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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a masterclass pacesetter. Without waiting for the next parliamentary election to be held in 2029, which may or may not return him to power, he has found an ingenious trick to beat Jawaharlal Nehru, his pathological obsession. This time his device is an elementary calculation, who spent exactly how many days as prime minister, Nehru or Modi, from the day they were sworn in after the election of 1951-52 and 2014, respectively. By that calculation, on June 9 Modi outpaced Nehru. 

In the process Modi cleverly expunged the most critical phase of the Nehruvian prime ministership, that is, the period between 1947 and 1952, when he served as the interim prime minister. It was in this period India had faced its worst challenge to its territorial and emotional integrity as a nation which was never replicated anytime later. Even the colossal Khalistani challenge of the seventies and eighties dwarfs in comparison.

The unprecedented communal riots in large parts of India involving Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had just torn the societal fabric of the nation when Nehru took the charge of India in 1947.

In these riots about a million people perished or injured and about 15 million people got displaced. Besides, the number of ravaged women was in the thousands, which has been most poignantly narrated in the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.

Also read: Modi’s 4,399 Days in Office: Less a Record, More About Conditions Apply*

The massive Hindu-Sikh refugee arrivals in Delhi and its vicinities, and of Bengali Hindu refugee arrivals in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and its........

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