somebody had to say it

How terrible, really, was the poetry of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee? And why can't his supporters from the lunatic fringe of Hindu nationalism accept a cold, hard look at his verse? They were the ones, after all, who criticized him so sharply when he dawdled over building a temple in Ayodhya, even while they kept silent about his equally prudent (from a pragmatic standpoint) dawdling over the prosecution of rioters in Gujarat. Rediff.com columnist Krishna Prasad lays into the grand old man of Indian politics--is he the only funny Indian columnist working today?