Modi At 75: The Retirement That Never Was
By Gajanan Khergamker
For years, the political grapevine has been obsessed with one date, 17 September 2025. Not because of any policy rollout, economic survey, or even a parliamentary showdown.
No, the breathless countdown was to Narendra Modi’s seventy-fifth birthday, the supposed magical marker when, as per the convenient rulebook invented in opposition WhatsApp groups, the Prime Minister would pack up his saffron shawl, hand over the keys to 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, and graciously disappear into the Himalayas.
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| Renowned sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik's sand sculpture at Puri Beach celebrates PM Narendra Modi's 75th birthday |
That imaginary handbook drafted, published, and circulated by serial detractors insisted Modi would step down at 74, as if politics in India were governed by a retirement age rather than the electorate’s stubborn insistence on voting.
Yet, the closer the milestone came, the louder the chorus grew. Think-pieces flooded the op-ed pages, editorials dripped with wishful reasoning, and Twitter (now X, but still the same echo chamber) thrummed with retirement memes.
Opposition leaders, who can barely hold their own states together, suddenly became constitutional purists citing “precedent.”
And today, the dreaded day has arrived. Modi turns 75. He is still Prime Minister. The saddle fits snugly, and the reins show no sign of loosening.
Cue the deafening silence from the same pundits and political soothsayers who, until yesterday, were calculating pension benefits on his behalf. If hypocrisy had decibels, India would need noise-cancelling headphones.
It is remarkable how predictable the babble has been: the same quarters, the same baiting, the same glee masquerading as analysis. The opposition, perpetually running on the fumes of wish-fulfilment, mistook an invented retirement clause for political gospel.
They rallied around the fantasy like pilgrims at a mirage, only to find today that the oasis was nothing more than hot air.
What they refuse to acknowledge - begrudgingly, of course - is that Modi’s grip on the polity has less to do with birth certificates and more to do with the political reality of an electorate that has kept him in the chair.
The age of 75, though handy as a talking point, is just a number. In fact, the only arithmetic that matters in Indian politics is majority—something the opposition cannot manage even when gifted a free pass.
So, while Narendra Modi blows out 75 candles, his critics must swallow their words, their timelines clogged with the ghosts of their own predictions. The silence is telling. The babble has evaporated.
The opposition’s premature obituary-writing has come undone. Modi, ever the conjurer of optics, has achieved what they cannot: turning a birthday into a political reaffirmation.
And, in the irony of ironies, the very people who wanted him gone now face the only retirement question that matters: their own.
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