The black-and-white photograph features a garland-laden Atal Bihari Vajpayee, clad in a light-coloured achkan and standing in an open jeep during a victory procession after the Lok Sabha elections in 1957.
In that election, Vajpayee had contested on a Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) ticket from three seats—Lucknow, Mathura, and Balrampur—and won from Balrampur.
With this victory, he entered the Lok Sabha for the first time.
The picture captures the arrival of Vajpayee as a leader to reckon with in national politics.
It is also a throwback to a very different time in Indian politics, when elections were a far less expensive affair.
Vajpayee ran his campaign with just Rs. 41,000, a few volunteers, and two jeeps.
He toured rural areas extensively by foot, bicycle, and even horseback, to connect with the electorate.
What stands out about that election, however, is not Vajpayee’s inexpensive campaign but his appeal to the voters of Mathura.
In a rare show of integrity, Vajpayee asked them to support his opponent, the freedom fighter Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh.
The appeal provided a glimpse into Vajpayee’s much-celebrated capacity to transcend the political divide, a quality that is extremely rare in today’s political landscape.
The photograph and the details about Vajpayee’s modestly-funded election campaign are part of Atal Bihari Vajpayee: The Eternal Statesman, a pictorial biography of the leader curated by senior BJP leader Vijay Goel.
The photographs are complemented by lesser-known details about the leader in the accompanying text written by Goel, who had a long personal and political association with Vajpayee.
The coffee-table book becomes much more than a collection of photographs to flip through during leisure time because of its subject: the life journey of Vajpayee, one of the most significant leaders in the right-wing sphere, and who, together with L.K.
