In normal course, whenever a new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president assumes office, the national council is summoned to formally inaugurate the presidency and put its stamp of approval. The public anointment is the new president’s moment of glory and an occasion to enlist party cadre in the immediate programmes being planned. For three days in early March, however, the spotlight was not on Rajnath Singh but on Narendra Modi, who appears to be racing ahead of his peers for the pole position within the party.

It is less than three months since Modi scored a hat-trick of electoral victories. Whatever doubts remained of his future pre-eminent position in the party have been removed. In this period, Nitin Gadkari, who had fallen out with Modi after the truce between the two in May 2012, was eased out of the party leadership by a combination of forces. Rajnath Singh, the new president, has not wasted any opportunity to strike an adulatory posture towards Modi. Leaders of the parties, including Modi’s peers, have made no critical remarks and projected him as the leading vote catcher. The only discordant note has been sounded by Advani who underplayed the importance of Modi without being explicitly critical.

In the three months, Modi has been wooed by the international community including the moralistic European Union that has attempted to rebuild bridges with Gujarat with Modi remaining at its helm. In February, Modi addressed a well-publicised gathering of the Shriram College of Commerce students and secured an invitation to address by video link, the Wharton Indian Economic Forum, again a student-organised event – indicative of Modi making inroads among youth. (The invitation was however withdrawn later.)

The ‘Modi as PM’ campaign has run from the autumn of 2011 when he embarked on the Sadbhavna mission. In this period he never expressed his ambition but did not stop anyone from drumming up support. Till the assembly elections in December last year, the general presupposition was that Modi would recast his image once the verdict rolled in his favour. It was believed that Modi’s hard-nosed Hindutva approach would not find much support outside Gujarat.

In three months after the verdict, Modi has said nothing and done little to shed his ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ core over which he assiduously built the picture of ‘Vikas Purush’. True, Modi has talked about little beyond development and the Gujarat model since December, but he has also not said anything to display remorse for the 2002 riots and the subsequent ghettoization of Muslims in the state. His approach towards religious minorities is similar to the auctioneer’s ‘as-is-where-is-basis’ marketing strategy. Fair play is promised but there is no making amends for anything that may have been happened in the past. In executing this strategy, Modi expects support of a section of short-on-memory and high-on-ambition Gujarati Muslim youth and the proponents of the ‘move-on’ argument. This is his hope, but it remains to be seen to what extent the dice rolls Modi’s way.

But what about the scenario outside Gujarat? Will the BJP with Modi as its mascot be able to draw more allies, or even retain the existing ones? Would not the elevation of Modi lead to another anti-BJP consolidation like in the 1990s and lead to its political ostracisation?

The BJP has lived with this nervousness for more than a decade and a half. In the autumn of 1995, Advani vacated the position of the party’s electoral mascot in favour of Atal Bihari Vajpayee because of the reasoning that the strongman’s Ayodhya activism would not end the party’s political isolation. While speaking at the national council, Advani returned to his old script: that the ‘mutual equation between the BJP and the minorities must be changed’ and that ‘BJP must take the initiative in this direction by including a Charter of Commitments to the minorities’.

Clearly aimed at defanging Modi, Advani’s assertion is built around the belief that in the next polls, disillusioned voters would robotically coalesce around a centrist, BJP-led alliance with little difference in policy from the one led by Congress. History and political commonsense would have us believe that such a path is the only viable one for the BJP to return to power. But this contention is disputed by Modi and supporters demanding his undisguised elevation. Modi and his supporters believe that there is no need for any political tokenism and that the time has come for plain-speakers to find support among an impatient electorate.

The debatable question is if India has truly changed in the past decade and half – more so since 2002, and is willing to accept a person like Modi as one of the contenders to be prime minister? However disagreeable Modi’s politics may appear to large sections of Indians, the stage has been reached that support for him is matched, if not in size then in political din at least, by a growing tribe of Indians. One may disagree with his lot, but democracy gives us the responsibility to accept people’s mandate, just as it gives us the right to protest violation of rule of the law by the state and its players.

Modi’s self-projection as Alpha-male found increased takers as the centre stumbled since 2010. Contrasting with the belief of a government in paralysis, the image of a non-corruptible leader has been perceived as a panacea for all ills in polity. Non-acceptance of this reality has only helped Modi in his march to Delhi. The more he has been attacked, the swifter has been his emergence. Developments like withdrawal of invitation to Modi at Wharton enable him to consolidate his core political base. It is akin the ‘Maut Ka Saudagar’ faux pas of the Congress in 2007.

If one draws metaphors from the sporting arena, Modi entered for the triple jump in the run-up to the assembly polls. After a run-up that lasted the campaign period, the verdict was his ‘hop’ – falling short from the intended 125-plus mark. Recent events and developments in near future is the ‘step’ for the final ‘jump’ to the pit. For the moment, Modi is focused on the ‘step’, the greater the distance he covers would facilitate the ‘jump’ that he intends to take.