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Mainstream, Vol XLVIII, No 22, May 22, 2010

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Is No More

Tuesday 25 May 2010, by SC

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Former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, 86, who was a three-time non-Congress CM of Rajasthan, passed away in Jaipur on May 15 following a heart attack. He headed the first non-Congress government in the State in 1977 and was an able administrator. An ajatashatru in the literal sense of the word, Shekhawat was above petty party politics when it came to upholding the interests of the nation. In this respect there was much in common between him and erstwhile PM A.B. Vajpayee. Both belonged to the BJP and RSS but both displayed extraordinary flexibility on national issues and matters relating to the country’s pluralist ethos.

A leader who rose from his humble surroundings in a village in Rajasthan’s Sikar distr5ict, Shekhawat actively participated in the campaign for the abolition of the zamindari system in the feudal State thus revealing his progressive approach to socio-economic problems. Again it was he who stood against glorification of sati in the wake of the infamous Deorala sati incident involving Roop Kanwar in 1987 and did not hesitate to earn the wrath of his Rajput kinsmen.

As the State’s CM he introduced several innovative schemes including Antyodaya. A man of practical action, who had given vivid testimony of his capabilities as a CM, he would have proved a better Home Minister at the Centre than the person the BJP actually selected for the office.

Some years ago he summoned this journalist to his residence to narrate an interesting episode. In fact the word ‘interesting’ was used by himself in this connection. He recalled what Socialist leader Madhu Limaye (who became the Janata Party’s General Secretary in 1977) had told him at the height of the Janata crisis in 1979. “You are not taking due note of the ‘dual membership’ problem (of some BJP leaders being simultaneously members of the Janata Party and RSS—S.C.) now but there will be a time when the ‘dual leadership’ issue (of the BJP and the RSS—S.C.) will come to haunt you,” were Limaye’s exact words. The Socialist leader had promised to write on the subject in Mainstream at that time. So Shekhawat was keen to know if Limaye had indeed written anything in the matter then. One gave him photocopies of Limaye’s articles in Mainstream during that period of the Janata’s July crisis in 1979 that resulted in the split in the Janata Party.

He was close to N.C. whom he had befriended during a trip to Vietnam in 1979.

He publicly patronised the movement for Right to Information when it was launched in one part of Rajasthan.

That was Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a towering personality in the national arena, but also a man of exceptional qualities of head and heart so rare in today’s murky political setting.

S.C.

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