It was October 7, 2001. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked Narendra Modi to take the oath as Gujarat’s Chief Minister (CM). Till that point, oath-taking used to be mostly attended by a select few, following which the CM would take over his role in the Chief Minister’s Office. After taking oath as the CM of Gujarat for the first time, Modi concluded his speech with a rousing chant of ‘Bharat Mata Ni Jai’. Dressed in a grey kurta, Modi stepped down from the podium and drove an open jeep into the crowd amid drums, bugles and chants of ‘Apanu Gujarat, Agavu Gujarat’ — setting a new political culture which took decades for others to understand and emulate.
Modi, as Narendra Modi is commonly referred to by people at large, did not wake up one day and become the Prime Minister. Before September 13, 2013, when he was announced to be the Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (albeit upsetting many like his present ally Nitish Kumar), he carried a body of work as a Sangh Pracharak, Chief Minister.
As he turns 74 on Tuesday (September 17, 2024), his political legacy is that of a unique mix of administration of 50 years, as Prashant Kishore — his political strategist for the 2014 Lok Sabha election — recently pointed out.
Modi’s political journey, from a modest tea seller in Vadnagar, Gujarat, to becoming one of India’s most influential political figures, has been both transformative and enduring.
A look at the key milestones:
Narendra Modi’s political legacy is that of flirting with fire and coming out unhurt, mostly so. When he brought demonetisation, many thought he would lose state elections due to the problems people suffered. But Uttar Pradesh brought the BJP to power. One of his biggest political achievements is to blur foreign policy and domestic politics. He reaches out to the Indian diaspora, often in big events like Howdy Modi in the United States, which brings a sense of pride among many domestic voters. “Videsh me desh ka naam badhaya” is the common refrain. It only got further activated when India’s Chandrayaan 3 landed on the moon or India hosted the G20 in Delhi with big pomp and Modi being the centre of global attraction.
As he turns 74, Modi is setting his eyes on 2047, already.
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