What’s in a birthday—or in this case a couple? That too birthdays past, in this case, quite recently. I will explain the deeper significance in the end but first let’s understand whose birthdays we are discussing.
I can tell you that they are counted among India’s two most powerful men. Both celebrated their birthdays within six days of each other, that too last month. I am sure you’ve guessed by now, but here’s another hint. Both crossed the ruling party’s Margdarshak Mandal (Guiding Committee) threshold of three score years and fifteen. Plus one.
That, after all, is only a notional not constitutional rite of passage for the BJP, therefore I consider is pointless to dwell on it. Instead, I want, rather, to reflect on the stark contrast between these two birthday celebrations. What, indeed, does that contrast tells us about contemporary India?
Yes, one of them is our prime minister, whose seventy-sixth birthday was on September 17.
I have, in my earlier writings, called Narendra Modi India’s “Millennium Man.” Given all his achievements and contributions to the nation, Modi will be remembered as India’s greatest leader since Mahatma Gandhi. All the easier, you might think, now that Gandhi is so systematically reviled.
Comparisons, as they say, are odious.Butanotherbirthdayof an eminent personage almost comes to mind immediately.He too crossed the same magic milestone, that toojust a week prior. I am, of course, referring to Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghachalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Bhagwat turned 76 on 9/11. Ominous or auspicious? I would say the latter. Because unlike RSS haters and baiters, he is so much closer to Swami Vivekanandathan the Al Qaeda terrorists at the opposite end of the religious spectrum.
As Bhagwat himself said in his centennial outreach interaction in London in September, the motivation of RSS was “shuddha, sattvik prem” not hatred as RSS critics accuse it of. Vivekananda, too, one might remember, called for the end of religious fanaticism and violence in his famous Chicago address on that day in the 1893 Parliament of World Religions.
But the reason for the comparison is that Bhagwat's birthday went almost unmarked and unheralded. Ironically, it was Modi published a homage in major newspapers else the nation may not even have noticed.
Modi's on the other hand, following closely after on September 17, was celebrated with fervor or, some would say, sycophancy. Top Cabinet members, starting with Defence Minister and long-timer supporter, Rajnath Singh, sang paeans to the great man. So fulsome was Singh’s tribute that one wiseacre remarked that the Defence Minister turned into Deference Minister for the occasion.
A whole host programmes and commemorations followed: lamps were lit, there were special prayers, havans, temple rituals, processions, motorcycle rallies, blood-donation camps, cleanliness drives, tree-planting ceremonies, exhibitions, not to mention elaborate publiccelebrations. The Prime Minister's photograph even received ritual attention in some places.
A month-long Seva Sankalp Abhiyanmobilised the BJP's formidable organisational machinery.Accompanying these festivities was a nationwide publicity campaign celebrating 25 years of the yashasvi Prime Minister's service in constitutional office, beginning with his assumption of the Gujarat chief ministership in October 2001. Newspapers and magazines carried adulatory accounts of his extraordinary accomplishments. Even the Union Cabinet adopted a resolution celebrating his quarter-century in government.
Well deserved, of course, then why this disquiet?
Mohan Bhagwat himself hinted at it.
The day after, on September 18, 2026, addressing the Yuva Dharma Sansad in Ujjain, Bhagwat warned against ahankar (arrogance) and the illusion of absolute power: “A person who acts out of ahankar (arrogance) believing that everything is under their control because of the ego, carries the misconception in mind that everything should happen according to their own will. But that is not so.” Was this a slanting reference to Modi? After all, the RSS doesn't believe in vyakti puja, the worship of individuals. Individuals come and go, but it is the Sangathan that must prevail.
Perhaps, Bhagwat did not refer to Modi at all. But couldallthe pomp and circumstance of the latter’s birthday, this ostentation, expensive and coordinated, have happened with approval from the very top?Was the PM was succumbing to seductive power of his own cult?
