Happy birthday, Mr President: Modi-Pranab bromance plays out on Twitter

You may want to consider our Prime Minister a serial and a generally responsible birthday wisher, given that he doesn’t miss mentioning the birthdays of anyone from Indira Gandhi to Sharad Pawar on Twitter. [caption id=“attachment_1846305” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pranab Mukherjee and Narendra Modi. AFP.[/caption] However, something rare happened yesterday, something that makes you want to go ‘awww’ over the PM. This is what happened:

Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India greeted #PresidentMukherjee this morning on his birthday pic.twitter.com/UdjdGWEazE

— President Mukherjee (@POI13) December 11, 2014

  If you didn’t know that these were your country’s Prime Minister and President, they could be just two old friends meeting on a birthday. They could be just saying: Person 1:  “Forgot the soda man!” Person 2: “Chuck it, we’ll have it on-the-rocks bro!” Given how thrilled to bits Mukherjee is in the picture, it seems that he was never as glad to meet anyone, as he is to have met PM Modi on his birthday. For example look at the following pictures with Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi plus flowers.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister of India greeted #PresidentMukherjee this morning on his birthday pic.twitter.com/3MiJPLrIDJ

— President Mukherjee (@POI13) December 11, 2014

#PresidentMukherjee was greeted by Smt. Sonia Gandhi, UPA Chairperson on his birthday pic.twitter.com/k52SiTo5mE

— President Mukherjee (@POI13) December 11, 2014

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Evidently, Modi seems to be the only guest Mukherjee was looking forward to the most. So, what accounts for the new Modi-Mukherjee bromance? The Telegraph quotes Congress ministers, a deep dark conspiracy by Modi to steal Congress’ only man in a position having some semblance of power. The Telegraph has a Congress minister spell out the motive for them: “Look at the tweets carefully; there is a design to undermine the contributions of the Nehru-Gandhi family,” he told The Telegraph. “See the political intent in his tweets, not the personal emotions.” It could be possible, The Telegraph points out, that Modi gushing over Pranab on his birthday, was a way of putting down Sonia Gandhi, whose birthday was celebrated a couple of days back. Then Modi had tweeted a relatively cold greeting saying, “Best wishes to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on her birthday. May Almighty bless her with a long and healthy life.” Even his tweets about Nehru and Indira Gandhi were pretty calm while the tweets about leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar were effusive, a Congress functionary  pointed out. Now, this is a classic playing off one friend against another strategy that is hugely popular in high school. However, one has to point out that Modi has always been curiously soft on Mukherjee, even when slamming the UPA in his pre-poll days. In fact, while campaigning for the polls and attacking Congress for practising dynastic politics and nepotism, Modi repeatedly spoke of how Pranab Mukherjee was one of Congress’ brightest politicians but was always given a raw deal by the party. Speaking in Bengal in January this year, Modi had asked Bengalis to not spare the Congress for slighting Mukherjee. He had said, “When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Rajiv Gandhi was in Kolkata and he went back. Under a democracy, that time the senior-most minister in Indira Gandhi’s government was Pranab Mukherjee. It would have been good if he had been sworn in as the country’s prime minister. They didn’t give it. Not only that, the family (Gandhis) felt that something is going on. So when the Rajiv Gandhi government was formed, senior-most minister Pranabda was not even made a minister.” He also spoke of how Mukherjee was not made the PM in 2004 either, though he was the senior-most leader in the Congress stable. Around the same time, while Modi had come up with disparaging names for the Gandhi family - Madam for Sonia Gandhi, shehzada for Rahul - he continued to call Mukherjee, ‘Pranab_da_’. ‘Dada’ is widely considered an acknowledgement of person’s respectability and seniority in Bengali. P Chidambaram, after taking over as the Finance Minister had relentlessly laid the blame for the financial mess the country was in on Mukherjee, his predecessor in the ministry. Given that the Gandhis never seemed to have objected, it must have seemed like a perfect opportunity for Modi to play Mukherjee’s brother-in-shining-armour back then, and even now. However, the PM’s job might he still half done, given Mukherjee is still in no mood to take the Gandhis to the cleaners just yet.