“We have given up office, but not our responsibility to serve the nation. We have lost an election, but not our determination.”

Indian statesman and poet

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian statesman and poet, and a central figure in modern Indian politics. He served as prime minister of India from 1998 to 2004, after a brief term in 1996, and was the first non-Congress leader to complete a full term in office. He was a co-founder and senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and earlier served as a full-time RSS pracharak. His politics combined cultural nationalism with a measured public style, and he is associated with a strand of Hindu nationalism that sought to balance civilisational identity with democratic pluralism.