Helpless Moksha.

"Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat's remarks on political retirement at the age of 75 has prompted the opposition to question its implications for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who turns 75 this September." ET. "September 11 will now be the date to watch. That's when Bhagwat turns 75. If he decides to follow his own counsel and retire, there will at least be 'talk' about Modi in the BJP corridors. Will there be a challenge. No." "Nobody would dare to even whimper, forget making a claim. Modi now has the power and pre-eminence in the BJP-RSS to choose how long he wants to serve and he is definitely going to want to contest in 2009," wrote Shekhar Gupta. "The Vedas, from whence we are instructed, Hindutva derives, designate 75 as the marker for the jeev atma (the fleshly human) to turn towards the forest in order to renounce this world and begin the quest for moksha (salvation)." The quandary for Mr Modi is whether he goes now as instructed by the Vedas, or hangs on until he has converted India into a Hindu Rashtra (state), wrote Badri Raina. Mr Modi had a popularity rating of 62% from 2 January-9 February 2025 (India Today), down from 87% from 6 April-19 May 2015 (Pew Research). wikipedia. The big guns in the BJP may want him to step down so that they may have a tilt at the post of prime minister but those lower down could want him to stay because they depend on Mr Modi's popularity to win elections. And winning a seat in the Indian Parliament is extremely lucrative. "An analysis of affidavits of about 258 sitting MPs recontesting the 2009 Lok Sabha elections shows that more than half of them saw their assets grow between 100% and 9,100% in comparison to what they had in 2004." TOI. Then, there is probably a worry that if the BJP were to lose the 2029 general election the new government would gain control of the investigative agencies and there could be a danger of score-settling for the alleged targeting of opposition politicians (The Wire). In January 2023, Hindenburg Research revealed "the findings of our 2-year investigation, presenting evidence that the INR 17.8 trillion (US $218 billion) Indian conglomerate Adani Group has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades." However, "A Supreme Court-appointed panel of experts examining India's regulatory mechanism in an investigation linked to the Hindenburg allegations has given a clean chit to the Adani Group and has said it appears there was no regulatory failure on the part of the market regulator SEBI." NDTV. It is irrelevant that Mr Adani is from Mro Modi's home state of Gujarat (Britannia). What if Mr Modi declares his intention to step down and there is an outcry from BJP members for him to stay? That could explain Operation Sindoor which was "focused, measured and non-escalatory" (pib.gov.in), like the 'surgical strike' on Balakot in 2019, in which "Open source satellite imagery revealed that no targets of consequence was hit" (wikipedia) but gave Mr Modi a landslide victory in the general election that followed (wikipedia). Create a TINA (there is no alternative) wave and reluctantly agree to stay in power. Helpless in front of adoration, as it were. That's moksha.