Let there be no doubt that Modi in these 24 years so far has reshaped politics and governance considerably, if not completely, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Turning seventy five while engaged in the uncertain, pressure-laden and ever-changing world of politics and governance for almost a quarter of a century is no mean feat.
The accomplishment is all the more laudable when the person remains as sharp and in command of situations, at least within the country on domestic political issues, as at the beginning of the innings.
In June 2024, when Narendra Modi took oath as prime minister for the third time, there was a consensual view that he was at the shakiest point in his tenure.
Yet a year later, he has seemingly extricated himself from the tight corner.
Problems lie scattered on the political terrain. Many are similar to the ones which led to the BJP's decline by almost 20% of Lok Sabha seats it held in the previous House.
But divisive majoritarianism remains as potent an issue as before. Hate fills stomachs and bank accounts, so it seems, for a significant number of people.
This however was not the case in 2024. At the onset of the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign, Modi chose to centralise the pitch for re-election around himself, with the slogan, 'Modi Ki Guarantee'.
As a result, making many within his ideological fraternity, including the all-important Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership, diluted their stakes in Modi's return to office.
Instead of mending ties and pleading for the return of swayamsevaks to the campaign, BJP President J P Nadda, sprung the 'we do not need the RSS now' startler, clearly, at the behest of everybody knew who.
It was a humbler Modi in sight, post June 4, and a more acerbic Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, who fired one barb too many in subsequent months.
The BJP's slide was not huge, but was sufficient to make the party dependent on inconsistent coalition partners.
Over the past year, Modi did pacificatory rounds; primarily within the Sangh Parivar mainly because allies were not keen to extract a 'price' for support.
Instead, they were satisfied with 'grants' that could keep their respective constituencies interested in them.
Modi's tussle vis-a-vis the RSS was on his insistence in retaining functional autonomy, whereas the bosses (or boss) in the ideological fountainhead demanded he should be consultative on matters like selecting the next party president or on who should be the next vice president.
In end-March this year, Modi came down from his pedestal publicly, visited Nagpur, went to the Hedgewar Smriti Mandir -- a RSS establishment -- parleyed with Bhagwat in private and addressed a public gathering alongside the sarsanghchalak with the two conveying great bonhomie.
But that act of smoking the peace pipe was transitory, and post Operation Sindoor, it was once again a government and party, with Modi in the epicentre or focal point.
Not to be outdone, Bhagwat stung back with the barb that leaders must 'collect' shawls gifted by their younger peers and walk into the sunset on turning 75.
The question that dogged Modi since last year's below-par performance staged a return with renewed fervour with this Bhagwat act: Would Modi (and possibly Bhagwat too) step down in September?
But the question became irrelevant with Bhagwat telling a packed audience at Vigyan Bhawan in late August, during his three-day lecture series to herald the launch of the RSS' centenary celebrations, that it had all been a massive misunderstanding, he was merely recalling words of an RSS luminary with no contemporary prod.
But the BJP sangathan was no 'furniture' always. Till 1998, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became PM, India had witnessed mainly two models of relationship between government and ruling party: the Congress' and the CPI-M's model.
The former made the party subservient to the prime minister and the while the CPI-M inversed this by making the government bowing to the party's diktats.
BJP leaders swore they would evolve a third model, wherein the party would be duly consulted by those in government and that there would be a regular flow of suggestions and ideas.
Old, almost forgotten, writings are revelatory.
Back then as BJP leaders scurried to get into the government, Modi had told me that his party did not think that "every leader worth his salt should be inducted into the government as there is a lot of work to be done outside."
Yet, if any leader is eased out of government and given a role in the party or in states, it remains to be be seen as a 'demotion'.
Also, over the past eleven years, the BJP organisation has not been even remotely vibrant. Think of it, has it to any degree, retained and displayed the old collegial style of functioning where charcha was a 'must' before any decision?
By early 2001, Modi had sensed that he could be tasked by the party to head back to Gujarat and become chief minister.
His confidence stemmed from the inability of the incumbent, Keshubhai Patel, to either administer the state with the efficiency required to enable it to put the January 26, 2001 earthquake in the past, or to successfully lead the BJP in bye-elections.
It was however, a coincidence that Modi took oath barely twenty days after his 51st birthday on October 7, in 'an extravagant function that was unparalleled for its scale and ostentation'.
This cannot have been a better coincidence, particularly now.
For, less than 20 days after celebrations at his 75th birthday begin to die down, he would enter the 25th year of holding public offices; from October 2001 to May 2014 as chief minister, and thereafter as PM.
Next year around this time, we may well be preparing for another blitzkrieg of 'events' to mark a quarter century of Modi being in public office, clearly a first in the country.
Let there be no doubt that Modi in these 24 years so far has reshaped politics and governance considerably, if not completely.
These two-and-a-half decades have been marked by incessant pursuit of Hindu majoritarian politics along with unabashed promotion of select business houses and business tycoons.
If the acceptance level of prejudice-filled politics has seen new heights in the last 11 years at the Centre and previously in Gujarat, the country has also witnessed unprecedented levels of economic disparity in the country.
To sustain himself electorally, in the absence of jobs and financial security for the majority of people in the country, Modi resorted to the politics of handing out doles, in the form of free food rations and money for a variety of schemes staring with partial funding for constructing toilets.
In the process, he has given the Indian State, what academic Hilal Ahmed coined, the character of a 'charity' State.
To understand what reshaping of politics means, one has to go back to the responses of the two BJP veterans who preceded Modi and were in fact jointly instrumental in his elevation to the CM's post in Gandhinagar, and eventually continuing in office despite demands for his removal after the 2002 riots.
In 2004, when Vajpayee was asked for reasons for the BJP's decline to a tally that was lower than that of the Congress, he put the blame at Gujarat's door -- that the voters had penalised the BJP for not taking action against Modi for his failure in controlling riots after the Godhra carnage.
Likewise in 2005, when Lal Krishna Advani was trying to consolidate his position after Vajpayee stepped aside, during his visit to Pakistan, Advani found virtues in Mohammed Ali Jinnah and called him a secularist.
Quite clearly, despite having pursued the Hindutva brand of politics for the entirety of their political careers, both Vajpayee and Advani concluded that aggressive Hindu majoritarian politics had its limits, and that hard-nosed Hindutva could take the party to a take-off point but not thereafter.
In contrast, Modi remained sure about the divisive agenda's infallibility.
Hindutva and raising the spectre of fear of the 'other', primarily Muslims and to some extent the Christians too, the two communities who in the words of V D Savarkar, do not have their punya bhumi (holy land) in the geographic territory called India, remains recurring to Modi's political rhetoric.
Most recently, in his speech on the occasion of Independence Day, Modi announced his government's intention to initiate a high-powered Demographic Mission.
This is little but giving sanctity to the old political campaign of the Sangh Parivar that the Muslim population is rising in a conspiratorial manner and involves pan-Islamic organisations.
The intention is obvious, keep the pot simmering always.
But people in India's neighbourhood have raised their heads in protest when they realised that basic issues which dog them the day in and the day out are not being prioritised by the government and its leaders.
As Modi crosses a memorable watershed and enters a year that will take him to another landmark, it has to be seen if the people continue to be swayed by the discourse which enabled him to emerge as a much-backed leader way back in 2002.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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