To celebrate the BJP’s historic conquest of West Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the party headquarters in Delhi on May 4 dressed in traditional Bengali attire—a dhuti-panjabi. Addressing the ecstatic party workers assembled before him, PM Modi spoke to them with the satisfaction of a leader who had waited nearly a decade for this moment. “From Gangotri to Gangasagar,” he proclaimed, “the lotus has bloomed everywhere.” Then, pausing over each state as though marking milestones in a long political journey, he traced the BJP’s sweep across the Ganga’s riverine course: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and now, finally, West Bengal. The entire Gangetic heartland, he declared, was now in the BJP-NDA fold.
