Given Prime Minister Modi’s style of communication, his speeches are like those of great leaders. The public wants to listen to him. He mesmerises the audience
Before the run-up to the lok Sabha election in 2014, leaders of various political parties were a worried lot. They were worried of the fact that there would be thin crowds to listen to their speeches in the rallies addressed by them. On a few occasions, some senior leaders including party presidents were embarrassed to see that their rallies were attended by only a few hundred people. If a few thousand people turned up for their meetings, it was considered to be a ‘big rally’. In some political meetings in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, senior Congress leaders had to cancel their campaigns because only a few people turned up. These leaders then started inviting poets, comedians and even film stars to draw crowds before the speech of the top campaign leader of the party. But even that practice failed to pull crowds.
It was during the same period when Mr Narendra Modi was hitting the ground to campaign for the BJP. Gradually, attendance in his political meetings grew day-by-day. He was drawing more and more crowds as people wanted to listen to him. When he took the stage, people raised slogans hailing ‘NaMo’. Though originally a Gujarati, Mr Modi’s style of speaking (in Hindi) displayed his command over the language.
People in India have had the opportunity to listen to leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Ram Manohar lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. They were charismatic leaders who used to command respect even from their adversaries and critics. It is not desirable to compare these great leaders with Mr Modi. However, given Mr Modi’s style of speech and the way in which he communicates with the people, he appears to be a bit ahead of these leaders in public speech. Mr Modi mesmerises the audience like none did.
Recently, he delivered his Independence Day speech on August 15, from the ramparts of the Red Fort. The 80-minute speech was the longest ever by any Prime Minister on the occasion. Mr Modi then addressed a huge gathering in Dubai, and from Dubai he hit the ground in Bihar. Thousands of people thronged to the Dubai cricket stadium to listen to him.
A good orator always mixes myths and facts to drive home his point. This writer has seen many people getting impatient with long speeches. But Mr Modi has been successful in holding his audience for long — more than an hour at times. Mr Vajpayee is one of the leaders who had kept his audience spell-bound by his oratory skills. He knew well to play with words. Mr Modi is yet another leader who touches the core of the heart of the audience.
There are some wonderful speeches delivered by some great Indians, that are written in golden letters in the pages of history. In 1941, the last speech delivered by Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan on the ‘clash of civilisation’, remains a memorable one. So was the address by Swami Vivekananda that was delivered in Chicago. The speech of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, wherein he said, “Freedom is our birth right”, is still remembered. Mahatma Gandhi’s speech on August 8, 1942, when he gave the call of ‘Quit India’ and Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ address on the midnight of August 14-August 15, 1947, when India became independent, were great ones. There are some other landmark speeches made by leaders like Martin luther King. US President Barack Obama, who is the first black President of the US, too is a good orator.
(The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP)
