Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will receive India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna today. Going against the protocol, President Pranab Mukherjee will visit the ailing 90-year-old veteran BJP leader to present the award to him.
This most prestigious award was instituted on January 2, 1954 and has been bestowed on 45 individuals so far, including the likes of scientist CV Raman, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, singer Lata Mangeshkar and politician C Rajagopalachari.
The award was originally limited to achievements in the field of arts, literature, science and public services but in 2011 the criteria was expanded to accommodate any field of human endeavour.
Vajpayee, one of India’s most respected Prime Ministers, is also arguably one India’s tallest non-Congress leaders, who provided an alternative political discourse to the nation, along with the likes of Jayaprakash Narayan. He played a key role in Indian politics for over five decades, the high point, of course, was when he became Prime Minister in 1998.
With his genial exterior and easygoing manner that hid an iron will and a master statesman, Vajpayee steered the country ably from 1998 to 2004 through a period of economic turbulence following the Asian meltdown, the post-Pokharan nuclear sanctions, the post-dotcom bust, and the Kargil war.
Atal Behari Vajpayee was born on December 25, 1924 in Gwalior. In 2014, the Modi government celebrated his birthday as “Good Governance Day”.
As a teenager, Vajpayee was briefly jailed for opposing British colonial rule.
He flirted with communism in his early twenties before choosing to support the Rashtriya Swamyamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Jan Sangh.
In the 1950s, Vajpayee dropped out of law school to run an RSS magazine. Later, he transcended his political roots in the RSS to emerge as the moderate voice of the BJP.
Vajpayee was at Shyama Prasad Mookherjee’s (Founder of Jan Sangh) side when he went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmir in 1953, to protest against the system of carrying a permit for entering the state and the “inferior” treatment of Indian citizens visiting Kashmir. The protest ended the identity card requirement, and hastened the integration of Kashmir into the Indian Union.
He won his first Lok Sabha election in 1957 and served the Lok Sabha for 10 terms until 2009.
Vajpayee was the first non-Congress Prime Minister to serve a full five year term, from 1999 to 2004.
An orator par excellence (he is also a poet of repute), Vajpayee earned much fame as India’s External Affairs Minister in Prime Minister Morarji Desai government.
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