Two back-to-back achievements—the longest-elected Prime Minister of India and completion of 25 years of distinguished, selfless service to the nation, including 13 years as the chief minister of Gujarat. That is Narendra Modi for you. He must have been a thinking person even while hawking chai on the platforms of Vadnagar railway station because the decision to become a pracharak of the RSS couldn’t have come overnight. In that role, he travelled far and wide in the country and became well-versed with its geography, diverse culture, and economics. He also acquired the gift of the gab and an oratorial ability to keep multitudes enthralled, regaling them with witticisms as well as impending crises.

Rocking The Political Boat

While his stewardship of Gujarat was indeed his launching pad for national politics as well as geopolitics, it is his role as the Prime Minister of a complex nation that has won him plaudits both nationally and internationally. Even his detractors admit that his quality of head and heart, more than anything else, is his fearlessness in rocking the boat, the shibboleths, and challenging the status quo. His party, the BJP, as well as the ideological parent, the RSS, has had three articles of faith—abolition of special status for Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, construction of a glorious Shri Ram temple in his birthplace at Ayodhya, UP, and ushering in the Uniform Civil Code........

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