It was listening to Saba say about Pramod Mahajan to Saurabh Dwivedi in "The Lallantop" that prompted me to buy this book. For he has always been a mystery. Also after the 50 - next 4 went in random. This book could be 51st or 53rd nevertheless, happy to have read it finally.
The BJP enjoys the predominant position in Indian politics today. In its journey from coalition politics to single-party hegemony, it has emerged as a very different entity from the one that first came to power in 1998. Veteran journalist Saba Naqvi—who has spent two decades covering the BJP—tells the story from the party’s founding in 1980 to its two stints in power.
Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi is both a first-person account of racy events as they unfolded in the nation’s history, and a work that raises larger analytical points about the BJP’s growth. It examines the role of the RSS cadre and its equations with elected leaders, the calibration of ideology, the issue of political finance and the social expansion of the party, as also the cults of personality that would emerge around, first, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then, more forcefully, around Narendra Modi. The book provides a riveting account of the party’s difficult journey from ‘untouchability’ (when allies were unwilling to join) to its presumed ‘invincibility’ today.
Naqvi’s long-standing equations with members of the party, developed over two decades of consistently fair reporting, delivers a narrative full of insights that are both fresh and deep, and anecdotes that are as lively as they are telling. In revealing hitherto unknown aspects, and reminding readers of the bigger picture, Shades of Saffron is a deep dive into the contemporary history of a party that keeps reinventing itself.
The book reveals interesting details about the inner workings of the Vajpayee administration. Chapters on Govindacharya’s ‘Vajpayee's mask remark’, 'tired and retired'; and how he was sidelined from the party with 'ideology' was an interesting read. The way some chapters are ended with the dialogue and a flashback make for fascinating reading. Few being Vajpayee is a leader, while Sonya is a reader. Once a man gets married, he will naturally pay more attention to his wife than his mother, the mother may feel hurt, but her importance isn't diminished. The General Secretary of BJP then Modi said about Vajpayee not attending the first year high tea party of Vajpayee Government. Sushma Swaraj of fighting election with Sonia said, it would be like fighting the Kargil work, I'll either be a glorious martyr or a triumphant victor. No one is innocent in the dialogue of the deaf. Mahabharatha had Lord Krishna, BJP has Lal Krishna. From Kargil to Kandahar was an interesting chapter, with how the hijack was successful with mission accomplished with India releasing three hostages Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Narratives can be cooked up and embellished as facts, because there is often no real information to go by. Uma the Fiery Sanyasin, described the party's top leaders as 'power hungry, deceitful and conspiring'. There were leadership issues and BJP was almost in oblivion but rose like a phoenix. Modi then said, 'Republic of Gujarat' has declared war on what he called 'Delhi Sultanate' - how Gujarat doesn't spread its hands for alms before Delhi; and how he is the chowkidar, not the ruler of Gujarat; the guardian of Gujarat's prosperity and so on and so forth. He was a paradox - a solitary reaper in Indian politics with a following that would be the envy of global cult leaders. One of the amazing feats that Narendra Modi achieved in not just winning elections but in controlling the narrative around it. NDA has become No Data Available government. They did manage to go deep and have roots intact.
One of the chapters in the book is "THE TRAGIC END OF PRAMOD MAHAJAN"
Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. And when the Lord said to Cain where is Abel your brother, he said, I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?
– Genesis, Old Testament
The first sin recorded in the Bible is the murder of a brother by a brother. Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, slays Abel in a fit of jealousy. Contemporary crime seems sordid, less grand. Yet the emotions that drove Pravin Mahajan to pump three bullets into his famous elder brother may have been the same deadly mix of blind rage and bitter jealousy.
On 22 April 2006, Pramod Mahajan was shot thrice by his forty-six-year-old younger brother at point blank range, and died thirteen days later. The reasons for this tragedy were never adequately explained, although there was a rumour that Pravin (who died in 2010) was mentally unstable. What happened thereafter to Pramod’s son and personal assistant, was shocking to say the least.
The saddest part of Pramod Mahajan’s macabre murder was that a man who had supported several loyalists and retainers, had failed to notice the darkness build up in his own brother’s soul.
Pramod Mahajan may have become the financial nerve centre for the BJP, but he had come up the hard way, taking care of his siblings even as he earned to support himself as a student. All of that came to naught on that fateful Saturday morning, when the forty-six-year-old Pravin Mahajan walked into Pramod’s Worli residence in Mumbai and pumped three bullets from a .32 Belgian pistol. All of that is however well documented.
What is less known is that just before dying, he had apparently forgiven his younger brother and told his brother-in-law and fellow BJP traveller, Gopinath Munde, ‘Pravin ko chhodo’ (Let Pravin be).
Exactly a month after Pramod Mahajan’s death, his secretary of fifteen years, the forty-one-year-old Vivek Moitra died of a drug overdose on 3 June 2006. On the night of 31 May, he along with Pramod Mahajan’s son, Rahul, and a twenty-one-year-old student, was said to have imbibed a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, and was declared dead on arrival at New Delhi’s Apollo hospital. Rahul Mahajan was taken into police custody.
This reckless party had taken place the night before Rahul was to immerse his father’s ashes. Eventually, the remains were sent by a courier service to Guwahati where the Assam unit of the BJP organised a small ceremony on the banks of the Brahmaputra.
It was well known that Vivek Moitra, the post-graduate in Law from Bombay University, who had joined Pramod as a young man, was the keeper of his secrets. Just before his death, Vivek had been complaining about how certain people had reneged on promises—after Pramod Mahajan’s death, many refused to return the money that was parked with them. Given that Vivek was the only one who knew details of the complex financial matrix created by Pramod, it was suggested that many stood to gain by his death.
With each passing day, the Pramod–Vivek–Rahul saga sounded more and more like a popular crime novel.
Not sure why this was missed in the book:
The third day of a month proved fatal once again on March 3, 2010 when Pravin Mahajan passed away in a Thane hospital after failing to respond to weeks of treatment following a brain haemorrhage. Munde too died in a hospital here on the third day of this month apparently of shock and cardiac arrest suffered during the road accident on 3rd June 2014. Munde’s wife Pradnya is the sister of Pramod Mahajan.
Tragedy marred the festive mood in the infant Narendra Modi government with the demise of Union Rural Development Minister Gopinath Munde in an early Tuesday morning road accident in the capital, that left the BJP leadership stunned and political class perplexed.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/content/411508/gopinath-munde-dies-road-accident.html
Like every novel story, this too just faded away.
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