Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the first Prime Minister to serve a full term outside the confines of Congress party. He was revered as the most important politician to lead the country out of the throes of the Kargil war and was subsequently elected as the Prime Minister in 1999. He previously did two stints as the leader of the nation both culminating in a swift end in 1996 and 1998. Vajpayee was born in Gwalior in 1924; He was a Marxist in his youth but veered away from its principles and joined the RSS, the epicenter of Hindu nationalism that he staunchly endorsed during his tenure as a politician. He was part of the Quit India Movement and Founded the Jana Sangh party in 1951. He was jailed during the Emergency and after his party formed the coalition to bring down congress and subsequently won the elections in 1979, he was made the Minster of external Affair. He served as a foreign minister for a short spell due to the internal squabbles that led to the fall of the government.

He was a man whose ambiguity in his beliefs was noted when he propagated policies that sometimes diverged from the ideologies of RSS. He tried to forge better relations with Pakistan which was often thwarted by the members of his own party. His attempts as a proponent of peace were marred by his restrain in abdicating Modi from the party for his complicity in Gujarat riots. He was an author with a prediliction for poetry. He published a book on poetry and also served as a writer for RSS magazine. He died in 2018 at the age of 93.