Who was Atal Bihari Vajpayee?
Vajpayee came from Gwalior, where he was born in 1924 to a schoolteacher. He took part in the Quit India movement as a student and then worked as a journalist. In 1951 he joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and six years later he won a seat in parliament. The Emergency put him in jail. When Janata took power in 1977 he became India's foreign minister, and in 1980 he helped start the BJP. He led a short-lived government in 1996, then ran the National Democratic Alliance from 1998 until 2004. His Hindi poetry was widely admired. He died in 2018.
Political views
- Rose through the Hindu nationalist RSS, but in parliament he gained a name for steering a moderate path.Source: bbc.com
- Earned praise in office for cutting the state's part in running firms and for a big program of national highways.Source: bbc.com
- Only weeks into his 1998 term he approved five underground nuclear blasts, and he kept going despite sanctions from Western states.Source: latimes.com
- In 1999 he crossed into Pakistan by bus. At the summit that followed, both governments promised to work on their disputes, Kashmir included.Source: latimes.com
- Told a rally in 1992 that the land at Ayodhya must be flattened. Mobs razed the Babri mosque the next day, and he later called that act a mistake.Source: latimes.com
- Faced criticism over a party speech in Goa in 2002, after the Gujarat riots, in which he claimed Muslims did not want to live in peace beside others.Source: independent.co.uk
- His government's biography calls him a champion of women and of equality, and says he saw India as a civilisation 5,000 years old.Source: pmindia.gov.in
Legacy
To his fans Vajpayee was an orator and poet who brought the BJP into government, held an unlikely coalition together and tried to make peace with Pakistan. Some said he was the right man in the wrong party. They give his years in office credit for economic opening, better roads and the win at Kargil in 1999. Opponents say the 1998 tests set off a nuclear arms race in South Asia, and that he made Hindu nationalism look respectable. They also blame him for not removing Narendra Modi from the top job in Gujarat after the 2002 riots, when over 1,000 people died, mostly Muslims.