Despite Vajpayee’s RSS lineage, he never came across to me in grim, communal light—in fact, I found him much less divisive than Congress prime ministers like P V. Narasimha Rao, for instance. I base this observation on years of reporting and interacting with a procession of Indian prime ministers. No one can lay blame at Vajpayee’s door for patently anti-Muslim policies. I say this even though it has always been believed that the Congress is comparatively more sympathetic to Muslims and despite the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru (who was prime minister from August 1947 to May 1964) was revered by
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