Ironically, the problem that Atal faced was from his parent organization, the RSS. To insulate himself, Atal surrounded himself with liberal leaders in the BJP like Jaswant Singh and George Fernandes of the Samata Party. Brajesh Mishra—former secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs who was Atal’s principal secretary as well as the national security advisor—was also a close ally. All of Atal’s novel political moves were planned through this team. A
