Charming and sensitive, secretive and vacillating, detached yet quietly ambitious, Vajpayee was a man of unusual gifts and some dangerously consequential flaws.

He made an unintended entry into politics in 1948 as the underground organiser of the RSS, which had been banned for creating an atmosphere in which Mahatma Gandhi was murdered. In 1957, he became the first RSS swayamsevak to win a seat in the Lok Sabha. Soon he grew popular for his fiery speeches and maudlin poetry, bridging the contrasting worldviews of Jawaharlal Nehru and V.D. Savarkar. In the first non-Congress government at the centre, the Janata coalition of 1977-79, he proved himself to be a successful Foreign Minister. As Prime Minister towards the end of his six-decade-long career, he tested nuclear designs, liberalised the economy, and steered India to a multi-party democracy. But his years in office also helped the RSS become mainstream, even respectable. A man of varied interests and poor health, Vajpayees tumultuous career was matched by a complicated private life.

Mixing new archival sources in India, the US and the UK with hundreds of detailed interviews, Abhishek Choudharys authoritative biography is the first major inquiry into the psychology of the most glamourized and enigmatic Indian politician in recent history. In detailing Vajpayees intimate relationship with the Sangh Parivar, Choudhary also paints a revealing emotional and psychological portrait of Hindu revivalism.