as a proof of weakness or duplicity. But to us this reveals Atal’s humility. It is not easy, especially if you are a prime minister, to swallow much of what you say in public, repeatedly and predictably.

Surely, you cannot argue that remaining atal on what is unfair and unjust is a greater virtue than going back on it. The alternative to Atal, in this respect, is Narendra Modi, who is cruelly consistent in the pursuit of the Hindutva agenda.

There is a third count on which we love Atal. And that is his capacity for abject self-denial. For him, the RSS ideology and the interests of his party come first and foremost.

The genocide in Gujarat presented Atal with the opportunity of a lifetime to stand towering above the debris of Indian democracy. Some of us even urged him to rise up and take the occasion by its forelock. That could have won him a hallowed niche in history. It was not that Atal was averse to this prospect. But his commitment to Hindutva and his loyalty to the party were too deep to let him indulge himself. He sacrificed his personal interests and buried himself in a tomb of willful silence.

Finally, Atal is the greatest political wizard we know. He has managed to hold together a motley crowd of power-seekers, utterly devoid of any ideological cohesion, and kept this collaboration going even when it has proved harmful to the coalition partners. It is a feat Advani and Modi can only envy.

Atal’s faltering tribute to truth — even if in the form of slips of the tongue — is more welcome than the strident lies marketed by the Hindutva camp.

We have a worry, nonetheless. Will the Atal model of averring truth anaesthetise the people of India to the sinister culture of untruth propagated by the storm troopers of the ideology he loves even at the cost of personal integrity?