‘Gandhi’s 20th century to Modi’s 21st’: Maha CM highlights Berjis Desai’s bold claim

Mumbai, Oct 24 (IANS) The Durbar Hall of Raj Bhavan shimmered under its chandeliers on Friday evening as the book ‘Modi’s Mission’ was formally unveiled, and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was the first to react to the book before the media.

“Berjis Desai has achieved something extraordinary,” he said, voice steady and deliberate.

“In this launch, we witness not just a book, but the distillation of a life lived under relentless scrutiny – yet one that reveals, page by page, the private steel beneath. From a boy’s childhood in Vadnagar to a leader now guiding the world’s largest democracy, every chapter is rooted in evidence, not anecdote. And then comes that arresting line: the 20th century carried Gandhi’s name across the globe; the 21st, Desai quietly insists, will carry Modi’s.”

Milind Deora, who had penned the foreword, said, “I’ve known Berjis for years,” he said, warmth threading his words.

“To be asked to write even a modest preface felt like being handed a small torch in a grand relay. My only plea: translate this book into every tongue our children speak. Let the youngest of this country read how one man’s discipline became a nation’s momentum.”

Berjis Desai – lawyer, columnist, chronicler of power spoke on the occasion, “I told him in 2001, ‘You’ll be Prime Minister one day.’ He said nothing, just handed me a cup of tea and went back to work. That silence, I now understand, was the sound of destiny being accepted without fuss.”

He traced the arc; the Gujarat of 2001, where Congress salons scoffed at a ‘provincial upstart’; the Delhi of 2014, where drawing-room elites packed imaginary suitcases rather than face a Modi victory; the India of today, where welfare flows to Salma and Radha alike, where Article 370 is history, where UPI hums in village chaupals, where a temple rises in Ayodhya not as politics but as civilisational closure.

Desai closed with the image that lingers longest, a mother in Vadnagar, her palms rough from years of washing dishes for others, telling her son that service is the only inheritance worth having. Monk, soldier, pracharak – three roads diverged in a narrow lane.

He chose the one that led, eventually, to South Block, carrying her quiet sanskar in his breast pocket.

–IANS

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