75 Years: A Tale of Two Figures and an Unfinished Story

The 75th birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not just a personal milestone; it was staged as a national spectacle.

From party workers and business houses to diplomatic circles abroad, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) orchestrated celebrations that underscored his centrality in Indian politics.

Yet beneath the pomp and hype, the number 75 carried a quiet irony—it revived an old, half-told story of the BJP’s power dynamics, where age was both a ladder and a stumbling block.

When Modi was first projected as the BJP’s prime ministerial face in 2013, the natural contender from within was Lal Krishna Advani—the elder statesman, architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, and once the most recognizable face of the party.

But Advani was gently yet firmly sidelined, not for lack of stature, but for what was diplomatically termed “generational change.” His age, then in the mid-eighties, was enough to push him into political oblivion.

Advani obliged silently, carrying his disappointment as a lonely figure within the power corridors he once dominated.Now, as the BJP hails Modi as a “75-year-old young man”, the contradiction emerges starkly.

The very number that once acted as a ceiling for Advani’s relevance is being celebrated as a badge of vitality for Modi. This is not merely about two individuals but about the evolving grammar of political legitimacy in India. Where age was once seen as wisdom, now it is repackaged as resilience; where seniority was once respected, now it is replaced by cult personality.

In this sense, Modi’s 75th birthday becomes more than an anniversary—it is a mirror reflecting the unfinished story of the BJP’s inner life. The party that once prided itself on collective leadership and ideological discipline now revolves around a single figure whose age is rebranded as strength rather than weakness.

The tale of Advani and Modi, therefore, is less about personal rivalry and more about the transformation of Indian politics itself: from councils of elders to the charisma of one leader; from stories paused mid-sentence to narratives that are rewritten entirely.

The age of 75, then, is not just a number—it is a reminder of what was lost, what was redefined, and how the politics of time itself has been bent to serve power.The celebration of Modi at 75 exposes the BJP’s most decisive but least acknowledged shift: the abandonment of institutional rules in favor of individual exception. The same party that once argued that leaders above 75 should step aside for “younger” generations now suspends its own logic when the personality cult demands it.

Age limits, once weaponized to retire Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, and even others in state units, have been selectively dismantled to protect Modi’s authority.This is not about age alone—it is about the reengineering of political morality. The BJP, which rose under the RSS discipline of collective decision-making, now thrives on the elasticity of rules, bent or broken to keep one man unchallenged.

Advani’s silence in his exile is a symbol of institutional defeat, while Modi’s spectacle at 75 is the triumph of personal branding over party ethos.Thus, the tale of two figures becomes a cautionary note: when principles are bent for convenience, power may consolidate, but the credibility of politics itself corrodes.

The number 75 no longer signifies either retirement or maturity—it signifies the selective politics of permanence, where time bends not to natural law but to the will of the ruler.