Book review
'Advaniji has been my friend and comrade-in-arms for over fifty years. He has never compromised on his core belief in nationalism, and yet has displayed flexibility in political responses whenever it was demanded by the situation. He has an open mind that always absorbs new ideas from diverse sources. I am certain that My Country My Life will be read widely, and with keen interest, by people from diverse backgrounds. For mirrored in it is the remarkable journey of a sensitive human being and an outstanding leader whose best, I hope and pray, is yet to come.'

From the Foreword by Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
Prime Minister of India (1998-2004)

My Country My Life is a self-portrait of India’s leading political personality - L.K. Advani. As an immigrant who was forced to abandon his beloved Sindh, which became a part of Pakistan after India was partitioned in 1947, on the basis of the communally inspired ‘Two Nation Theory’, Advani gives a poignant first-person account of that tragedy. With a career spanning six decades as a political activist in post-1947 India, during which he has been a ringside viewer of, and participant in, almost all the major socio-political developments in India, Advani is uniquely qualified to offer a perspective on independent India’s political evolution.

The apogee of Advani’s achievement was his seminal contribution, together with his senior colleague Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to ending the Congress party’s dominance over India’s polity by building the Bharatiya Janata Party as a viable alternative for governing India. The book provides a riveting, insightful and assertive account of Advani’s fight for democracy during the Emergency, his Ram Rath Yatra for the reconstruction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya that resulted in the biggest mass movement in India since Independence and catalysed a nationwide debate on the true meaning of secularism, and his years as India’s Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the Vajpayee-led government of the National Democratic Alliance between 1998-2004. The importance and relevance of the publication of his memoirs has increased considerably since he has now been chosen by the BJP-led NDA to lead the multi-party alliance into the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

My Country My Life is a testimony to what Advani’s admirers as well as his critics have always known him for: the gift of clarity of thought, strong convictions and forceful articulation. This is a candid reflection on himself, his party and his nation that is likely to engage readers in a tour de force with India’s leading statesman. In a country where political memoirs, especially by those who are still active in politics, are rare, this book is a landmark.


About the author Lal Krishna Advani’s political journey began in 1951, when Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Jana Sangh. The party’s ideologue and Chief Organiser, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, was a major influence on his ideology and idealism. Advani was elected President of the Jana Sangh in 1973 and incarcerated in jail for nineteen months during the Emergency. Advani was the Information & Broadcasting Minister in the Janata Party government in 1977-1979 and has served as the President of the BJP for the longest period. He was India’s Home Minister (1998-2004) and Deputy Prime Minister (2002-2004) in the Vajpayee government. A Member of Parliament since 1970, and recepient of the ‘Award for Outstanding Parliamentarian’, he is currently Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.