Rohit Kumar 
It has taken me 10 long years, but I have now understood why two people can have two completely different views of Narendra Modi, and why some can adore him while others can be his trenchant critics; why some can revere him as a great vishwaguru or world leader, while others consider him the greatest threat to Indian democracy ever.
The answer to this question is actually very simple. It is because (drum roll please)…
… Just like comedian Vir Das’s two Indias, there are also two Modis!
One Modi refuses to visit civil-war-torn Manipur, give press conferences, or stem the dangerous communalism threatening to tear India apart. The other Modi is a living saint – a kind, self-effacing, grandfatherly figure committed to building a just and prosperous nation for all.
Let’s call the former Modi I and the latter Modi II.
This important realisation dawned on me after I finished watching the entire two-hour long ‘podcast’ of Nikhil Kamath’s interview with Modi II. Kamath made it abundantly clear in the beginning of the podcast that he is not a journalist, nor does he know much about politics, which effectively relieved him of the journalist’s burden of cross questioning his interviewee or asking him questions on the burning issues of the day.
Modi II shared how, soon after becoming chief minister of Gujarat for the first time, he invited his old school friends for dinner and had a meal with them, wistfully hoping that one of them would address him with colloquial “तू” (tu), a friendly, informal way of saying “you”. But alas, no one obliged, so in awe were they of him now as chief minister.
Modi I on the other hand has sent all those those who might have had a right to address him with a “तू” straight to the Margdarshak Mandal – Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, and others. Modi I now has the dubious distinction of being a truly polarising prime minister whose presence in the Indian polity has led to the ending of countless friendships and relationships along ideological lines.
Modi II longs for friendships, Modi I has effectively wrecked them.
When asked what qualities a young politician should have, Modi II replied, “Dedication, commitment, the ability to walk with the public in their joys and pains, and most of all, be a good team player.”
Team player? Clearly, these are qualities that only Modi II possesses, because Modi I has saturated the land and its public and media spaces with his own photos and visage so completely (for example, G-20 posters and COVID-19 vaccine certificates) as to leave practically no room anywhere for the rest of the ‘team’ of which Modi II speaks.
As far as walking with the public in their pain, Modi I has decided to build himself a brand-new residence, estimated to be in the range of Rs 467 crore while 80 crore Indians subsist on monthly government ration handouts. India incidentally ranks 105th out of the 127 countries on the 2024 Global Hunger Index.
Around the 23-minute mark of the podcast, Modi II announced, “Good people need to keep entering politics and they should come with mission, not ambition.”
A damning indictment, indeed, of Eknath Shinde, Ajit Pawar, Praful Patel, Y.S. Chowdhry, Suvendhu Adhikari, Ashok Chavan, and even Himanta Biswa Sarma who have joined Modi I’s BJP.
Around the 30-minute mark, Modi II told Kamath, “I am a human, I am not a god, I make mistakes.” So unlike Modi 1, who in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections declared he was a non-biological being, sent by God to perform his divine will!
Shortly thereafter, Modi II told Kamath, “I will work hard, I will never do anything for myself…I don’t live in the comfort zone. I am unfit for comfort.”
That must have been a slightly confusing moment even for Nikhil Kamath who possibly found himself wondering whether he was in the presence of Modi II or Modi I, sitting as they were in a luxurious living room in a bungalow at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, Maybach Mercedes cars nearby and aircraft of Rs 8,400 crores parked not too far away.
When asked if thick skin was needed in politics, Modi II replied that what is needed most is empathy, and when asked, “Do you feel sad?” Modi II said, “Yes, I get emotional when I think about the poor and their problems.”
Again, a striking contrast to Modi I who showed little empathy for the poor while enforcing demonetisation, and the COVID-19 lockdowns with only a few hours’ notice for each, and who also let allegedly 700 peacefully protesting farmers die on the outskirts of Delhi between November 2020 and December 2021, refusing to give in to their demands for a whole year.
In fact, one of Modi I’s ministers has become quite famous for the government’s fiscal policies which are wreaking havoc in the lives of common people – for example, imposing high GST on everything possible, including on caramel popcorn and examination papers.
Modi II told his interviewers that young people nowadays are quick to fact-check fake news. So it must have been in Modi I’s reign that Alt News fact-checker Mohammad Zubair was sent to prison.
Modi II recounted the story of one Vasant Vrajlal Parikh, (1929 – 2007) an eye doctor from Vadnagar, Gujarat, who fought elections as an independent candidate and won, with donations worth only Rs. 150, every paisa of which he gave an accounting for. In this story there is nothing remotely resembling Modi I’s electoral bonds scheme which helped the BJP to get Rs 6060 crores in anonymous donations between 2018 and 2023, till the Supreme Court finally struck it down as unconstitutional.
Unlike Modi I, Modi II claimed he doesn’t really like campaigning and prefers to focus instead on governance. He also claimed he doesn’t like giving updesh to naujavan (discourses to youth), nor does he have any right to give lectures to anyone, quite the opposite of Modi I who can’t seem to share enough of his Mann Ki Baat with the masses.
Towards the end of the podcast interview, Modi II once again stressed the need to build others up, not put them down. It’s just too bad that Modi I is not of the same genteel persuasion, and who has not refrained from making derogatory remarks about senior opposition leaders like former PM Manmohan Singh whom he accused of showering with a raincoat on or calling Sonia Gandhi “the Congress widow.”
Modi II told his podcast host that he had foreseen decades ago that the day would come when the world would line up for Indian visas. Kamath, for reasons best known to himself, felt it prudent not to mention that in 2023 alone, 216, 219 Indians renounced their citizenship.
Of course, that has happened in the reign of Modi I. Modi II had nothing to do with that.
Enough talk about two Modis.
There is no Modi I or Modi II.
There is only one Modi at whose doorstep lies the ultimate responsibility for what India has today become. And while the prime minister’s ability to say one thing and do another remains unparalleled, even in the world of double-speaking politicians, his illusory world of stage-managed interviews and godi media ‘news’ will one day necessarily crumble.
One wonders what those who so wholeheartedly aided him in building his phantasmagoria will say that day.
Rohit Kumar is an educator, author and independent journalist, and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.