The many faces of Vajpayee

A biography of India's first non-Congress PM to serve a full term offers an insightful and engrossing narrative

Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Author: Sagarika Ghose

Publisher: Juggernaut

Pages: 432 

Price: Rs 799

In recent years, we have been seeing a number of high-profile releases of biographies of politicians associated with the Sangh Parivar. These books seem to stake their subject’s claim to uncle-of-the-nationhood, as if to offer Sanghi alternatives to the Gandhi-Nehrus. In so doing, it’s not that facts are always massaged; more usually, calamitous actions are made palatable through generous and glowing interpretations of motives or contexts. The idea, I suppose, is to write an Indian historical narrative that is, if not entirely Congress-mukt, at least one in which Congress figures are diminished