Remembering Vajpayee: Where Have The Great Political Orators Gone?
Niranjan Rajadhyaksha -
Thursday, March 19, 2009 5:51 PM
The tenant of this Awkward Corner is taking a break from economics and straying into an area he knows even less about --- politics.
Let me start with a story, as far as I can remember it.
An acquaintance who now heads a private sector bank, and was a journalist and economist in previous lives, had recounted this to me a few years ago.
He was then employed as an economist with the Planning Commission. His boss had sent him to the parliament library sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s to check out some facts. He had his head buried in some suitably impressive tome when a voice wafted in. I am now not sure whether it was relayed over some public address system in the parliament building or whether the library was so close to the action that the non-amplified voice came through.
Anyway, someone was making a speech in parliament. My acquaintance remembered being mesmerized by the oratory. He asked the librarian which parliamentarian was speaking. "Yeh Vajpayeeji bol rahen hai," he was told.
This economist, no friend of the BJP, shut the book in front of him and sat back to savour the beauty of Vajpayee's Hindi.
Now compare this with the utterly mediocre public speaking skills of the current generation of Indian politicians. You either have insipid speeches or the poisonous rabble rousing of the Varun Gandhi types.
Where have all the great orators gone?
Where are the leaders who can hold the attention of lakhs of supporters with just the power of their expression and the beauty of their language?
Where are those who do not need remixed Bollywood songs to keep the audience going?
And let's face it: The TV talking heads from all parties are no substitute.
Vajpayee was a master. So was Indira Gandhi. In Mumbai, the communist S.A. Dange and the Hindutva champion Bal Thackeray were brilliant. I am told by a colleague that MGR was superb. I am pretty sure there must have been top-class orators in other states too between 1970 and 2000.
But is there anybody in the new generation who is an orator in the Vajpayee class?
Answers are welcome.