How do you box a BJP leader who hero-worshipped Nehru?
In a time of harsh polarities, the freedom to be a “compound human” feels a big thing.
Today the BJP is synonymous with Prime Minister Modi. But there is another leader who impacted the party’s destiny — and by extension, the country’s — in perhaps equally huge & complex ways: Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Full of sharp & surprising insights, journalist SAGARIKA GHOSE examines forgotten avatars of the party & the dramatic journey of the compelling, complex, and paradoxical man who led it.
If the electorate had not let him down, would India have inherited a right-of-centre party without communal overtones?
Why did the party pivot away from its founding ideas of “positive secularism” & “Gandhian socialism”?