The world has space for artists of all kinds, even if the government of the day may not agree. There are artists who wish to be recognized for their work, be it a painting, a song or a musical composition, a piece of sculpture or a poem or a novel. The musician playing an instrument or a dancer may reach the heights of creativity in their interpretative execution. Then there are the nameless artists who work every day, unrecognized and never paid in full for the beauty they create — for example, at looms and potter’s wheels. There are artists who want to make a point and artists who ask questions. The artist of persuasion, for example, is one of the most honoured since old times. He can move his listeners to tears and rage at the same time, as Mark Antony did in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The Indian prime minister is also gifted with the creative ability to persuade his listeners of anything he pleases; his unique brew is composed of misdirection and sophistry. Shakespeare’s Mark Antony was hardly that gifted.

But the Indian prime minister has the modesty of the true artist. In a rally in Mathura, he produced a tale out of counter-intuitive ingredients in a jiffy — that there are some people who get an electric shock when they hear the words ‘Om’ and ‘cow’ — and presented it humbly as the mere truth. It simply turned the violence, fear and losses that now surround the aggressive cow-centred politics championed by the Bharatiya Janata Party on their head, while projecting as the ‘other’ anyone and everyone who objects to the interference in livelihood and food habits of thousands of Indians, many of them poor. Woven artistically into this comment is the assertion of majoritarianism, a sentiment that is now widespread enough for elected representatives to support publicly groups charged with lynching. The prime minister’s emphasis on ‘Om’ and the ‘cow’ was unmistakeably a reminder of the Hindutva tone the BJP believes to be characteristic of Indian culture. No wonder the prime minister said that those who think that ‘taking the name of cow’ pulls back the country to the past have destroyed everything in India.

There is a minor inconvenience around still: it is called the Constitution. According to this founding text, India is a secular country. The prime minister of such a country is expected to be secular too, not exclusivist and majoritarian. He is also the prime minister of the whole country, not just of the BJP and its siblings and followers. He cannot afford to spend all his time attacking anyone who does not agree with the party’s policies and values. But the prime minister is a true artist; he has never let minor considerations such as the Constitution or prime ministerial horizons interrupt his creative flights. Especially when he has to address something as mundane as a flagging economy.