Maurice Nagar chowk in Delhi University doesn’t exactly look like a place that could host a bustling public event. But, it did once — four decades ago. Old timers recall that a huge crowd had gathered here in 1977 when Arun Jaitley was welcomed in a public reception on his release from jail after the Emergency came to an end. Before being jailed for anti-Emergency agitation, Jaitley had been elected as the president of Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) in 1974.
The hero’s welcome that Jaitley received that day as the ascendant leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was one of the few, or perhaps the last, occasions when he had the chance bask in the warm glory of public affection. Thereafter, his political journey was more about taking the Lutyens’ insider route to make inroads into public offices. Popular vote eluded him but that didn’t come in the way of his rise in the power corridors of Delhi.
In a way, Arun Jaitley’s was the story of a type of successful professional in urban India who has ambitions of public presence and power but lacks the appeal and inclination for the grind, heat and dust of electoral battles. In straddling different spheres of a lucrative career in law and as the suave face of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Jaitley compensated the lack of ground-connect and charisma with his capacity for networking in Delhi establishment and a knack for organisational strategies.
Born in 1952 as the third child of Maharaj Kishen Jaitley and Prabha Ratan Jaitley, who had migrated from Lahore to Delhi in the aftermath of Partition, there was nothing in his middle-class family that could be viewed as political inheritance. Settled in Naraina Vihar, north-west Delhi, his father was a lawyer, while his mother was a housewife. However, the one family legacy that Arun Jaitley persisted with was a career in law, something even his children have opted for.
Unlike many stalwarts in the Supreme Court, Jaitley was a true blue Delhi lawyer. Having started in 1977 from the Trial Court and Delhi High Court (which designated him as a senior advocate in 1990), he argued in different High Courts in the country before graduating to the Supreme Court. An academic background in commerce from the Shri Ram College of Commerce (Delhi University) perhaps explains his tilt towards taking up corporate cases for companies as varied as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and more recently, the successful pleading for telecom giant Vodafone in the double-taxation case.
That, however, didn’t mean that political clients weren’t part of his work in the courts. They were very much there — ranging from Congressman Madhavrao Scindia to Lohiaite socialist Sharad Yadav to his very own party mentor Lal Krishna Advani. This access to political players of different parties and various ideologies had its role to play in entrenching him in the oligarchic power circles of the capital across parties — something that proved to be as much an asset for his utility as the manager of Lutyens perception battles as much as it turned out to be a liability for Sangh Parivar’s disapproval of his non-ideological outreach to power-traders.
RSS’ scepticism about Jaitley is also attributed to his handling of the investigations into Bofors case. In 1990, then Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh, heading the National Front government, had got Jaitley appointed as Additional Solicitor General (ASG) at the young age of 37, it was believed that even his elevation to the position of a senior advocate of Delhi High Court was to take care of technicalities of this appointment. What followed his appointment as ASG, was his appointment as a member of the three-member team to investigate the Bofors deal case — other members being Bhure Lal, a senior Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer and M K Madhavan, a senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer. Contrary to expectations, the team couldn’t produce anything concrete. There is a belief that RSS developed its share of doubts about Jaitley’s role in not giving a conclusive end to the probe into Rajiv Gandhi’s involvement.
That, however, didn’t obstruct his steady rise within BJP. This was also a period when BJP had increased its tally from only two seats in 1984 Lok Sabha polls to 86 in 1989 polls and his role as the party’s fund raiser couldn’t be overlooked. Similarly remarkable was his contribution to the party’s campaign strategy and media outreach. With his growing stature in legal circles, he became the party’s go-to man on legal and constitutional issues. In 1991, he was made a member of BJP’s National Executive and also doubled-up as a key spokesperson of the party in days.
These were crucial years for the right-of-centre stream of Indian politics, especially in the wake Ayodhya movement mobilisation and its repercussions on the political landscape of the country. A suave Jaitley, at home in English as well as Hindi, was the party’s telegenic answer to a decade when urban India was at the cusp of diversifying its news consumption beyond print — video and television news content were going to become a force to reckon with. His rising stock in the party and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1998 to 1999, and then 1999-2004) was also reflected in the ministries he headed — ranging from law, justice and company affairs to information and broadcasting at different points of time. He was elevated to cabinet minister rank in 2000.
