No Indian prime minister in the past has been shown feeding tender grass to cattle or adorning himself with mounds of rudraksh necklaces before elections in his or her constituency. But Narendra Modi is a different kind of politician – and an aggressive one at that.
A few days before the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections, Modi made an unfair comparison between Muslim graveyards and Hindu cremation grounds. This was no innocent remark. It was a nuanced attempt to polarise the electorate in a high stakes election, which the BJP subsequently won with a massive mandate.
Now, turn back to 8 November 2016, when Modi sprung a surprise by demonetising two high-value banknotes, sucking out Rs 15.5 lakh crore in value from the banking system and, in the process, causing tremendous hardship to Indians, not to speak of damaging the economy.
This was, with the benefit of hindsight, a move to “construct” a new rich-poor narrative that, some analysts say, met with a degree of acceptability in UP.