Prejudice, hubris, crisis management

A book of thumbnail biographies of Indian prime ministers delves into the motivations behind their history-altering decisions, revealing a narrative that centres around survival

How Prime Ministers Decide

Author: Neerja Chowdhury

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 578

Price: Rs 999

The book gives us thumbnail biographies of six of India’s prime ministers, describing their motivations for making crucial, history-altering decisions. But it is equally an exploration of how, over the past 50 years, benign Hinduism lost out to its angrier version.

Did the process begin with Jayaprakash Narayan giving legitimacy to the Sangh Parivar in his bid to unseat Indira Gandhi?  “If the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] is fascist, so am I,” JP famously said in 1974. Or did the worm turn with Indira Gandhi’s gradual Hinduisation, propping up Sikh