India's prime minister. Gujarati. Described as a "strongman prime minister" who riffs off Trump's slogans, aiming to "Make India Great Again". The most famous alumnus of the RSS, having served as an RSS pracharak (worker) for many years before moving to the BJP. Served as chief minister of Gujarat for almost 13 years before becoming prime minister in 2014, when he flew to Delhi in Gautam Adani's private jet. He campaigned on a promise to turn all of India into Gujarat—synonymous with efficient governance, ease of doing business and first-class infrastructure. His right-hand man is Amit Shah, the home minister and BJP chief strategist. Rahul Gandhi leads the opposition Congress party.
Soon after taking power in 2014 he lamented that "the mentality of 1,200 years of slavery continues to haunt us." The chief target of this grievance is the series of Muslim empires that came before British colonialism, above all the Mughal Empire. His party has spent the past decade renaming Mughal cities, rejecting Mughal cuisine and writing Mughals out of history books. In early 2024 he consecrated a temple at Ayodhya on the ground said to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, where a mosque built during the reign of Babur had stood until a mob demolished it in 1992—a conflagration that forged the BJP's base and propelled it from 16% of parliamentary seats in 1990 to 56% by 2024.
In 2016 he sent troops to hit militant targets in Pakistani-administered Kashmir 11 days after an attack on an Indian military base. In 2019 he fulfilled a long-held ambition of his Hindu-nationalist movement by revoking Kashmir's semi-autonomous status. He says that this brought peace and prosperity, but a deadly attack in April 2025 undermined that claim. After the attack—in which at least 26 people were killed in Pahalgam—Modi cut short a visit to Saudi Arabia and, breaking into English (a rarity), warned: "India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers." On May 7th 2025 he ordered India's largest aerial assault on Pakistan in more than 50 years, striking nine sites in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and in Punjab. The strikes were partly intended to satisfy a furious public that expected Modi to go beyond his responses in 2016 and 2019. During skirmishes in 2019 Modi foolishly stoked jingoism at home; this time government rhetoric and the public mood were more restrained.
The BJP lost its parliamentary majority in the 2024 election. Modi now rules with coalition partners, which mostly act as a check on his autocratic tendencies. After 11 years in power the BJP appears to be running out of bold reform ideas. Legislatively the party has hit several obstacles: a change to capital-gains tax had to be partially reversed after an outcry, a media bill was put on the back burner, and a bill to synchronise state and central elections was kicked into the long grass. In June 2025 the government announced it would hold a long-delayed census in 2027, which could lead to a redrawing of electoral boundaries that favours the BJP-friendly north.
On May 12th 2025, two days after Trump announced a ceasefire, Modi addressed the nation, saying India's operation established a "new normal" in which terrorist attacks would be treated as acts of war. He said India would not differentiate between terrorists and the government that supports them, nor bow to nuclear blackmail. He denied India would enter wide-ranging talks with Pakistan, as America had claimed, and made no mention of Trump's role. His party announced nationwide victory rallies, but few Indians believed in the triumph the government was peddling, in part because hyper-nationalist television anchors had led viewers to believe India was on the verge of annihilating Pakistan before the ceasefire cut short the campaign.
By January 2026, sixteen months after his electoral reverse, Modi's coalition had won a string of state elections and the opposition was in disarray. He is approved of by some 70% of Indians. At 75 and with almost 12 years in office, he is expected to run again in 2029 and has his eye on Jawaharlal Nehru's record time in office, which he would surpass in 2031. His coalition has proved surprisingly stable: small regional parties have offered loyalty in exchange for patronage, and the weakness of the opposition has made difficult economic reforms easier.
Though he still indulges in divisive rhetoric, he has taken fewer actions to goad or bully India's Muslims since his electoral setback, concentrating instead on economic reforms. Adversity and the need to satisfy coalition partners appear to have made him more pragmatic.
In the 2024 election the BJP's vote share fell by less than a percentage point, from 37.4% to 36.6%. Congress won only 21.2% of the vote. Postmortems predicting a new era of messy coalition politics were wide of the mark.
The coalition has shown a ruthless electoral edge. Weeks before state polls in Bihar in November 2025, 10,000 rupees ($110) was transferred into the bank accounts of around 2.1m female voters under a scheme purporting to support entrepreneurs. While legal, such transactional vote-buying stretches electoral norms. Rahul Gandhi alleges the government has committed "vote chori", or voter fraud, and claims the BJP is engineering elections nationwide—but has not presented evidence of widespread fraud, nor have analysts found a smoking gun. States including Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal go to the polls in spring 2026.
