AA Edit | Modi Shook Off Freedom Legacy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a record of 8,931 days in power, as the Gujarat Chief Minister and the Prime Minister combined. With this, Modi surpassed the 8,930-day record of former Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling.

Modi has the distinction of being the longest-serving Gujarat Chief Minister, with his term spanning from October 2001 to May 2014. He was first sworn in as India’s prime minister on May 26, 2014, after winning the Lok Sabha elections held that year. Since then, he has won two more Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and 2024 and continues to serve as the Prime Minister of the country, which tops the world in population and remains the fourth-largest economy.

Apart from being a personal achievement for Narendra Modi, this milestone is a testament to the unique strength of Indian democracy. When India became free in 1947, several world leaders were sceptical about the experiment of democracy in India, a country that, by the Western standards, was too complex, chaotic and disorderly.

India has had many leaders with humble beginnings, such as B.R. Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, K. Kamaraj, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Jayaprakash Narayan, among others. However, many of them had their origins in the freedom movement, which catapulted them into leadership roles.

Modi’s long innings in power opened a different dimension in Indian politics. The very fact that Modi could not only rise through different levels of a complex society without any godfather and reach the apex of political power, but also sustain himself for over a decade, indicates the maturing of democracy. India has, for the first time, chosen a leader whose claim to power does not come from the legacy of the freedom struggle. Instead, it is based on the hope for a better future — a key change that augurs well for the country.