New Delhi: Based on journalist Sarang Darshane’s biography of the former prime minister, Main Atal Hoon falls short of painting an accurate picture of the life of Atal Bihari Vajpayee — a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak who became India’s first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term.
Directed by Ravi Jadhav, the film struggles to capture Vajpayee’s strong liberal impulses and multifaceted personality, besides his efforts to put forward an alternative idea of India.
The only high point of the film is actor Pankaj Tripathi’s exceptional portrayal of Vajpayee. Tripathi carries the film on his shoulders, only to be bogged down by a poorly written script and wayward narration.
Tripathi tries his best to emulate Vajpayee’s oratory skills but is held back by a reductive script. He is not even given a chance to recite the poet-politician’s most famous composition: “Haar nahin maanunga”.
Credit also goes to actors Dayashankar Pandey and Pramod Pathak, for their impressive performances as Deendayal Upadhyaya and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, respectively. Even Piyush Mishra, who plays the role of Vajpayee’s father, pulls it off and how.
However, actors casted as Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Advani or Murli Manohar Joshi fall short of leaving an impression.
The biopic does not come across as convincing to those who were witness to Vajpayee’s meteoric rise in the pre-internet era. It fails to depict how the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) founder, who had a penchant for poetry, swept the nation despite that the Opposition at the time was bound by limited access to resources.
In that vein, it does not ably capture how the rise of Vajpayee, and by extension that of the Hindu Right, marked the beginning of the end of the Congress party’s hegemony. One must remember that Vajpayee was the architect of the most successful post-Independence political movement India had ever seen, and he did it without an army of keyboard warriors.
Even Darshane, on whose book the film is based, said: “Although it was an honest effort, since Vajpayee’s life is multifaceted, after seeing the film, I felt more effort was needed not only in direction but also in terms of script, narration and detailing.”
For today’s generation, Main Atal Hoon attempts to piece together a chronological sequence of events marking the rise of the Hindu Right. The film, however, fails to touch a chord with millions of Indians who witnessed first-hand Vajpayee’s electoral struggles and ideological dilemmas.
The film also does not touch upon two of the most notable events during Vajpayee’s tenure as prime minister: the IC 814 hijack in 1999 and the attack on Parliament in 2001. Besides, it dodges any discussion on Vajpayee’s views on Gandhi, his experiences during the Emergency or his role as foreign minister in Morarji Desai-led Janata Party government.
Though it briefly touches upon the Pokhran-II tests, the Kargil war and the bus yatra to Lahore, the film fails to illustrate how Vajpayee shone through as an exceptional statesman during these challenging times.
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Vajpayee & Mrs Kaul
The director also tries to explore the love story of a young Vajpayee and his companion Rajkumari Kaul — played by Ekta Kaul — albeit only half-heartedly. The film does not show how Mrs Kaul played a pivotal role in shaping Vajpayee’s worldview in his later years. Such was their relationship that when Vajpayee was prime minister, journalists whose requests for an interview were denied, often pleaded their case with her.
Senior Supreme Court lawyer N.M. Ghatate, a close friend of Vajpayee’s, had once recounted an incident when Mrs Kaul was not at home and Vajpayee — who was very fond of savoury and sweet dishes — wanted to have poori against the advice of his doctors. Ghatate said he along with Vajpayee and BJP’s Balbir Punj were just about to enjoy the pooris when Mrs Kaul returned home and the three were in for a dressing-down.
In his biography of the former prime minister, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977, Abhishek Choudhary writes how Vajpayee “may have felt the void of not being able to call himself a father, though Gunnu (Mrs Kaul’s younger daughter Namita) began calling him ‘Baapji’”.
This is also a reminder of how the film steered clear of Vajpayee’s curious eating habits and inner circle.
Vajpayee, Advani & the RSS
While the film emphasises Vajpayee’s deep-rooted ties with the RSS, it does not touch upon his turbulent relationship with Sangh hardliners like Dattopant Thengadi, K. S. Sudarshan, or Balraj Madhok — who rose to become president of the Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP.
In his book on the BJP, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi, Vinay Sitapati writes in great detail about Vajpayee’s differences with the RSS. The book mentions one instance from 1970 when Vajpayee told then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras to choose between him and Subramanian Swamy.
Madhok too was ousted from the Jan Sangh over his differences with Vajpayee.
In 1999, when Thengadi criticised the then Vajpayee-led government’s economic policy, Madan Lal Khurana — who had resigned as Union minister following the gruesome killings of Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons (aged 6 and 10) by members of the Bajrang Dal in Odisha — came to Vajpayee’s defence. The RSS and fringe elements of the Hindu Right are trying to derail the government, Khurana said at the time.
Vajpayee too was deeply hurt by the killings. In his book, former civil servant Shakti Sinha who was in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) at the time, wrote: “Vajpayee was shocked and horrified. I never saw him look so perturbed.”
Another side of Vajpayee’s relationship with the RSS the film fails to capture is his disagreements with the Sangh on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, which was a turning point not just for the BJP but also for Lal Krishna Advani, who used the Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya to grow out of Vajpayee’s shadow. In addition to that, Main Atal Hoon also does not depict Vajpayee’s strong disagreement with Advani on then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s handling of the 2002 riots.
In his autobiography My Country My Life, Advani concurred that throughout their political association spanning six decades, there were only two issues on which he had disagreements with Vajpayee: “the Ram Janmabhoomi issue and whether Narendra Modi should continue as chief minister after the 2002 Gujarat riots”.
Interestingly, while showing the speech Vajpayee delivered in Lucknow’s Aminabad a day before the Babri Masjid demolition during which he spoke about the need to “level the ground”, the film also talks about the remorse he expressed at communal riots that followed the demolition.
The only time director Ravi Jadhav approaches the issue of Vajpayee’s ideological dilemmas is a reference to RSS ideologue and BJP general secretary Govindacharya’s much-quoted remarks to three British diplomats during which he famously referred to Vajpayee as a “mukhota” (mask).
In that vein, the film shows Vajpayee’s fondness for Jawaharlal Nehru and Nehru’s prophecy that Vajpayee would one day become prime minister.
It does not, however, make any mention of the moving obituary Vajpayee delivered for Nehru in the Rajya Sabha: “Bharat Mata is stricken with grief today — she has lost her favourite prince. Humanity is sad today — it has lost its devotee. Peace is restless today — its protector is no more. The down-trodden have lost their refuge. The common man has lost the light in his eyes. The curtain has come down. The leading actor on the stage of the world displayed his final role and taken the bow.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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