India, June 14 -- The tidy partisan instinct is to treat Nehru and Modi as antitheses, as if to honour one is to repudiate the other. However, this is what is known as a 'category error'. They are better understood as two movements of a single composition, as sequence rather than split.

There is a simple way of understanding the inevitable comparison between the terms of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the incumbent. Nehru began with the idea of "discovering India", and proclaiming its moral greatness to the world. Modi, on the other hand, started having discovered India, and proceeded to rebuild its material strength.

The tidy partisan instinct is to treat Nehru and Modi as antithese...