In 1962, China attacked India in a war that would define South Asian geopolitics for decades to come. Amidst an uproar in Parliament, during which many called for Jawaharlal Nehru’s resignation, Atal Behari Vajpayee, one of the leading lights of the right-wing Jan Sangh, expressed his full support to the beleaguered Prime Minister. From his point of view, calling for Nehru’s resignation in the middle of a full-blown war was impractical. His stand exasperated Acharya Kripalani into snapping that Vajpayee was a “Nehruvian in Jan Sanghi garb.”
Years later, another shaft came from Subhadra Joshi, the fiery Congresswoman who had managed to defeat Vajpayee in the 1962 Haryana elections. In an essay in Secular Democracy in 1970, Joshi stormed, “The thought never crossed any democratic mind that Vajpayee was only acting the liberal to provide cover to the RSS, so that this fascist machine could gain the time it needed to build adequate strength.”
The public life of a private man
Two very different descriptions of one man, but despite the hyperbole of the first, both were emblematic of just how difficult it has always been to encapsulate the enigma of Atal Behari Vajpayee. In his lifetime, nobody could – or dared – lift the veil…
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