‘All the parties were like planets moving around the omnipresent Congress party that was akin to the sun and it seemed that there would never be a sunset for the Congress party. It was thus remarkable for someone like Atal Bihari Vajpayee to stick on and actually prosper. This is a mark of his statesmanship,’ says Amit Chaudhuri who grew up in Delhi during the 1960s, a time when many political parties and numerous opposition politicians rose and fell and disappeared into oblivion without being able to leave any mark.
