‘For Vajpayee, discrimination on faith was completely no-go’ (Book Review)
By IANS| Published: 23rd December 2020 8:42 pm IST
New Delhi, Dec 23 : At a time when inter-faith marriages have come under pressure and Uttar Pradesh has even promulgated an anti-conversion ordinance, a new book contends that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was vehemently opposed to discrimination based on faith and that religious conversions deeply offended his sensibilities – but he accepted them.
“Unlike Gandhi, who had detailed exposure of living in a non-Hindu milieu and extensive conversations with Christian theologians, Vajpayee was very much rooted in the larger Hindu traditions. Hence, for him, discrimination based on faith was completely no-go, and the ruler was not to be concerned with the belief systems of his subjects. This worked fine conceptually when boundaries between faiths are fluid and faith is not seen as all-pervasive,” Shakti Sinha, who had worked closely with the former Prime Minister for three-and-a-half years from 1996-99, writes in “Vajpayee: The Years that Changed India” that the publisher, Penguin, is set to release on December 25, his 96th birth anniversary.