From 'Divider in Chief' to a unifier: For US' TIME magazine, 'Modi has united India like no PM in decades'

New York: Barely a month after TIME magazine put out an article calling Narendra Modi ‘Divider in chief’, the US-based publication took a U-turn on its stand on India’s Prime Minister after he returned to power with a bigger mandate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, saying ‘Modi has united India like no Prime Minister in decades’ in the latest article. In an article published on May 28, the widely-read magazine enumerated the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party’s developmental agenda in the previous five-tenure from 2014-2019. While the earlier article was highly critical of the Indian PM, the recent on talks in praise of the BJP stalwart who silenced his 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 article on May 10 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”. However, the tonality of the article published on Tuesday changed to “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.” The Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with an absolute majority and an even bigger mandate than what they had received in 2014. While they won 282 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats in the previous general elections, this year they single-handedly won a whopping 303 seats, decimating the Congress and other opposition parties. Source: Times Now