Former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief K S Sudarshan and former Bharatiya Janata Party president Murli Manohar Joshi on Friday attended a function to release a book, which severely criticises former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Joshi was a Cabinet minister when Vajpayee was the prime minister.
The book 'Superpowering India' written by Air Marshal (retd) A K Mukhopadhyaya says Vajpayee "let down India as much as he could in the short three tenures served by him".
A press release, quoting paragraphs from the book said, "All his (Vajpayee's) political initiatives resulted in fiascos for his party combine and the mother organisation the RSS, to which he used to pay opportunistic obeisance".
Criticising the tenure of the National Democratic Alliance prime minister, the book said, "There were maximum massacres of Hindus in J&K, LoC and in international borders during his tenures. He nonchalantly watched or composed poems when majority of Hindus were driven out of Kashmir valley by the resident Muslims in connivance with the infiltrators from Pakistan and PoK."
Quoting from the book, the release also criticised the nuclear tests saying it gave Pakistan an alibi to prove their nuclear capability.
"He (Vajpayee) did a command performance of carrying out six partially successful nuclear tests to provide alibi to Pakistan to prove their nuclear capability. He, on superpower insistence, permanently closed nuclear and missile options.
"Vajpayee's bluff on strategic capabilities was tested by Pakistan by occupying vast tracts of Indian land in Kargil," the book said.
