For much of his political life, Narendra Modi has posed as the electorate’s savior from the impending and exaggerated threats his own rhetoric conjured up for them.

In the 2002 state elections in Gujarat, he set the theme for the campaign with a few deft sentences, “The songs which Sonia Gandhi and some English TV channels were singing about Gujarat after Godhra have obviously been heard across the border. Now mian Musharraf is repeating their accusations against me in an international forum. ”

Modi managed to convey that the dynasty which had ruled this country for so long was not only mocking a majority of the electorate but was also providing fodder to India’s greatest enemy—a mian no less— to exploit the aftermath of Godhra.

For the Lok Sabha election in 2014, he assumed the persona of thechaiwalla who, once and for all, would rid this country of the same dynasty, which, he now claimed, was threatening to usurp the achievements of icons such as BR Ambedkar. “It is unfortunate that these days Congress party's shehzaade (prince)—Gandhi—enjoys humiliating Baba Saheb Ambedkar by repeatedly saying that Congress has given this right or Congress has given that right. All the rights and laws have been given to us by Ambedkar.”

Over the years, in Modi’s speeches, the dynasty—from Sonia Gandhi to the shehzaade—had come to embody a world of inherited privilege that was running the country into the ground. Modi himself, on the other hand, became in this conception a man who had risen by the sheer dint of his hard work. His 56-inch chest was the bulwark between the people and feudal exploitation.