Mother tongue, tied

Mr Modi has confessed that his wax alter-egos understand him best, in his mother tongue of course, because he can talk at length without being asked fraudulent, Nehruvian questions

Mr Modi has come straight from the Wuhan summit with the Chinese President, where he no doubt spoke in his mother tongue when he convinced the premiere to concentrate on dhokla rather than Doklam. Emboldened by his persuasive faculties, he came to Karnataka and straightway challenged the pitiable Rahul Gandhi to speak in his mother’s mother tongue for 15 minutes, that too without looking at a paper. This is a fair challenge because the PM, a polymath, would have then understood Gandhi’s crisp Italian and gone back to reread Dante, Lampedusa and Calvino in the original; readings he missed when