When Narendra Modi delivered his fifth Independence Day speech from the ramparts of Red Fort, he became one of two non-Congress PMs to have completed five years in office. The first was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. That the original master orator passed away just a day later is particularly poignant. Today Modi’s dramatically delivered addresses energise low-attention-span millennials. In the BJP, it was Vajpayee who first set the template for harnessing the magical, omnipotent power of words to political campaigns. Yet while PM Modi’s thundering orations are delivered from the bully pulpit of an immensely powerful politician, Vajpayee’s seemed to flow from the stage of a kavi sammelan.
There was witty pungency but always a Nehruvian respect for the adversary. Occasionally though, Read More
