Great Nationalist Of India Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (born 25 December 1924) is an Indianstatesman who was the eleventh Prime Minister of India first for13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. A leader of theBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) he is the first Prime Minister fromoutside the Indian National Congress party to serve a full five-year term.Vajpayee’s first exposure to politics was in August 1942 whenhe and his elder brother Prem were arrested for 23 days duringthe Quit India movement when he was released only after givinga written undertaking expressly declaring not to participate inany of the anti-British struggle and naming the undergroundleaders leading the ‘Quit India Movement’.In 1951 he was seconded by the RSS along with DeendayalUpadhyaya to work for the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangha Hindu right-wing political party associated with the RSS. Hewas appointed as a national secretary of the party in charge of theNorthern region based in Delhi. He soon became a follower andaide of party leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee. In 1954 Vajpayeewas with Mookerjee when he went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmirto protest against perceived inferior treatment of non-KashmiriIndian visitors to the state. Mookerjee died in prison during thisstrike. In 1957 Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha the lowerhouse of India’s Parliament from Balrampur. There his oratorialskills so impressed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that hepredicted that Vajpayee would someday become India’s PrimeMinister.