Abhishek Choudhary
Abhishek Choudhary is a writer based in Delhi. He studied economics in Delhi and Chennai, followed by stints in development and journalism. He was awarded the NIF Fellowship in 2017 to research former Prime Minister Vajpayee's life. During the winter of 2021–22 was a scholar-in-residence at the International Centre Goa.
NIF Books
A man of unusual gifts and dangerously consequential flaws, Atal Behari Lal Vajpayee was until recently the Hindu Right’s most glamorized and enigmatic face. Drawing on a natural talent to pull in the crowds with his eloquence, he elevated his physically frail and academically mediocre self to become a powerful spokesperson of historical victimhood, far more critical to the project of Hinduizing India than was previously understood.
Abhishek Choudhary’s definitive account uncovers how Vajpayee’s early life, of which we knew shockingly little, lay at the heart of his political character: essentially conservative yet curious and conciliatory, detached yet quietly ambitious. Together with fresh details of Vajpayee’s underground activities after Gandhi’s assassination, the early deaths of his parents and mentors, the surprises of his private life and the arc of his maudlin poetry, we get a powerful and riveting account of the tumultuous Nehru-Patel relationship, Indira Gandhi’s fleet footed attack on the Jan Sangh’s finances, the foolish fantasies of JP’s Total Revolution, the Sangh Parivar’s dubious heroism during the Emergency, and their earliest tryst with power in Delhi as the most significant constituent of the Janata government.
The first of a two-volume study, Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right is a stunningly original portrait of Hindutva and its first prime minister.
Purchase: Amazon
Believer’s Dilemma concludes Abhishek Choudhary’s landmark two-part study of Atal Behari Vajpayee (1924–2018), the RSS propagandist who established himself as an imaginative moderate, drawing the Hindu Right from the fringes to displace Congress as the natural party of power.
This magisterial second volume combines new archival documents with revealing interviews to present an unsentimental history of India’s ongoing political moment, beginning with the short-lived Janata coalition and the Vajpayee–Morarji Desai tussle to steer foreign policy; Mrs Gandhi’s ad-hocism in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir; Rajiv’s cynical turn toward the Hindu vote; Vajpayee’s failure to secularize the newborn BJP; the Sangh Parivar’s meticulous plan to raze the Babri, and much more. Choudhary traces these machinations of the previous half-century to cast fresh light on major events from Vajpayee’s term in office (1998–2004), including his desperation to conduct nuclear tests; his cold pragmatism and heartbreak in negotiating with Pakistan and China; his wide range of emotional strengths, which allowed him to manage an unwieldy thirteen-party coalition and turn India into a multi-party democracy; his role in propping India up as a potential superpower and embedding capitalist aspiration into its socio-political imagination.
Mapping the evolution of the Sangh Parivar, this book reveals a deeper pattern in Vajpayee’s character: his reflexive loyalty to his ideological family in moments of crisis – be it the 1983 Assam riots, the 1992 Babri aftermath, the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, or his tragic last public appearance in 2008, when the stroke-battered patriarch voted against the Indo-US nuclear deal he had earlier helped seed.
A decade in the making, Believer’s Dilemma is an original and psychologically insightful take on the Hindu Right and its first prime minister.
Purchase: Amazon
Reviews:
VAJPAYEE: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977
‘The finest biography of an Indian prime minister that I have read’ – Ramachandra Guha, author of India After Gandhi: A History
‘A real achievement, an instant classic and a total triumph’ – Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics, University of Cambridge and author of Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age
‘Doubles as a history of Hindu supremacism; it won’t be bettered for a long time’ – Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present
‘Extraordinary and unputdownable. This is biography done right’ – Sonia Faleiro, author of The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing
Believer's Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right's Path to Power, 1977–2018
“In documenting Vajpayee’s journey, Choudhary inadvertently writes the story of how moderates become midwives to extremism. The India that emerges from Vajpayee’s era spawned the India we live in now.”- Amritesh Mukherjee
Book Awards:
VAJPAYEE: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977:
Winner of the 2023 Tata Literature Live! First Book Award
Shortlisted for the 2023 Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize