With Bharat Ratnas, Narendra Modi firms up a four-M Mantra – Mandal, Mandir, Market, Mandi

By conferring Bharat Ratna first on Karpoori Thakur and L K Advani, and now on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Choudhary Charan Singh, and agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan, it is evident that Narendra Modi will present a mantra including Mandal, Mandir, Market and Mandi (farmers) in the Big Battle of 2024 – taking a leaf out of the book of many a leader before him, but giving it a Modi touch.

Three of the leaders honoured by the Modi government are from the Opposition ranks – Bharatiya Lok Dal (now Rashtriya Lok Dal or RLD) leader Charan Singh, socialist ideologue Karpoori Thakur, and Rao, the first non-Gandhi family leader of the Congress to complete a term as PM. The BJP under Modi has been co-opting leaders from outside the party and adding them to its pantheon, whether Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose earlier, and these personalities now.

Swaminathan, the Father of the Green Revolution, is associated with Indira Gandhi. She initiated the process towards self-reliance on food production after she went to the US soon after becoming PM in 1966, and American headlines greeted her with ‘An Indian PM comes with a begging bowl’.

Mandal in the Modi Mantra stands for the importance given to OBCs under his government, with the PM himself an OBC. Karpoori Thakur and Charan Singh both belonged to backward classes, with Thakur really the father of the Mandal phenomenon. As chief minister of Bihar in 1978, he introduced 26% reservation for OBCs in government jobs, and when the decision was met with violent protests, he decided to set aside 3% for the EWS (economically weaker sections) and another 3% for women – a harbinger of things to come in later years.

A Bharat Ratna to Thakur also gave a