Dear Mr Narendra Modi,

After I reached this place on 27 May 1964, I have generally kept away from writing letters. But old habits die hard. My daughter is here, and so are my grandsons. None of us knows you personally, but we often discuss your tenure as prime minister because you happen to be one of our successors in a long line of occupants of a rather demanding office.

I was delighted to learn that you completed 4,399 days as prime minister on 10 June 2026. Since you appear to be in excellent health and full of energy, you may even aspire to surpass the record of your friend Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has served either as president or prime minister since 9 August 1999. Please accept my heartiest congratulations on this milestone.

I often wonder, though, whether comparisons between you and me are entirely in order. When I died in 1964, life expectancy in India was around 42 years. Yet I managed to live up to 74. Today, life expectancy in India is close to 72 years. By that standard, you may well cross the age of 100 and leave me far behind in every comparison.

You are already older than I ever became while serving as prime minister, having turned 75 on 17 September 2025.

I confess to having a certain admiration for you. As you have often remarked, I was born with what people call a silver spoon in my mouth. I grew up hearing stories that my dirty linen was sent to Paris for washing. My father, Motilal Nehru, was born on the same day, the same month and the same year as Rabindranath Tagore — 6 May 1861.

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My father earned enormous wealth and could have accumulated much more had he chosen to do so. Instead, he abandoned comfort to join the freedom struggle. He was arrested twice, the second time along with me during the Civil Disobedience Movement. He spent a total of seven months in prison and was released early each time because of failing health. In fact, he died shortly after his final release from jail.

I succeeded him as president of the Indian National Congress. My greatest strength in those years was the support of Mahatma Gandhi. I can say without fear of contradiction that I was dearer to him than his own sons. It was Gandhi’s support that helped me become vice-president of the Executive Council in 1946, the body over which the viceroy presided.

Before that, I had spent nearly nine years in prison. Since you were born after Independence, you had no occasion to go to jail in the freedom struggle. It remains a mystery to me, however, how you escaped arrest during the Emergency that my thoughtless daughter imposed upon the nation. Whatever the reason, I shall not hold it against you.

I would like to disabuse you of the belief that the prime minister-ship of 1947 resembled the prime ministership of 2014.

Except for railway lines, the postal and telegraph systems, and cantonments established by the British, there was very little that could be called national infrastructure. Starvation deaths were not uncommon. There was scarcely any private sector worth the........

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