Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Biography

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born in Gwalior in 1924, the son of a schoolteacher. He studied at Victoria College in Gwalior and took a master's degree in political science at DAV College, Kanpur. As a youth he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, became one of its full-time workers in 1947, and wrote for Hindi newspapers linked to the movement.

In 1951 the RSS sent him to help build the new Bharatiya Jana Sangh. He first won a Lok Sabha seat in 1957 and went on to sit in Parliament for most of the next five decades, earning a reputation as a gifted orator. He led the Jana Sangh from 1968 to 1972, was jailed during Indira Gandhi's Emergency, and served as foreign minister in the Janata government of Morarji Desai from 1977 to 1979. In 1980 he became the first president of the newly formed Bharatiya Janata Party.

Vajpayee was briefly prime minister for sixteen days in 1996 and returned to office in 1998 at the head of the National Democratic Alliance coalition. His government carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in May 1998, opened a peace process with Pakistan that produced the Lahore Declaration in 1999, and faced the Kargil War that same year. Re-elected in 1999, he served a full term marked by economic liberalisation, infrastructure programmes, the 2001 attack on Parliament and the 2002 Gujarat riots.

After his coalition lost the 2004 election he withdrew gradually from public life, retiring from Parliament in 2009 because of poor health. He received the Bharat Ratna in 2015 and died in New Delhi in 2018.