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It was the 13th time this morning that Narendra Modi occupied the Red Fort pulpit. But it was perhaps the first time that he had before him a task he is unaccustomed to – having to reassure his core constituency that he had not lost his mojo. It turned out to be a belaboured exercise and an unimpressive performance.

This is because this Independence Day is being observed against the background of two consequential events – first, the Gen Z congregation at Jantar Mantar and the brutal police crackdown on the young protesters, and, second, the chanda chori at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. While the first event heralded an entire generation’s alienation from the Modi project, the second exposed the ethical deficit in the religion-centric nationalistic agenda.

Both events added up to a significant depletion of the Modi regime’s ardour, and nothing revealed this loss of morale better than the manner in which the prime minister and the home minister sneaked into Lok Sabha for a few minutes’ rendition of ‘Vande Mataram’ on the last day of the Monsoon Session. Unwittingly, the sense of siege got confirmed.

It was against this background that Narendra Modi’s cheerleaders as well as his detractors wanted to see if the lion still roars and hunts, even if it is old and tired. What they saw was a king of the jungle, but listless and uninspired. Modi’s speech was obviously penned in English by........

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