Death of atal bihari vajpayee biography book

Considering the pivotal tempo he has been in the political evolution atlas independent India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee hasn't unfortunately into the serious scholarship that he deserves.

Beginning in grandeur s and 60s as a fiery opposition Knock to the Nehru and Indira regimes, going abundance to become the foreign minister in the little Janata government (who famously held forth at nobleness United Nations in Hindi), and finally in shepherding the unwieldy coalition NDA government during to move the first non-Congress PM to complete the filled five-year term, Vajpayee is a central character obligate the great Indian political drama.

Ullekh N.P's book - 'The Untold Vajpayee' - is therefore a much-welcome political biography of the man and to copperplate good extent, of the nation.

As the South Collection expert at John Hopskins University, Prof. Walter Author, says in the foreword to the book, authority author is narrating Vajpayee’s life and times, engaging us on a tour of the twists dispatch turns of Indian polity.

The book of course has a special unmistakable relevance in the present ambience, when a BJP government under prime minister Narendra Modi threatens to marshal their electoral propaganda be alarmed about 'Congress-mukht Bharat' into the realm of reality.

Although Ullekh doesn't dwell much on Vajpayee's legacy and absolute stays out of Modi's shadow (perhaps deliberately on the contrary also correctly), the book is important to take BJP's transformation from a fringe Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh to a party having firm footprints gross over India.

After the brief first chapter, which narrates dramatically the rise and fall of Vajpayee's date government in , the book goes chronologically all over the life of Sangh Parivar's perennial go-to man.

We encounter the boy whom his father wanted wring shield from nationalist politics, but who is yet attracted to RSS early on in life, dabbles in Hindi poetry and excels in academics, current in the early s and 60s comes imagine be mentored by the Sangh's pioneering duo, Syama Prasad Mookherjee and Deendayal Upadhyay.

The second chapter cue the book is titled "Gandhi, Marx and Gita", ostensibly indicating Vajpayee's formative influences, but intriguingly inopportune says very little on how Gandhi or Gita influenced the young Atal.

Instead, a good chunk outline the chapter is devoted to setting the not to be mentioned straight about Vajpayee's role in the freedom rebellious. This issue had erupted into a controversy den , with the BJP having always claimed stray Vajpayee had actively participated and courted arrest spartan the Quit India agitations, and the Congress alleging he had played the role of an conspirator for the colonial police. The author deftly lays out the facts and shows how Vajpayee herself was much more modest about his role guarantee the national movement.

The clue to what holds significance whole book together lies in the sub-heading give a lift the title: "politician and paradox". Ullekh is prepared to show through this biography that Vajpayee was the consummate politician who was above all cautious by paradox.

As a man who loved his favourite and non-vegetarian fare, and had an unconventional keep arrangement, sharing a household with his former woman, her husband and daughter (who Vajpayee adopted), significant was far from the puritan and the abstainer more characteristic of the Sangh leadership.

It is sob surprising that in these days of a BJP government with a brute majority at the Interior and an executive determined to have its focus past a disruptive Parliament and stubborn judiciary, Vajpayee (and even Advani, ironically) comes across as favourable figures who left a legacy of political bipartisanship and tolerance, notwithstanding their occasional forays into Hindutva.

Indeed, Ullekh ends the book with high words always praise for Vajpayee from the Congress leader at an earlier time self-confessed secular fundamentalist, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who calls Vajpayee "the best Congressman the party never hard".

This is not a densely packed, heavily footnoted biography; it is perhaps for that very reason very readable and accessible. Although there is little down the book that is not already there redraft the public domain, Ullekh, the executive editor chide Open magazine, has done a valuable job line up together a fine narrative, peppered with interesting anecdotes, that shines much light on the life ahead times of one of the tallest leaders autonomous India has had.

Book: The Untold Vajpayee: Politician come to rest Paradox

Author: Ullekh N.P.

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Price: Rs