Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — Blessed Are These Eyes
Abhi To Sooraj Uga Hai — The Sun Has Just Risen
Tasveer Ke Us Paar — Beyond the Picture
Kargil
Vande Mataram
Narmada
Titali — Butterfly
Prem — Love
Maa, Mujhe Daivatva Dena — Mother, Give Me Divinity
Sapnon Ke Beej — Seeds of Dreams
Mallah — The Boatman
Garba
Basant
Swabhiman — Self-respect
Ek-aadh Aansoo — A Tear or Two
Aise Manushya — Such a Human Being
Narendra Modi the Poet — The Man Behind the Public Persona
We know Narendra Modi as a political leader, administrator, orator and Prime Minister of India. But there is another Narendra Modi who is less visible — the poet.
Long before the enormous political responsibilities of today, Modi wrote poetry in Gujarati. His collection Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — These Eyes Are Blessed — brought together poems written over a period of years. The collection was later translated into English as Letters to Self.
What makes this interesting is not simply that a political leader writes poetry. It is what he chooses to write about.
The observer behind the leader
Poetry requires a different kind of attention.
A politician has to look outward — at people, events, problems and possibilities. A poet often looks inward and notices things that ordinary attention misses.
Modi's poems frequently turn towards nature, seasons, the sky, rivers, flowers, light, darkness and the changing world around him. His own official website describes his poetry as revolving particularly around themes such as Mother Nature and patriotism.
There is something revealing in that.
The man who spends much of his public life speaking about development and the future also finds space in his writing for the silent world of nature.
“What cannot be explained in prose…”
Modi has himself expressed an important thought about poetry:
“What cannot be explained in prose can often be expressed in poetry…”
That perhaps provides the key to reading his poems.
A speech has an audience. A poem can be almost a conversation with oneself.
And that is why the English edition was appropriately titled Letters to Self.
A different emotional vocabulary
Public life demands certainty.
Poetry permits questioning.
In his poems one encounters not merely declarations but observations, feelings, memories and reflections. There is patriotism, but also solitude. There is nature, but also human emotion. There are moments of confidence as well as introspection.
This is particularly interesting because political personalities are usually presented through their public words — speeches, slogans, interviews and parliamentary statements.
Poetry gives us something different:
the private imagination behind the public voice.
The eyes that notice
The title Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — These Eyes Are Blessed — itself suggests a philosophy of seeing.
To be blessed is not merely to possess eyes.
It is to see.
To notice the first change of a season.
To observe a flower.
To look at the sky.
To feel the presence of nature.
To recognise beauty in something that millions may pass without noticing.
Perhaps this is one of the most interesting connections between observation and leadership. A person who observes deeply may see possibilities, problems and people differently.
Poetry and patriotism
His poetry also contains a strong sense of the nation.
But patriotism in poetry can be different from patriotism in a political speech. It becomes personal — an emotional relationship with the land, its people and its cultural memory.
Nature and nation sometimes meet in the same imaginative landscape.
The river becomes more than water.
The soil becomes more than earth.
The country becomes more than a political boundary.
It becomes something felt.
The man behind the microphone
There is a curious contrast here.
The public Modi is known for speaking to enormous audiences.
The poet Modi writes to an audience of one — himself.
That contrast is perhaps the real reason to explore his poetry.
We need not agree with every political position of a public figure to appreciate an artistic or literary dimension of that person. Poetry allows us to step temporarily outside politics and ask a simpler question:
What does this person notice when he is alone with his thoughts?
That is a much more intimate question.
A poet does not necessarily look like a poet
We often have an image of a poet as someone sitting quietly with a notebook, detached from the world.
But poets can come from anywhere.
They can be scientists, soldiers, teachers, administrators, businesspeople — or political leaders.
Modi himself once told schoolchildren that poetry exists within every person: for some it comes through the pen, for others through tears, and for some it remains within.
That is a revealing observation.
It suggests that he does not regard poetry merely as literature. He sees it as another way of experiencing life.
Beyond the political biography
History will record Narendra Modi through his political life.
His poetry records something else.
It gives us glimpses of the observer, dreamer and reflective human being behind the office.
And perhaps that is why reading a leader's poetry can be worthwhile.
Not to judge the politician.
Not to praise or criticise the government.
But simply to discover the person.
For behind every public personality there is usually another, quieter individual — the one who observes, remembers, wonders and feels.
Perhaps the poet is one of the places where that quieter person speaks.
And sometimes, to understand a person, we should listen not to what he says from a podium…
but to what he writes when he is alone.
Seven poems by Narendra Modi
1. Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — “These Eyes Are Blessed”
The title itself suggests gratitude for the gift of seeing. The poem reflects on the world through observant eyes — nature, beauty and the experiences that make life meaningful. It presents the poet as someone who pauses to look rather than merely pass through life.
2. Titali — “The Butterfly”
A butterfly becomes a symbol of beauty, movement and fleeting moments. The choice of such a delicate subject gives us a glimpse of a more sensitive and contemplative side of the poet.
3. Narmada
The Narmada is not merely a river. It becomes a living presence, connected with land, memory, culture and emotion. The poem reflects a relationship with the landscape that goes beyond geography.
4. Ek-aadh Aansoo — “A Tear or Two”
Here the tone turns inward. Tears represent emotions that may remain unspoken. Behind strength and outward composure there is also a human being capable of tenderness, pain and vulnerability.
5. Prem — “Love”
A meditation on love and human feeling. It moves away from public life and achievement and towards the emotions that connect one human being with another.
6. Kargil
The poet turns from the intimate to the national. Kargil evokes courage, sacrifice, patriotism and the price paid by soldiers. It reveals the poet's response to the nation through the sacrifice of those who defend it.
7. Abhi To Sooraj Uga Hai — “The Sun Has Just Risen”
This is the voice of optimism and possibility. The rising sun becomes a metaphor for a journey that has only begun. Its message is essentially: there is much more to be done; the dawn is not the conclusion but the beginning.
In his 2025 address marking 150 years of Vande Mataram, Modi said its core essence is Bharat — Maa Bharati, the eternal idea of India. He sees the Motherland not simply as territory but as a civilisational presence that has witnessed centuries of change and absorbed lessons from history.
He also describes Vande Mataram as much more than a patriotic slogan: a mantra of freedom, sacrifice, energy, purity and dedication. He emphasises how it gave courage to people during the freedom struggle and continues to inspire the responsibility to protect that freedom.
There is a particularly interesting connection with our earlier idea of Mother Earth: Modi interprets Vande Mataram through the ancient Indian idea of the land as Mother — the mother who gives, nourishes and, when her children are in danger, protects them.
