It is natural to feel a sense of loss when an economist of the stature of Meghnad Desai—Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics and a British Labour Lord—passes away. However, such moments also offer an opportunity for a more objective assessment of his life and legacy. Desai was a figure admired both by civil society activists in India and those close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi—a rare duality.
Interestingly, there is no publicly available record of Prime Minister Modi praising Desai -- who became a member of the House of Lords of the British Parliament in 1991 -- during his lifetime. It was only after his passing that Modi, recalling a "valuable" conversation with him, referred to him as "a distinguished thinker, writer and economist" who had "always remained connected to India and Indian culture" and had played "a role in deepening India-UK ties."
One of Gujarat's towering civil society personalities, the late Achyut Yagnik, who was a friend, philosopher, and guide to me after I joined The Times of India in Ahmedabad in 1993, knew Desai personally. He once told me that Desai was the brother of Bhalubhai Desai, an officer in the Indian Accounts Service, and encouraged me to meet and interview him—which I did.
I met Desai sometime in the mid-1990s at Bhalubhai Desai's residence on Satellite Road in Ahmedabad. Though I don’t remember the exact year, I do remember that the interview—spanning over 3,000 words—was prominently published opposite the editorial page under the headline “Marxist Lord,” a title chosen by then-editor Tushar Bhatt.
After the interview, Desai asked if I could drop him off at someone’s house nearby. I said I had a scooter with a sidecar, and if he didn’t mind sitting in it, I’d be happy to take him. He agreed with a smile, saying it was the first time in his life he’d be riding in a sidecar. I often joked with friends afterward that my humble scooter had become historic—after all, a British Lord had ridden in it!
In that interview (unfortunately, I no longer have the clipping, which took up more than half a page of The Times of India), Desai offered a fascinating take on Marxism. To him, Marxism was primarily a tool for analyzing economic and social life—a methodology rather than a call to action. His view was that capitalism was here to stay, and its evolution would depend on how the mode of production changed over time.
I met him again a few years later, probably in the late 1990s after I had shifted to Gandhinagar to cover the government. This time, the interview was published on the business page and was less prominent, but my interest in what Desai said and did never waned.
In fact, following the post-Godhra riots of 2002, I once had a conversation with A.K. Sharma, then secretary to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. A few months after the riots, Sharma—who resigned from the IAS in 2021 and joined the BJP—asked me whether any intellectuals abroad could help improve Modi’s image internationally. I wasn’t sure but gave him a list that included economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Desai.
Not long after, I noticed that Modi had established a rapport with Bhagwati, the staunch free-market advocate. As for Desai, Modi reportedly first met him during a climate change event in 2010. This seemed to be the turning point in Desai’s evolving view of Modi, although his public support didn't crystallize until 2013.
Until then, Desai had repeatedly said that Modi would always be associated with the 2002 Gujarat riots. “Modi has to answer for 2002,” he asserted, calling the riots a “stain” that could not be erased and labeling Modi a “divisive” figure. Even in 2013, while praising Modi's governance in Gujarat, he remarked, “He is a controversial leader because of his past… whether he can unify the country is still a question,” and questioned whether Modi would gain acceptance across India, particularly among minorities and liberals.
Desai also criticized the Gujarat government’s handling of riot-related documents, saying: “The government destroyed many relevant records four days after the Supreme Court appointed the Special Investigation Team (SIT), and the SIT did not even bother to investigate why.”
However, things began to shift before Modi became Prime Minister. At the 2014 Jaipur Literature Festival, Desai said, “Modi is a ‘Dabangg’ hero... we need dabangg types of leadership in our country,” praising Modi’s boldness and charisma and describing him as the kind of visible, energetic leader India needed.
In January 2014, Desai wrote: “Narendra Modi will be Prime Minister of India… I hope so for the sake of India,” adding, “He is the only leader in India who can get things done.” His praise continued till 2020, during which he maintained that Modi remained India’s most capable leader for executing major initiatives. Yet, Desai also began to caution that the government should shift from Hindu nationalism to a more inclusive developmental narrative, even as he supported controversial decisions like demonetisation.
The turning point in Desai’s support may well have come during Modi’s official UK visit from November 12 to 14, 2015. As photos from the time show, Desai and his wife Kishwar Desai were present alongside Modi and UK Prime Minister David Cameron during the unveiling of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at Parliament Square in London.
In an essay for the book Making Sense of Modi’s India (HarperCollins), Desai—quoted in my report in Counterview—said Savarkar “was a modernist and not a devotee of religion.” According to Desai, Savarkar’s idea of nationhood was shaped by contemporary European notions and was not rooted in Hinduism per se. Savarkar believed that anyone born in the land of the Indus (Sindhu) was part of Hindutva, meaning even Muslims could belong, provided they were loyal to their homeland.
Calling Savarkar’s doctrine “secular,” Desai warned that the problem was not Hindu nationalism per se, but the fact that the government had taken it upon itself to propagate a narrow version of it. He was deeply critical of the way state institutions had begun promoting an “official line” in history writing, suggesting it had led to the patronage of ideologically compliant academia.
Desai specifically criticized Modi’s oft-repeated claim that India had suffered 1200 years of slavery, calling it a distortion of history. “This is bogus history,” he wrote, adding that Hindu nationalists were trying to erase the historical tensions between Buddhism and Brahmanism by falsely portraying Buddha as a Vishnu avatar.
Desai’s final reversal came in January 2019 during the Pravin Visaria Memorial Public Lecture in Ahmedabad. I reported on the lecture for Counterview. Speaking to a jam-packed audience, Desai said that many were “disappointed” with Modi and felt that “acchhe din ab tak nahin aaye”—the much-promised “good days” had yet to arrive.
In that talk, Desai also revisited the Mahabharata, calling it a story about a “property dispute in a family.” Quoting Marxist historian D.D. Kosambi, Desai argued that the epic was fiction, noting that the reported death toll of millions—based on the scale of war described—was implausible. He cited the Atlas of Population History (1978), saying India’s population during the likely period of the Mahabharata ranged from 10 to 50 million. With such numbers, a war that wiped out nearly two million people was demographically impossible.
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