“Who can forget that in critical times of war in 1962, 1965 and 1971, Naga underground organisations did not fire on the Indian Army? They showed restraint.”

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.