Can longevity be a political message? Decoding the politics of the PM@4399 celebrations

The BJP-led NDA’s celebration of Narendra Modi completing 12 uninterrupted years may prompt a question: what exactly is a governing party asking voters to think about when it asks them to see how long it has been in power?

The question deserves attention because democratic elections and political anniversaries are fundamentally different things. Elections are prospective in nature, asking voters to exercise their choice of political players vying to navigate the unseen future of public life. But anniversaries of stints in power invite reflection on the passage of time. They encourage citizens to look back rather than forward. When a governing party places a milestone at the centre of its public messaging, it is doing something slightly different from what governing parties usually do. It is asking voters to think not only about where the country is going, but also about how long the present political arrangement has endured.

This is not a commentary on the government’s record. Supporters and critics have their own assessments of the last 12 years, and those arguments are unlikely to be settled anytime soon. The more interesting issue is one of political communication. What political meaning does longevity acquire when it is presented not simply as a historical fact, but as a message directed at the electorate?

At one level, the answer seems obvious. 

Remaining at the apex of government for more than a decade in a democracy as large, diverse and politically competitive as India is no ordinary accomplishment. Yet democratic politics has always had a complicated relationship with the passage of time. Governments tend to naturally view, or at least like people to view, longevity as evidence of public confidence. But voters may often view it through a wider lens, measuring not only what difference it brought but also triggering the anti-incumbency instinct – whether the current government overstayed in the seats of power.

One reason opposition parties across democracies constantly remind electorates how long governments have been in office is that their objective is straightforward. They seek to turn elections into judgments on incumbents. Governing parties usually prefer a different emphasis. They seek to persuade voters that they remain the best vehicle for the future rather than encourage extended reflection on the duration of their incumbency.

The recent celebration therefore raises a question: why foreground a theme that governments elsewhere often approach with a degree of caution?

In some ways, part of the answer lies in how BJP’s relations with power corridors in Delhi have evolved over the last eight decades – from a remote and almost ostracised aspirant to an unsettled occupant and then a dominant holder.

The history behind the optics

The optics of spectacle of the anniversary, for which the PM-led government seems to have a penchant, can also be seen in that historical light. The BJP did not enter government for the first time in 2014. The broader Jana Sangh tradition had participated in power before, and the BJP itself led governments during the Vajpayee era. Yet 2014 represented a different kind of political moment. For the first time, a non-Congress party secured a parliamentary majority on its own and established itself as the principal pole around which national politics revolved.

The sense of emphatic arrival lay not merely in the party’s access to power but in its place within the country’s political imagination.

For much of the post-Independence period, in many political and intellectual circles, the Jana Sangh and later the BJP existed outside the mainstream consensus – the dominant ‘common sense’ that ironically flowed from the upper echelons of the political class in the Republic’s early decades. Their ambition was not merely to participate in power but to become one of the principal authors of the national political story.

The celebration of 12 uninterrupted years, therefore, seems pitched to reinforce the public affirmation of a long political journey. A stream of politics that once saw itself as peripheral to the dominant establishment now finds itself occupying the centre of political life, with a degree of continuity that earlier generations within that tradition could scarcely have assumed.

A comment made shortly after the 2014 election reflected on this aspect of the shift. Writing at the time, the Cambridge historian Shruti Kapila argued that “Modi’s victory has declared the arrival of a distinctive brand of conservatism as the mandated political language to direct India’s future”. More significantly, she suggested that, in India, the moment had acquired “a kind of revolutionary import, in that it is the byword of change.” The Modi mandate, she wrote, was “certainly not about protecting old privilege. Quite the opposite. It is all about validating the new.”

Keeping aside political preferences, the observation captured something important about the BJP’s rise. Its appeal was rooted as much in ideology as in its ability to present itself as the vehicle of political change, at least a challenger to entrenched power systems. The party sought a mandate not only for what it stood for, but also drew on what it was seen as challenging.

