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It’s been raining since the morning, but Bhairon Singh Shekhawat doesn’t know that. “Is that thunder,” he asks, looking mildly surprised. The Vice-President’s bungalow is, clearly, well protected from the sudden mood swings of nature.
The thunder of the 2007 presidential election, however, hasn’t bypassed the Vice-President. He is in the midst of a political storm, along with his rival, Pratibha Patil, and mud is being freely chucked at and by the two warring camps — the NDA and the UPA.
Shekhawat is not going to open up on this, but it seems that he is a little uncomfortable with the no-holds-barred campaign. “I will not say anything on Pratibha, but personal campaigns should not mar a presidential race,” he says. “Come back in a few days, and we will talk about why I am in the contest. I will give you lunch or tea, or something else to drink if you want,” he says.
We are in the high-domed sitting room of his central Delhi bungalow. The mandatory rose bowl is there with a cluster of pale orange buds, but it’s the paintings on the wall that tell you about Shekhawat. The glittering Nathdwara Sreenaths point to his Rajasthani roots, while a huge portrait of a Rajput in full regalia — turban, sword, sash and all — says more than what the Vice-President does.
Rajput Shekhawat’s candidature has sparked a powerful caste lobby into action. Thakur politicians have been lobbying hard to get him to Raisina Hill. The group includes former central ministers Digvijay Singh of the Janata Dal(U) and Jaswant Singh of the BJP, former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar, the Thakur for all occasions, Amar Singh, and apparently even a few powerful Congress caste-men.
The Vice-President himself is immersed in the daily grind of meeting politicians and other strategists in the run-up to the poll. The Shekhawat camp says he was putting off meeting the media till the NDA made up its mind on whom it wanted to support — its old party stalwart or the current occupier of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. But now that it’s clear A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is finally out of the race, Shekhawat has started a subtle public relation exercise. And meeting the press, clearly, is a part of it.
“But this is not an interview,” he stresses, waving away the tape-recorder and notebooks. It is, we discover, an informal chat over tea and a platter of sweets and savouries — and a treasure trove of anecdotes.
Shekhawat is something of a raconteur. After all, a 55-year-old electoral career is bound to throw up a few interesting stories. And when you grow up in rural Rajasthan, you can always colour your narration with those little tales of village life. That’s where he grew up, dancing the lively gindar and swinging a stone mace to build his biceps.
The mace may have done it, but Shekhawat is surprisingly fit for his age. At 83, he is older than his two contemporaries in the BJP — Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee — but seemingly has no problems with his knees. On a recent trip to Paris, Shekhawat recalls how he climbed up the Eiffel Tower, while accompanying journalists, huffing and puffing, gave up the exercise mid-way.
Says Shekhawat: “Somebody asked me then, how are you so fit? Do you go to a gym? I replied: Does my body look like it needs a gym?”
It doesn’t. And the secret behind it, says Shekhawat, is the Rajasthani food that he eats — bajra roti or khichdi with dollops of ghee — and the occasional non-vegetarian dish. “And meeting people is my way of doing yoga. It relaxes me,” he says.
That’s evident, for there are a few old-timers sitting with him, Rajasthani journalists who seem to know the VP rather well. He has a legion of friends in the media, who say they look forward to the annual winter lunch he hosts. It’s a sit-down meal, and the guests are courteously served Rajasthani food — dal baati churma and the rest — on silver thalis and in little silver bowls.
Shekhawat, you can tell, gets along with people. And that is possibly why politicians of different hues were all praise for him when he completed four years as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha last year. Former governor P.C. Alexander described him as a father figure and Jay Panda of the Biju Janata Dal said he touched all hearts. Sitaram Yechury was equally effusive. “I would cherish this contribution that you have made for Indian democracy, and I wish you many, many years of such contribution for the sake of India’s future,” said the CPI(M) politburo member.
Shekhawat’s associates hold that he has always been a liberal in the BJP. They claim his links with the RSS are tenuous and Shekhawat points out that though he has been to RSS shakhas, he was never a pracharak.
But he fondly recalls an encounter with RSS strongman M.S. Golwalkar. “Once Golwalkar asked me what I was doing for the poor.” Shekhawat gave him a copy of his antodaya programme for rural uplift. “Have you shown it to Jayaprakash Narayan, Golwalkar asked me. I went to J.P. and showed it to him. He read it, and I remember he had tears in his eyes,” he says, and then adds, “But don’t ask me the year.”
Years tend to get smudged for the man whose first electoral victory — to the Rajasthan Assembly — was in 1952. He was sitting in a room with a few people — “the way we are now” — when someone suggested that he file his nomination from Sikar. “I had no money, not even an anna with me. I cajoled my wife into parting with 10 rupees, which she did most reluctantly.” He ended up winning the election.
“But even now, when some old friends and family come home, they ask me: What about the 10 rupees? Did you return the money to your wife? I tell her, take it back, with compound interest or whatever,” he says, and laughs.
The Shekhawats are a close-knit family. He is clearly proud of his three grand-children — from his daughter, an only child. One has studied law, one is in Germany and the third acts in a television serial called Sai Baba, aired on STAR Plus. “He was the young Amitabh Bachchan in the film, Lal Badshah. The film was being shot in Rajasthan, and the Bachchans and Shilpa Shetty had come to my house for tea,” he recounts. “There they met my grandson and thought he’d be just right for the role — the boy was talkative enough!”
But the former Rajasthan chief minister — he held the post thrice — has no great fondness for films, unlike his colleague, Advani. He likes reading — biography and other non-fiction — and is often asked if he plans to write an autobiography. “For that, I need time and concentration. And that is difficult, for I am not the kind to tell a visitor to come back in three days. If someone comes, I have to meet him.”
It’s a rigour that he may have picked up from his days as a policeman — something that he says trained him for his career in politics. Shekhawat couldn’t finish college after his father died, and joined the force “It was a great training. It taught me about law, about poverty, and about people,” he says.
Shekhawat holds that he has always tried to bridge social or religious gaps. “I have done more for the minority community as a chief minister than possibly anybody else. I don’t believe in caste or religious divisions — I believe in working for the people.”
Yet, Shekhawat was curiously silent when Gujarat burned five years ago. “There are two factors that hamper me from speaking — one, I am the Vice-President. And, two, I am a presidential candidate. Otherwise, there are a lot of things I could have commented on.”
He did speak up during the Ayodhya movement, though. On a visit to the Uttar Pradesh town as part of a BJP delegation, he was asked if he saw the Babri Masjid as a mosque or a temple. “It’s both a temple and a mosque,” he replied, much to the consternation of his party which had deemed it the birth-place of Ram. We remind Shekhawat of this, and he smiles.
One of his old associates prompts Shekhawat to tell us the story of a play — a scene from the Mahabharat — that he took part in as a boy. The VP picks up the thread. He was Abhimanyu, son of Arjun, who knew how to get into a chakravyuh, a battle maze, but not out of it. Apparently, the young Bhairon Singh, instead of dying on stage, insisted on killing his foes in battle. “He was later told that he had to die at the end,” the associate narrates.
Shekhawat smiles some more. “Since then, so many chakravyuhs have come my way. I have got out of them all,” he says.
There is one left, though — slated for July 19. If he emerges out of this one unscathed, though he is almost as unlikely to do so as the young Abhimanyu, it will be his biggest victory ever. If not, the curtain comes down on an epic tale.