IndiaWho was Atal Bihari Vajpayee?
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born in Gwalior in 1924, the son of a schoolteacher, and joined the Quit India movement as a student. He worked as a journalist before joining the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951 and entered parliament in 1957. Jailed during the Emergency, he served as foreign minister in the Janata government from 1977 and co-founded the BJP in 1980. He was briefly prime minister in 1996 and governed from 1998 to 2004 at the head of the National Democratic Alliance. He was also an acclaimed Hindi poet. He died in 2018.
Political views
Came from the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, but learned in parliament to take a moderate middle path.
Source: bbc.comAs prime minister, won praise for reducing the role of government in running businesses and for building a national ring of highways.
Source: bbc.comWeeks after taking office in 1998, ordered five underground nuclear tests despite Western sanctions.
Source: latimes.comRode a bus across the border into Pakistan in 1999 for a summit at which India and Pakistan committed to resolving their disputes, including Kashmir.
Source: latimes.comTold a crowd in 1992 that the ground at Ayodhya 'has to be leveled', the day before mobs destroyed the Babri mosque, and later said the demolition should not have happened.
Source: latimes.comDrew criticism for a 2002 party speech in Goa, after the Gujarat riots, in which he generalised that Muslims did not want to live in harmony with others.
Source: independent.co.ukWas described in his official biography as a champion of women's empowerment and social equality who saw India as rooted in 5,000 years of civilisational history.
Source: pmindia.gov.in
Legacy
Admirers remember Vajpayee as a gifted orator and poet who made the BJP a party of government, held a diverse coalition together and pursued peace with Pakistan, and some called him the right man in the wrong party. His government is credited with economic liberalisation and road building, and with victory in the 1999 Kargil war. Critics argue that he set off a nuclear arms race in South Asia and lent respectability to Hindu nationalism. He was faulted for failing to remove Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister after the 2002 riots, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.