Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Born

December 25, 1924

Died

August 16, 2018 (aged 93)

Known as

politician, poet, journalist, writer

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian statesman and a poet who served as the prime minister of India, from 1998 to 2004, and previously for two weeks in 1996. He was the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a volunteer and full-time functionary (pracharak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. Vajpayee combined cultural nationalism with political moderation, shaping a distinctive strand of post-Independence Indian conservatism rooted in civilisational identity. Vajpayee represented a current in Hindu nationalism that sought to harmonise cultural identity with democratic pluralism.

Biography from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.