An asset to BJP in the coalition game

There are some things that are very difficult to write about. It is even more difficult when a very close personal friendship going back four decades also involves a public personality. How much of the private persona should intrude into the public space?
My first encounters with Arun Jaitley in 1972-73 were casual. As a junior member of the St Stephen’s College debating fraternity, I was slightly in awe of the much more accomplished Arun who was the stalwart of Shri Ram College. But it was not his eloquence that was appealing. At a time when Jana Sangh was regarded as a bunch of boorish Hindi-Hindu bumpkins by my anglicised peer group, I was intrigued how a man, fluent in both English and Hindi, and a thorough cosmopolitan, could be associated with Jana Sangh. Somehow it seemed incongruous. This was a familiar prejudice and one that extends to the present-day BJP.
Arun, it is said by both his admirers and detractors, was the proverbial bridge between elite, cosmopolitan India and the more authentic nationalists that dominated BJP. That was true but it is only half the story. By the time he entered Parliament in 1999 during the AB Vajpayee government, Arun was already a part of India’s Establishment. With a thriving and lucrative legal practice and on first name terms with India’s top lawyers and judges, he was a public figure in Lutyens’ Delhi. He had been unflinchingly loyal to Jana Sangh and then BJP — having been jailed for the full 19 months of Emergency. He had also been the president of DUSU during the turbulent days of the JP movement and had brought JP to address a huge student rally at Maurice Nagar in late 1974. Yet, despite this strong political commitment, the image of being a technocrat, rather than a politician, never really left him.
The reality was very different. Arun could laugh, joke, discuss law, cricket and Hindi films with his circle of friends — few of whom were in BJP. He could also be the charming socialite — though he never drank and would start yawning by 11pm. But when it came to hard politics, Arun’s commitment was unflinchingly ideological. He supported every ‘Hindu’ turn of BJP, particularly the decision to make Ayodhya a political plank; he plotted the removal of Articles 370 and 35A many months before the Bill was moved; he was shocked and offended when L K Advani mouthed praises of Jinnah in Pakistan; and he was among the most enthusiastic champions of Narendra Modi from 1999. When it came to the party’s ‘core’ beliefs, Arun never wavered and never had doubts.
Where he was a little different was in his approach to economics. Arun was instinctively pro-market and a reformer; he hated socialism of the type practised in India. Most important, he loathed corruption and his personal uprightness was coupled with his insistence on integrity.
His distinctiveness lay in his ability to wear his convictions lightly. That is why he was an asset to BJP in the difficult game of coalition building. Arun’s friendships cut across parties and even across social groups. He had served V P Singh as an additional solicitor general, resigning after BJP withdrew support. He knew the entire Janata parivar — from Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar to Sharad Yadav — intimately. He could build a rapport with Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik. And his links with Congress stalwarts were well known, coming in useful in the daunting business of parliamentary politics.
This understanding of the other side was to prove invaluable in crafting political, but particularly electoral, strategy. He was a thorough professional when it came to political communications and could cut through the verbiage and address the core issue. In 2002 and 2009 he ran the entire backroom operations of BJP, giving Narendra Modi the elbow room to focus on campaigning. In 2019, despite his illness, he briefed party spokespersons each morning on what to focus on and what to avoid.
Part of Arun’s charm lay in his ability to cull information — some mistook this for idle gossip. He had an encyclopaedic memory. The media loved him for his openness. In Central Hall of Parliament, he invariably had a darbar around him. But Arun could also guard secrets fiercely. He knew where private life stopped and public duties began.
Arun had many years of political life left before him. Alas, fate intervened. We will miss him terribly.
The writer is a TOI columnist and a Rajya Sabha MP
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References

1. ^{^} Ayodhya (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
2. ^{^} Narendra Modi (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
3. ^{^} Mamata Banerjee (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

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