Vajpayee's true colours

Over decades, Vajpayee and Mr Modi were on opposite sides of the playing field, most infamously in 2002

Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1927-1977

Author: Abhishek Choudhary

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 401

Price: Rs 899

From the late 1980s when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was emerging as a major political party in its own right, not piggybacking on other non-Congress parties during the anti-Emergency movement, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was almost universally called the “right man in the wrong party”. He was considered a Nehruvian at heart trapped in a sectarian party and by then, it was too late for him to move — he had after all, become a Member of Parliament for the first time in 1957. After Lal Krishna