After Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964 there was a steady trickle of coffee table books with photographs and light commentary. The same thing happened after first Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated. One was a book curated by Sonia Gandhi and it contained photographs that Rajiv had taken.

But it was always puzzling that other prime ministers received no such honour. And there have been nearly a dozen of them since 1947. That vacuum has now been filled with this beautifully produced book of photographs of Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was as much a darling of the masses as Nehru was. It is especially

The photographs have been chosen by Vijay Goel, a politician from Delhi who was a close follower of Vajpayee from the early 1970s. Goel eventually rose to a ministerial position in the Vajpayee government of 1999-2004. Goel was appointed a minister in the prime minister’s office in 2001. His father and Vajpayee were friends, Goel had the privilege of meeting and spending time with Vajpayee from his childhood.

Coffee table pictorial books are never easy to produce because of the problem of choice. A political leader of Vajpayee’s stature would literally have lakhs of photographs over his lifetime. Goel has done well to choose the ones that best bring out Vajpayee the Man. Genial, courageous, avuncular, passionate, articulate and, above all, compassionate, Vajpayee had captured the core of the Indian heart. Goel’s choices in this book tell us why. The text is minimal but the photographs speak a lot, and the captions are clearly put together after careful research.

 There’s one peculiar omission in these photographs: there’s not a single one of Vajpayee with anyone from the RSS. True, many of the photos are with people who were from the RSS. But they are shown in the book as representatives or members of the Jana Sangh which in 1980 went to become the BJP. One of them was a man called Narendra Modi with whom, says Goel, Vajpayee had a working relationship. They occupied different corners of the same room. There are three photos of them together.

Published on May 15, 2026