About the Book
THE FIRST AUTHORITATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF INDIA’S CURRENT PRIME MINISTER
On 26 December 2012, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Gujarat for the fourth time, to extend his record tenure in office. Even then, his name prompted extremes of hate-filled anger or outright adulation. Since then, despite polarising Gujarat and India in more ways than one, he continues to do what it takes to survive in a democracy: win elections.
Written by veteran journalist and writer, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, after several in-depth interviews, meticulous research and extensive travel through Gujarat, this book reveals hitherto unknown aspects of Narendra Modi's psyche: as a six year-old boy selling tea to help out his father and distributing badges and raising slogans at the behest of a local political leader, abandoning his family and wife in search of his definition of truth, being initiated into the RSS as a fledgling who ran errands for his seniors, and finally, his meteoric rise after 2002.
Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times is the definitive biography of a man who may have challenged the basic principles of a sovereign, secular nation, but emerged as an undisputed and larger-than-life leader.
About the Author
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay embarked on a career in journalism in the early 1980s and is best known for his reportage and analysis of the rise and growth of Hindu organisations, their politics and agitations. He was among the first journalists who tracked the emergence of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid conflict from the late 1980s. He has followed, and written about, the political and electoral emergence of the BJP and its allies from that period.
He is the author of The Demolition: India at the Crossroads (1994), one of the first books on the Ayodhya discord and the rise of Hindutva. His biography of Narendra Modi, Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times, was published in early 2013, before Modi’s campaign to become prime minister took off. It is widely considered the most credible and authoritative account of Modi's rise to power.
Mukhopadhyay is also the author of Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984 and The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right. His most recent book, The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India, was published in 2021. He is currently a regular columnist and contributor to several leading newspapers and web portals, and a well-known commentator and host on Indian television news and video channels. An unabashed college dropout, he lives in India’s National Capital Region.