Despite the ideological straitjacket of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS)-turned-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) he was connected to the mass of people and to leaders across the political spectrum.
Former vice president Bhaironsinh Shekhawat, who died on Saturday in Jaipur, aged 86, belongs to a generation who played power games with panache and who knew in their bones that politics was about connecting with people at large.
Despite the ideological straitjacket of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS)-turned-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which he had represented through his long career of more than half century, he was connected to the mass of people and to leaders across the political spectrum.
Addressing a party workers’ conference in Hyderabad 20 years ago, he said that when he became chief minister in 1977 he did not go to a temple but that he had announced the ‘Antyodaya’ programme, a welfare measure to reach the last poor man. It is the kind of populism that one does not generally associate with the leader of a right-wing party. And he remained an old-fashioned populist, who had a running battle with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), his ideological alma mater.
He remained a towering - physically and symbolically - figure in Rajasthan politics and not many could cross swords with him for a long time. And when he was challenged at long last, he fought in his corner with much ferocity till the last even as there was change of guard in the state and in his own party. His appetite for political manoeuvring was daunting. This could be seen in his bid for presidency in 2007. He did not give up the battle even when the prospects were unpromising.
What might seem a paradox in Shekhawat’s career is that despite being a shrewd politician and an able administrator, he could not move to the national centre stage till late in his life when he became vice-president, a constitutional post without much political clout, in 2002. It did not dampen his spirits. He used the political skills he has honed over the years as chairman of the Rajya Sabha, and won the confidence from all sections of the Upper House.
If political commentators are tempted to speculate that West Bengal’s CPI-M leader Jyoti Basu was the best prime minister the country did not have, it will also remain a matter of lively debate whether Shekhawat would have been a friendly face of the BJP in the country along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee if he had moved to national politics earlier than he did. Others may argue that he was a powerful and impressive local satrap who did not have it in him to make it at the national level.
What will remain undisputed however is the fact that he was a charismatic politician who knew every trick in the book and he played them all out during his long innings in Rajasthan. But along with being a politician, he had also become a leader, one who was accepted and regarded as such by friends and foes alike. The state has lost a leader who passionately believed in politics as a means for transforming the lives of the people, especially the poor. He was a populist in the best sense of the term.
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