The following article excerpt about Vajpayee should make it clear that "uncle" Vajpayee isn't all that he is cracked to be. In fact, he is no different from the rest of them power-hungry politicians going around.
(In summary, the excerpt says that Vajpayee spent the better part of his one-year term trying to get Jayalalitha out of the clutches of the law, and associated with characters like Mayawati, Sukh Ram, Chauthala and Bansi Lal in order that he can stay in power. Imagine what people would have said if it was somebody else, like Mulayam Singh Yadav or Deve Gowda or Sonia Gandhi that associated with the above named characters. But no, it was "uncle" Vajpayee who dabbled with them!)
Anyway, here's the excerpt...
Let's see, where shall we start? Mayawati? OK, Mayawati.
In my memory, and I believe it stretches back to before
Mayawati hit the big screen of Indian politics, there is
not one thing this winsome lass has done that would make
her worthy of trust. Believable. Credible. She has run
election campaigns in tandem with one party, announcing
even while she does so that she intends to dump that
party after the election. Time and again, she has abused
the BJP, not kept her promises to them. What's more, she
revels in this very untrustworthiness, believing it to
be a badge of honour. She is that curious beast in our
politics: a weasel who is proud of being one. And I am
conscious, as I say this, of the slur I'm attaching to
the fair name of the weasel family.
If Mayawati "lied to the people and the country", that's
just about what any ordinary Indian expects from her.
The wrong is entirely Atalji's, for believing this woman
in the first place. That is, if he did believe her in
the first place. There is the little matter, that I
quoted once before, of what a BJP MP from Karnataka has
been telling rallies in that state, as reported in The
Times of India on April 22: Mayawati "got money from us
and them but ditched us."
Wrong, we were looking for? It stares us in the face.
Next, Jayalalitha? OK, the Big Lady from TN. Much the
same reasoning, if that's the word, applies as with
Mayawati. This lady has also proved that she has no use
for promises and words such as "trust." Besides, she is
neck deep in a series of scams involving amounts
carrying so many zeros you think you are seeing double.
You would think a man who so badly wants a halo would
have said something like: "I will not have anything to
do with a woman on trial for corruption, even if that
prevents me from forming a government." Instead, the
"true leader of India" very consciously and cynically
joined hands with the lady before our last Lok Sabha
election. Then he spent much of his year in power
helping her in her efforts to wriggle weightily off the
hook of the cases against her. He even put his Attorney
General, Soli Sorabjee, to the task of undermining the
special courts the Tamil Nadu government set up to try
those cases: Mr Sorabjee has spent months arguing in the
Supreme Court that they were unlawfully constituted.
Naturally, now that uncle's new alliance in TN is with
the party in power there, such efforts are a thing of
the past. Suddenly Jayalalitha must indeed be tried by
those special courts.
And for that little extra dab of opportunism, try this:
uncle and fans ridicule Sonia for joining hands with
Jayalalitha in a joint search for power. Spot on, uncle.
We agree with you. That's what they did and power is
what motivated them. But you did exactly the same thing
just over a year ago, also in search of power! I ask
you, what is it that makes one grab for power stink, but
the other smell of roses? (And while we're about it, may
we please see an end to the frantic finger-pointing
about people harbouring a lust for power? Power is what
politicians want. Lusting for it is what they do. It is
what we must want them to do. And the ones who pretend
to be uninterested in it are lying).
Wrong, someone said? It's here, in full-figured life.
But there's more too. Atalji the genial uncle was quite
happy to watch as my state, Maharashtra, was given as CM
a man accused of murder in a case that is still on
appeal. He looked on benignly as our largest state, UP,
turned a gaggle of thugs and goons into the biggest
cabinet of ministers Lucknow has ever known. He was
quite content to make a hero of a man, Sukh Ram, who has
thereby escaped any punishment for the corruption he had
become synonymous with only two years ago. (Millions
rolled into bedsheets, no less). Atalji was similarly
benevolent towards two other stalwarts of the North: Om
Prakash Chautala who disgusted us a decade ago with his
crimes in Meham; and Bansi Lal who disgusted us two
decades ago with his crimes during the Emergency -- the
very same Emergency that jailed Atalji and company, the
same one they fought so valiantly.
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