Barely a month back the US-based TIME magazine called Prime Minister Narender Modi ‘Divider in Chief’ but with the thumping electoral victory of BJP under the leadership of Modi the same magazine said ‘Modi has united India like no Prime Minister in decades’. In the article published on May 28, the TIME magazine listed the developmental agendas of Modi led BJP during his five-year tenure (i.e. 2014-2019). Though the article of May 10 was critical of Modi, the recent praise of Indian PM has silenced the Modi critics across the world.

 

 

 

 

While the earlier article started with “Of the great democracies to fall to populism, India was the first”, Tuesday's piece said, “A key factor is that Modi has managed to transcend India’s greatest fault line: the class divide”. “How has this supposedly divisive figure not only managed to keep power but increase his levels of support? A key factor is that Modi has managed to transcend India’s greatest fault line: the class divide,” the TIME article read. The writer, Manoj Ladwa, credited Modi's emergence as a unifier to his origins in a backward caste – a factor missed or deliberately omitted by Western media obsessed with what they call upper caste domination.

 

 

 

 

The pre-election cover write-up was covered by Aatish Taseer was turned into campaign fodder in India and acclaimed by Modi's critics as an indictment of him as a "divider" by a global media powerhouse. Taseer is the son of late Pakistani politician and Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, and the Indian journalist Tavleen Singh. He wrote May 10 article on Modi, in which he said, “Populism has given voice to a sense of grievance among majorities that is too widespread to be ignored, while at the same time bringing into being a world that is neither more just nor more appealing”. But the tone of the recent article is completely different, which mentioned that “Narendra Modi was born into one of India’s most disadvantaged social groups. In reaching the very top, he personifies the aspirational working classes and can self-identify with his country’s poorest citizens in a way that the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who has led India for most of the 72 years since independence simply cannot.”

 

Modi led BJP has won more seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls in comparison to the number of seats it won in 2014. In 2014 it won 282 seats out of 543 but in 2019 it has won 303 seats.