A man of unusual gifts and dangerously consequential flaws, Atal Behari Lal Vajpayee was until recently the Hindu Right’s most glamorized and enigmatic face. Drawing on a natural talent to pull in the crowds with his eloquence, he elevated his physically frail and academically mediocre self to become a powerful spokesperson of historical victimhood, far more critical to the project of Hinduizing India than was previously understood.

Abhishek Choudhary’s definitive account uncovers how Vajpayee’s early life, of which we knew shockingly little, lay at the heart of his political character: essentially conservative yet curious and conciliatory, detached yet quietly ambitious. Together with fresh details of Vajpayee’s underground activities after Gandhi’s assassination, the early deaths of his parents and mentors, the surprises of his private life and the arc of his maudlin poetry, we get a powerful and riveting account of the tumultuous Nehru-Patel relationship, Indira Gandhi’s fleet footed attack on the Jan Sangh’s finances, the foolish fantasies of JP’s Total Revolution, the Sangh Parivar’s dubious heroism during the Emergency, and their earliest tryst with power in Delhi as the most significant constituent of the Janata government.

The first of a two-volume study, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right is a stunningly original portrait of Hindutva and its first prime minister.