INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - MAY 2006
THE MONTH THAT WAS...

PRAMOD MAHAJAN PASSES AWAY

After battling for over 12 days, the neversay-die Pramod Mahajan gave up the fight. BJP loses its chief strategist, networker, CFO... And politics, a tall leader PRAMOD MAHAJAN breathed his last in Mumbai on Wednesday after battling close-range gunshot wounds for 12 days, plunging the crisis ridden BJP into even deeper gloom.

Shot by his younger brother Pravin on April 22, Pramod Mahajan's end came at 4.10 pm on Wednesday at the city's Hinduja hospital. The BJP general secretary is survived by wife Rekha, son Rahul and daughter Poonam.

Mahajan's younger brother Pravin Mahajan shot him thrice in the BJP leader's 14th floor flat in an apartment block in Worli on April 22. Pravin later surrendered at the Worli police station and is now in judicial custody.

 “It is with deep regret we have to announce that Pramod Mahajan, who had been battling for life for the last 12 days, succumbed to his bullet injuries,” said Dr Pramod Lele, CEO, Hinduja Hospital. “He was suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome for the past four days, and that is what has caused his demise,” said a senior doctor of the hospital.

 During his days at the hospital, Mahajan underwent three surgeries. He was constantly on ventilator and dialysis support. Doctors conducted a bronchoscopy on him on Tuesday to identify the cause of his respiratory problems. He suffered multiple organ failure on Wednesday and stopped responding to treatment. All his vital organs were on artificial support system since April 22. The bullets had severed the main vein in Mahajan's abdomen, shattered the right side of the liver, the top of his pancreas and damaged the small intestine, doctors at Hinduja Hospital said. Doctors managed to stop his liver from bleeding, but then Mahajan's kidneys started malfunctioning and he had to be put on dialysis.

THE man who seamlessly shuttled between corporate glamour and grassroots' heat and dust, obviously, didn't believe in dichotomies. Pramod Mahajan was one leader who had mastered the challenging art of balancing two diametrically-opposed world —the ideological hawks and those with an abhorrence to the ‘I' word. During his rise as one of the most powerful leader of the BJP, Mahajan rode dangerously and masterfully on the thin edge that divides ideology and pragmatism within the Parivar, thus creating committed admirers and powerful rivals.In the untimely and tragic death of this master organiser and skilful political networker, the BJP has received a body blow.

Mahajan will be remembered for his unconventional and flashy methods, sound byte skills, fast-track political successes and personal controversies that he courted during his post-1996 high-profile days. But old associates remember his early struggling days when he, as a rank-outsider, a Brahmin youth of humble origins from the far off Ambejogai village of the Marathwada interiors, climbed the top leadership defying social and political speed breakers through hard work and genuine leadership qualities. Not a political paratrooper, Mahajan had put in solid and painstaking groundwork through the ranks of RSS, Janata Party and BJP before he became an important power centre at BJP's Ashoka Road headquarters.
Even his entry into the BJP inner circles in Delhi and national capital's power corridors was no cakewalk as this ‘outsider' had to virtually push open the powered-doors, by defying the entrenched and possessive ‘insiders'. In fact some of the “baggage' that he ended up carrying, bringing him bad name and company, many say, was in fact due to his habit of being indulgent and obliged to those who initially ‘showed him around' and took him to the glittering world of the Capital
 Mahajan, however, was determined to stay put and his will to conquer Delhi was amply demonstrated in the way he fought and defeated the entrenched ‘ideological puritan' K N Govindacharya, the then resident tactician and ‘visionary' at BJP headquarters, who tried to build a case against him of ideological compromises.

“When I collect funds for the party from industrialists, am I supposed to ask them to wash it in Gangajal?” Mahajan once asked the Govindacharya camp when he confronted them in a debate. The fact that Mahajan rode to new heights in the BJP and Mr Govindacharya was shunted out of the party, many say, demonstrated how the saffron party eventually opted for the winning ‘pragmatic ways' of Mahajan by shunning the unproductive doctrines of dogmatism.

The manner in which he cemented the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra demonstrated his political acumen, something that Atal Bihari Vajpayee later used at the national stage by making Mahajan one of his chief coalition managers. The manner in which Mahajan changed over to the Vajpayee camp after being an Advani loyalist for years demonstrated his ability to be a politically savvy and a smooth operator. Towards the end, he had used the same tact to emerge acceptable to both Atal and Advani, as the BJP's new ‘Lakshman.'

 Even though his ‘liberal ways' many times got him disapproving marks from the RSS, Mahajan's commitment to the causes of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, was unquestioned. As BJP's biggest showman, after Atal, and strategist, after Advani, leaves the stage mid-way of an eventful journey that showed prime ministerial potential, depleting the party's future talent, his friends and foes will be keeping their ears on earth to judge the aftershock of his death in the BJP.

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