With the then party power equations revolving around Advani-Vajpyee factional bipolarity, Jaitley did manage to keep himself afloat in part hierarchy. Besides ministerial responsibilities, in 2002, he was elevated to the role of BJP’s general secretary.
In the aftermath of the 2004 loss of power at the Centre, the BJP’s years of wilderness saw talks of a Jaitley-Swaraj rivalry as the factional claimants of the second-generation mantle in the party. This perception was further bolstered by veteran Lal Krishna Advani’s steady decline after the 2009 poll debacle suffered by the BJP and the RSS, clipping his wings far earlier for his controversial comment on Jinnah. It was also believed that if situation arises to pick between the two, RSS would back Sushma — a perception that had roots in reasons discussed above and further reinforced by the statement of RSS chief K S Sudarshan favouring her.
The fact that he was fiercely ambitious was stuff of Delhi’s political folklore: he had once reportedly dismissed his friend Nitish Kumar’s suggestions of trying for Delhi’s chief ministership with the repartee — “who wants to be mayor of Delhi?’’ However, Jaitley had a judgment of his strengths as well as limitations alike. Being leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, he had the advantage of being in public eye and he leveraged it by putting his bilingual eloquence to good use in Parliament — particularly at a time when Manmohan Singh government was besieged with corruption scams, ineffective approach to questions of national security post 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and accusations of policy paralysis. On poll scene, in the party’s quieter days of reflection, he was credited with successfully strategising with Janta Dal (United) Nitish Kumar and making NDA snatch Bihar away from Lalu Prasad Yadav-led Rashtriya Janta Dal’s firm grip in 2005.
But, it was the realisation of his own limitations as a leader — the obvious lack of mass appeal — that made him sense it as a weakness in Sushma’s political stock too. He came up with a swift response to it — something that decisively tilted the scale in his favour as the undeclared number two in any future BJP government. He realised the possibilities of converting the groundswell of support for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the popular BJP leader from a state that had been Jaitley’s route to Rajya Sabha, into a decisive electoral mandate in 2014 elections. Jaitley, with his fabled access to Delhi power circles, turned himself into Modi’s point person in the national capital. Besides negating the challenge of Advani-led bid for another shot at prime ministership, Jaitley took care that organisational support for Modi was expressed unequivocally at the Goa session of the party in 2013. The view that he had cultivated close ties with a section of Delhi media also meant charges of perception-management in favour of his party and government — an allegation which isn’t unique to the backroom operators of any major political party.
While 2014 elections witnessed Modi-led BJP winning a landslide mandate at the Centre, Jaitley’s own search for popular approval ended in a failure. He lost the election in Amritsar — the recourse to Rajya Sabha was the only way to reap his expected eminence in Modi government. And reward it did — Jaitley bagged cabinet portfolio of finance and was also entrusted with defence and information broadcasting portfolios as stopgap arrangements. However, a combination of factors — PM Modi’s approach of letting PMO have firm grip over the working of various ministries, Amit Shah’s rise in the party and its strategic outlook eating away his utility and his own declining health — didn’t leave Jaitley enough space to come into his own in a period which could have been arguably his most secure stint in power. As events unfolded, it was increasingly speculated whether it was in policy-making loop of contentious measures like demonetisation. As the head of ministry, however, his involvement and defence of Goods and Services Tax (GST) reforms seemed more spirited and resolute.
Failing health made him an intermittent presence in the last two years of the government — the very reason he cited to opt out of any responsibility when Modi government returned emphatically to power in May this year.
There is an inescapable feeling that his passing away is an abrupt end to a political career that had entered its most powerful period. The bloom never came and even a consummate backroom hand like Jaitley couldn’t defy the quirks and the deal that time brings. Still his imprint as a Lutyens’ facilitator and tutor to some of the most successful politicians of this generation — namely Narendra Modi — will remain indelible. It’s a legacy that somehow falls between an ambitious and pragmatic side of his life in politics.
Disclaimer : Newslaundry.com is determined to include views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. This doesn’t mean we agree with everything we publish. But we do support their right to the freedom of speech. In case of columnists and non-Newslaundry staff articles, the information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of Newslaundry.com. Newslaundry.com does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
