This refers to the article, “With Modi's ascent, India comes of age” (September 19) by Gautam Mukherjee.
Times have changed. Fifty years ago, educated people would have mocked at Mr Narendra Modi's poor English and thereby concluded he was unfit for high office. It is not widely known that Mahatma Gandhi chose Jawaharlal Nehru over Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for prime ministership because he believed the former would be more acceptable to the West.
While it is true that the Congress before independence was totally different from what it is today, we should note that even before independence there were two Congresses: The Gandhi-Nehru Congress with no vision for the country but simply a political unit continuing to govern pretty much as the British did. To the party, the nation was defined by the state. The other was the nationalist version that drew on the vision of Sri Aurobindo built on Sanatan Dharma.