Even after 2 decades, Lucknow's Atal connection refuses to die down

Lucknow: The city on Wednesday was flooded with posters and hoardings of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who represented the constituency in Lok Sabha for a record five consecutive terms, with people from Muslim community recalling the time when they would vote for him despite their reservations against the BJP.

The country on Wednesday celebrated the birth centenary of Bharat Ratna former prime minister Vajpayee.

“In Lok Sabha polls, we would vote for Atal ji as none of the other parties put up a candidate that could match his stature, his aura,” said Mohd Rehan from Lucknow currently working in Gujarat.

Athar Nabi, a prominent Lucknow-based organiser of big-ticket events, had even set up an ‘Atal Fan Club’ comprising members of the minority community who would go door-to-door to seek support for Vajpayee, also a poet, in Muslim-dominated localities.

The fan club had prominent Urdu poets as its members.

“I do remember that prominent Urdu poets of the time had campaigned for Atal ji, whose appeal transcended all barriers,” Sarvesh Asthana, a prominent Lucknow-based poet told PTI.

Lucknow had been synonymous with Vajpayee before illness forced him to quit active politics soon after the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

From Lucknow's present MP and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to former MP late Lalji Tandon, who became the Lucknow MP after Vajpayee in 2009, all have invoked 'Atal ji' during elections and after in their speeches to connect with the masses.

In fact, when Tandon contested the Lok Sabha polls from Lucknow in 2009, he had campaigned with Vajpayee’s 'khadau' (footwear).

“It was hard to visualise Lucknow without Atal ji. Since he couldn’t travel to Lucknow due to his illness, I decided to campaign along with his ‘khadau’,” Tandon had said.

After winning the Lok Sabha poll, Tandon vacated his Lucknow (west) assembly seat and in the subsequent bypoll, BJP leader late Amit Puri too visited Delhi to meet ailing Vajpayee and came back with his ‘kurta’ as proof of his support for him.

He had even held a presser displaying ‘Vajpayee’s kurta’.

Top UP bureaucrat Manoj Kumar Singh also recalled how the former PM believed in dialogue to thrash out contentious issues.

“He would often say that ‘na goli se na bandook se, baat banegi boli se (neither with guns nor bullets, talks would happen through dialogue),” Singh recalled at a centenary event of the veteran politician who was often described as the ‘Ajaatshatru’ of Indian politics, one sans any enemies.

From Vajpayee's 25-ft bronze statue at the Lok Bhavan, the chief minister’s office, to the Atal Chauraha, the main Lucknow crossing at Hazratganj that has been named after him, virtually everything in Lucknow resonates with his memories.

On Wednesday, yet another statue of the BJP stalwart was unveiled in Lucknow’s old city area.

In 2021, about three years after Vajpayee’s demise that Rajnath Singh on a Lucknow visit had admonished the BJP cadre on finding Vajpayee's photo missing from the posters and publicity material.

“It’s impossible to think of Lucknow without Atal ji. I hope next time this doesn’t happen,” Singh had said at the Lucknow event.

“None of my speeches are complete without a mention of Atal ji,” Singh had shared with this correspondent.

Manav Prakash, a bookseller, said, “I think books on Vajpayee ji have done well. His name is synonymous with Lucknow.” Vajpayee would also often take to poetry to express his feelings. In fact, among his first few poems that made him popular was the one that read, “Hindu tan man, Hindu jeevan, rag rag Hindu mera parichay (Being a complete Hindu is my identity).” There is an interesting episode where Vajpayee had taken recourse to poetry to express his inner turmoil before a surgery in the US. He had revealed the same in a letter to Dharamvir Bharti, the then editor of 'Dharamyug' in 1988.

In the letter, Vajpayee wrote: “After the doctors told me an operation would be performed on me, I got disturbed and could not sleep properly. My inner turmoil has given birth to a poem.” The poem was titled 'Maut se thun gayi' (face-off with death). It read: “Thun gayi, maut se than gayi, jhoojhne ka mera koi irada na tha, mod par milenge iska wada na tha, raasta rok kar woh khadi ho gayi, yun laga zindagi se badi ho gayi (a face-off with death is a certainty now. I was in no mood to fight since I never knew what lay in store. Death is trying to scare me, and threatening to become larger-than-life but I won’t give in without a fight).

Vajpayee, who had undergone a successful operation then, eventually served as the prime minister thrice -- first for a term of 13 days in May 1996, then for a period of 13 months in 1998-1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004, becoming the first non-Congress leader to complete a five-year stint.

Lucknow municipal corporation officials admit that they still keep receiving proposals from “corporators, cadres, and commoners” to name a building, lane, or block after the BJP stalwart.

Such was Vajpayee’s charisma that several young BJP workers like Shailendra Sharma, who is now an advocate, had been nicknamed ‘Atal’ as they modelled their speeches on Vajpayee.

“Atal ji once asked me why I spoke like him. I told him because I admired him much. He advised me to create my own identity,” Sharma told PTI.