The public do not really care about what degrees their elected representatives possess. The highest office is not barred to people without a doctoral degree in, say, quantum mechanics. Let us rewind.
Jawaharlal Nehru did not have academic qualifications to be flaunted. Manmohan Singh had a doctoral degree. But no sane person would argue that Nehru was the worse prime minister. Nehru connected. Nehru had a vision that was, sadly, unfulfilled. But the idea that we could think became central to our public lives. Notwithstanding the calumny recently heaped on him by Perry Anderson.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claimed academic qualifications pose a different order of problem.
There is first the problem of transparency. The documents put out in the public domain are far from convincing. Why, we may legitimately ask, have the original documents not been presented? The authenticity of the documents and the claims they seek to bolster seem to be given to the public on trust. Journalists and citizens are being asked to accept what they are being ordered to.