Privation, limelight, exile: Jaswant Singh's political life saw all three

A true democrat and nationalist, the former army officer, founding member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, remained fiercely independent and intrepid in expressing his views

The last post sounded for Jaswant Singh, India’s Defence, Finance and External Affairs Minister, a few months scant his 83rd birthday. Since 2014, when he met with an accident and had to be operated for skull injuries (‘we had to take out that part of the brain that deals with feelings’, one of the doctors who attended to him said at the time) he had been out of the public gaze, tended devotedly by his wife Sheetal and his two sons. A founder member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was fiercely independent, intrepid in expressing his views even