Five states announced results on May 4th 2026. The BJP won a landslide in West Bengal—taking over 45% of the vote and more than two-thirds of seats—ending 15 years of rule by Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC). It was one of the BJP's most important state victories since coming to power nationally in 2014; West Bengal, India's fourth-most-populous state, has 100m people and 42 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP also won a third term in neighbouring Assam with 37.8% of the vote. With allies, Modi's coalition now runs 22 of India's 31 states and territories with elected legislatures, covering 80% of the population. In Kerala the ruling Communists were ejected by a Congress-led coalition, leaving India with no Communist state-level government for the first time in almost 50 years. In Tamil Nadu, Vijay, a cinema megastar turned politician, swept away the incumbent M.K. Stalin.
Critics decried a heavy-handed revision of West Bengal's electoral rolls that removed more than 9m names—11% of the electorate—disproportionately Muslims, women and Dalits; of 3.4m appeals against exclusion, fewer than 2,000 voters were reinstated in time. The central government deployed almost a quarter of a million armed police to oversee voting. Modi is perhaps the most ruthless Indian leader in tilting elections in his favour since Indira Gandhi cancelled them in the 1970s, though even critics conceded that institutional pressure could not by itself explain the BJP's dominance, which rests on his ability to unify Hindu voters.
During the 2013 "taper tantrum", when the rupee lost nearly a fifth of its value, Modi—then a state leader eyeing the top job—delivered fiery speeches denouncing the ruling Congress party, saying the collapse was "not just for economic reasons" but "because of the corrupt politics of Delhi." He was astutely exploiting a long-held fixation: Indians have viewed a strong currency as a matter of international prestige since the humiliation of 1991, when the government pledged 50 tonnes of gold and devalued twice. Opposition politicians now relish giving him a taste of his own medicine.
In a defiant public address on August 2nd 2025, Modi avoided name-checking the American president but urged economic self-reliance at a time of global uncertainty, after Trump slapped tariffs of 50% on Indian exports. Months-long negotiations towards a "mini-deal" yielded a final tariff rate virtually double the original threat of 26%. Modi's government sent anonymous officials to brief international media on India's right to buy Russian oil. Ajit Doval, the national security adviser, was warmly received in Moscow; Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the foreign minister—long known for patiently corralling sceptical compatriots into American arms—mounted no recent defence of Trump. Instead he said India desired "a fair and representative global order, not one dominated by a few." Even India's small club of free-market economists stopped arguing for India to unilaterally lower its tariffs.
According to a 2024 poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations, 84% of Indians had believed Trump was good news for their country—the highest of 24 countries polled. But despite Modi's outwardly friendly reception at the White House in February 2025, Indian diplomats were "stunned" by the "lack of respect" America's president showed India's prime minister behind closed doors, according to one journalist briefed on the visit.
On November 21st 2025 Modi announced the biggest overhaul of India's labour laws since independence in 1947, liberalising hiring and firing, simplifying compliance and extending social security to gig workers. States must implement the changes. Modi first tried to rewrite the labour codes five years earlier but relented in the face of opposition. Manufacturing subsidies had largely failed to boost industry, and a shortage of good jobs was blamed for his failure to retain a majority in the 2024 election. A string of subsequent state-election wins gave him the freedom to act; Trump's tariffs (Indian exporters face an American duty of 50%) added pressure for reform.
On August 15th 2025, marking the 78th anniversary of independence, Modi delivered a defiant speech: "When we grow and excel, the world will acknowledge our worth." He announced a long-overdue simplification of the goods-and-services tax (from four main rates to two) and pledged to "accelerate the journey of reform". He wants India's GDP to reach $10trn by the centenary of its independence in 2047 (currently $4trn), which would require sustaining nearly 6% annual growth for more than two decades.
On August 31st 2025 Modi attended a Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Tianjin—his first visit to China in seven years. He was expected to meet Xi Jinping. The trip reflected improving ties following a border understanding reached in October 2024. Since America's tariffs, Modi twice called Vladimir Putin his "friend" on the phone. Trump has played a role in the India-China rapprochement, by making India less sure it can keep strong ties with America: he imposed swingeing tariffs on India, condemned it for importing Russian oil and embraced Pakistan's army chief.
An elaborate cult of personality is built around Modi. India's biggest cricket stadium is named after him. A rail service to the capital, Namo Bharat, takes part of its name from a short version of his. There is even a road named after his mother. He is a mascot for welfare schemes and an icon on every central-government website. A visitor to India will encounter Modi's face more often in one day in Delhi than Xi Jinping's in a month in Beijing.
He has always insisted that the government exists to serve, declaring on taking national office in 2014 that he was not the country's prime minister but its "chief servant". His government renamed the street on which he lives from Race Course Road to the Path of Public Welfare. In 2025 it renamed state governors' residences from Raj Bhavan (Government House) to Lok Bhavan (the People's House). In February 2026 he inaugurated a new prime-ministerial office christened Seva Tirth, or Sacred Place of Service, with a legend mounted on the outside that translates as "The citizen is akin to God."
The covers of this book are too far apart.