in a new book https://theprint.in/feature/around-town/atal-bihari-vajpayee-has-just-been-gift-wrapped-returned-to-the-rss-in-a-new-book/1637337/ Rama Lakshmi 22 June, 2023 Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924–1977 shatters BJP poet-politician’s reputation as a liberal hero. “I recognise more of Vajpayee in this book," said BJP's Swapan Dasgupta.
The younger Vajpayee, the book says, was a loyal soldier of the RSS, internalised Hindu victimhood and regarded Muslims as inherently disloyal to India — and not the hero of the liberals that he is today. ...
Called Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924–1977, the book’s author Abhishek Choudhary spent seven years trying to peel the layers off one of the most enigmatic politicians of the BJP.
...Former BJP general secretary Govindacharya had famously called Vajpayee a ‘mukhota’ or a mask in 1997, referring to him as being the acceptable face of the BJP. His moderate mask was, of course, immensely useful for the party. In
...Other than ‘mukhota’, another label that got stuck to Vajpayee’s image was the much-used media phrase ‘right man in the wrong party’. It was a measure of how much non-BJP voters, politicians and intellectuals wished to appropriate him.
...This dichotomous insider-outsider image of Vajpayee has had many benefits. It attracted non-BJP centrists and liberals and also hoisted Modi as the proto Hindutva icon. Vajpayee is not counted as a Hindutva Hall of Famer today. His iconography was edging alarmingly close to the ideological centrism of Indian politics and farther and farther away from the RSS. It’s a lot like how Sardar Patel is not seen as a Congress leader but has been grafted on to the BJP today.
But now Abhishek Choudhary’s new book has placed Vajpayee right back into the Hindutva history of India.