Shekhar Gupta: Mandal, Mandir make way for Modi

BJP's Mandir politics has subsumed Mandal under Modi-Shah and created a pan-Hindu vote. Modi's challenger has to invent a new politics

An epoch has ended in Indian politics exactly after three decades. A new one has begun. We are certainly not talking about the decline of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the rise of Narendra Modi as the solitary new pole of Indian politics. That would be too narrow a focus to understand the profound political transformation in India. We are marking the end of the Mandal-Mandir politics and the unfolding of the Modi epoch.

It was exactly around this time of the year in 1989 that the BJP, reduced to two in the Lok Sabha by Rajiv Gandhi in 1984, had begun