Why should we be so uncharitable, even suspicious? Moreover,Modi admirers protest, isn't he doing it for the party? After all, larger-than-life promotions and projections win elections. From Indira Gandhi to J. Jayalalithaa.
Right? Then let us put this hypothesis to the test. If Modi's personality cult alone won elections, then the 2024 results should have been charso par--400 plus. But, personality cults by themselves do not win elections. Nor do ideologies or propaganda. Else, shouldn’t the setback of 2024 must also be laid at his doorstep?
Today, what we see instead is a government that though it seems electorally formidable is no longer invulnerable. The ruling party appears to be misfiring on several fronts: unemployment and economic anxieties, foreign-policy complications, youth unrest resulting in the resignation of the former education minister, controversies surrounding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, strictures on the Chief Election Commissioner, and the growing North-South divide—to mention a few.
These problems demand serious attention, consultation, institutional competence, and, above all, a willingness to listen. Not deflection, whether via foreign tours and awards, nor the endless rehearsals of the accomplishments of the last twenty-five years.
What seems to be the response instead? Too often, a tendency to delegitimate dissent while ratcheting up the personality cult of the great leader.To double down on stamping out all protests while and ratcheting up the personality cult of the longest-serving prime minister may not be the best way forward.
Proverbially speaking, shootthe messenger to escape or avoid dealing with the message. As if attacking Rahul Gandhi or Cockroach Janata Party will make the issues they raise go away.
But who will drive home the message that this strategy is not quite working?
The difficulty is that well-wishers who offer honest advice are often the first to be discredited or discarded. As a result, the leader hears increasingly less of what he needs to know and more of what he wishes to hear.
That is when political power becomes particularly dangerous, not necessarily to its opponents, but to itself. If history is to be believed, the isolation of a great man in his own echo chamber is often the prelude to a fall.
The Modi saga, even the Modi myth,isquite secure in Indian history.Why, then,is there a driver need to overhype it? Shouldn’t constructive criticism, so crucial to improvement, indeed, to democracy itself, be more welcome?Democracy, after all, is not merely the periodic endorsement of popular leaders. It is the continuous possibility of questioning them.
The eleventh-century Kashmiri historian Kalhaṇa, whose Rājataraṅgiṇī records the splendours and follies of kings, understood something fundamental about political power. Its greatest danger lies not always in external enemies but in the corruption of judgment that success itself can produce.
The ruler begins to believe his own publicity machine. Courtiers compete in exaggerating his greatness. Institutions lose their independence. Warnings are dismissed as disloyalty. What appears outwardly as strength conceals a gradual weakening within.
There is no reason why the BJP must follow this familiar historical trajectory. Indeed, its remarkable organisational resilience provides an opportunity to avoid it.Here Bhagwat's example offers an instructive corrective. The RSS has survived for a century not because one leader became indispensable, but because it cultivated continuity beyond individuals. Its greatest strength, whatever its critics may say, has been its capacity to reproduce commitment, leadership, and organisational purpose across generations.
Modi himself emerged from that tradition. Surely he does not need to be reminded of its central lesson.The real tribute to a great leader is not to surround him with lamps, garlands, hymns, and extravagant superlatives. It is to preserve the institutions, ideals, and political culture that make his achievements durable.
At 76, just past the pinnacle of success, Modi has little left to prove except how power should be exercised, shared, restrained, and eventually passed on.
That is where greatness must be tested.
Modi can still learn from Bhagwat, if not from history. For the finest legacy of a leader is not that people continue to worship him, but that the cause he served becomes strong enough to survive without him.
In my view, it is this message that the Sangh hopes to drive home by inviting the defrocked if not disgraced former Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar as the guest of honour for its forthcoming Vijayadashami celebrations.
This important event also marks the completion of the centenary of the RSS. The Sangh is greater than the party, not the other way round. And the corollary: the party is greater than the leader, not the other way round.
(Views are personal)
Makarand R. Paranjape,
Director of Education, AHCP LLC
Sri Aurobindo Chair (Hon.), Vedere