My Country, My Life

My Country, My Life is the extraordinary self-portrait of one of India's leading political personalities: L.K. Advani. Forced to abandon his beloved Sindh, which became part of Pakistan after independence, Advani poignantly describes the sense of displacement that affected him, as it did millions of Indians. With a career spanning six decades as a political activist in post-1947 India, a witness to and participator of almost all the major socio-political developments in the country, Advani is uniquely qualified to offer a nuanced perspective on independent India's political evolution.

His seminal contribution to India politics, along with fellow politician Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was creating the Bharatiya Janata Party as a viable alternative for governing India and ending the Congress's dominance over the country's polity.

My Country, My Life is 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 independent India's biggest mass movement and a nationwide debate on the true meaning of secularism and his year as India's Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the Vajpayee-led government of the National Democratic Alliance between 1998 and 2004.

A testimony to what Advani has always been known for – his clarity of thought – My Country, My Life is a candid reflection of the man, his party and his nation. In a country where political memoirs, especially by active politicians, are rare, this book is a landmark.