The anniversary seems to be hinting at another strand: the lure of the historical register that entices key political forces once they entrench themselves in power circles. 

The iconography is inescapable

The Congress system, particularly during the decades following Independence, developed a powerful public iconography around its leaders, milestones and achievements. Certain anniversaries, personalities and historical moments became woven into the broader story through which the Republic understood itself. As the BJP has emerged as the dominant force of contemporary Indian politics, it is hardly surprising that it should seek to construct a parallel vocabulary of historical significance. Political anniversaries, commemorations and milestones are part of that process. They help establish a sense of continuity, permanence and historical presence. They locate a political movement within the larger narrative of the nation.

Such efforts are rarely detached from personalities. 

Political eras are often remembered through the leaders who come to embody them. Just as earlier periods of Indian politics became associated with larger-than-life political figures, the BJP’s contemporary narrative is inescapably linked to Narendra Modi’s political persona. The marking of 12 uninterrupted years is, therefore, not merely the commemoration of a tenure. It also contributes to the construction of a wider symbolic narrative in which a political movement, a governing era and a central political personality become intertwined.

Even after factoring in the above aspects, the original question remains: does longevity function effectively as a political message?

Comparative experience offers some perspective. 

The projection of longevity

Long-governing parties in mature democracies have often been careful about how they present the fact of their longevity. Britain’s Conservatives governed for 14 years between 2010 and 2024, yet they rarely made the duration of their tenure the centrepiece of their appeal. Their campaigns generally focused on future priorities, leadership or policy choices. Similarly, Angela Merkel’s long period in office in Germany was usually framed through ideas of stability, competence and governance rather than the simple arithmetic of years served. Even Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, one of the most electorally successful parties in the democratic world, has generally justified itself through performance and management rather than duration alone.

Political strategists understand something that is easily overlooked. Voters may respect continuity, but they are not necessarily persuaded by continuity on its own. Democratic politics remains fundamentally future-oriented. Citizens generally want to know where a government intends to take them next rather than how long it has already been at the wheel.

An analogy can be drawn from the different reactions to different types of cricket statistics. 

Cricket followers know that statistics come in different categories. Some may signal major milestones and register in quantitative terms. A batting average, a tally of centuries or a record of wickets tells us something fundamental about a player’s contribution. Other statistics – like the trivia about the longest seventh-wicket stand by New Zealand batters in a test match at Adelaide – perform a different function. They record, classify and commemorate. They tell us that something has been noted, but their significance lies in duration, not achievement. Political milestones can sometimes occupy a similar space.

Twelve uninterrupted years in office may be a fact, but it is a blunt form of political statistics. The political meaning of that fact is less straightforward – more a trivia that the passage of time keeps throwing up. It tells us that a government has endured; whether endurance by itself constitutes a persuasive political argument is another matter.

The distinction is particularly relevant in the BJP’s case because so much of the party’s rise was tied to the language of change. Its great political accomplishment after 2014 was not simply that it occupied power but that it persuaded large sections of the electorate to see it as the principal vehicle through which change could be pursued. That perception helped transform a party once viewed as peripheral to the dominant political consensus into the dominant force of contemporary India. Success, however, changes the questions that political movements must answer.

For much of its history, the BJP’s challenge was how to move from the margins towards the centre. Today it occupies the centre. The task before a dominant party is therefore different from the task before a challenger. It is no longer enough to persuade voters that one represents an alternative to the existing order. The more demanding challenge is to persuade them that energy, renewal and purpose remain possible after a prolonged period in power. The party should be reflecting on whether longevity is understood as a historical fact to be recorded, a milestone to be commemorated, or a political message to be actively projected.

In projecting its endurance in power corridors, is the party not also telling voters that it has been too long an incumbent? In some ways, such celebrations unwittingly declare the party as the entrenched political establishment – something that it sought to challenge and replace.

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