Sir — This refers to the report, “A titan’s journey ends” (August 17). Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a beloved leader whose appeal cut across all party lines. He was a paradox: A liberal and moderate politician and an avowed pracharak. He will go down in history as a great statesman.

Vajpayee was too much in the Nehruvian mould to look like the inheritor of the legacy of the likes of KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar. He once said, “The Sangh is my soul.” Yet, he had an uneasy relationship with the RSS when he was the Prime Minister. He famously distanced himself from the Ayodhya movement and revealed his mental make-up when he asked Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister, to follow ‘raj dharma’ in 2002.

Vajpayee’s efforts with Pakistan hold lessons for today. His coinage, “Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat and Jamhooriat”, still resonates as the only plausible solution to the Kashmir problem. What is still debatable is whether the Pokhran nuclear tests he conducted fortified our national security?

A binding force