Jugalbandi

Narendra Modi has been a hundred years in the making. Vinay Sitapati's Jugalbandi provides this backstory to his current dominance in Indian politics. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s, moves on to the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980, and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004. And it follows this journey through the entangled lives of its founding jugalbandi: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Sitapati's great strength as a writer is that, on the one hand, his early career as a journalist allows him to write in very readable prose and style, picking anecdotes (that the churlish would call gossip) that add colour to prose; on the other hand, his scholarly training as a student of law and political science enables him to contextualise his story within a wider framework informed by a reading of contemporary history. It is this combination that made his biography of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Half Lion, so readable and a best-seller, and it is this that makes Jugalbandi also so readable. It will, presumably, also be a best-seller. -- The Wire ― The book is a wonderful, must-read addition to a scholarly, objective study of the saffron phenomenon. -- Swarajya magazine ― Brilliant researched and fascinating book.. if you are interested in politics you need to read this book. -- Barkha Dutt