Modi Elevates Civilisational Confidence as India’s Moral Compass, Anchors India’s Future in Ancient Continuity
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at Somnath today, the event was freighted with far more than religious symbolism. The timing, one thousand years after Mahmud of Ghazni's first sack of the shrine, and the choreography, drone shows, Om chanting, and a Shaurya Yatra honouring nameless defenders, served as a carefully constructed statement about how India sees itself in a world full of flux.
In Modi’s own telling, Somnath is a civilisational anchor in the midst of global fragmentation, a site where the ancient speaks to the modern without contradiction.
 |
| Image Source: PM NaMo |
India, he suggests, does not move forward by severing its past, but by deepening its relationship with it. In this, Somnath is a statement that what survives, not despite trauma but through it, and becomes foundational.
The Somnath Swabhiman Parv, where Modi led Omkar mantra chanting and presided over commemorative events, is reflective of an underlying worldview that India’s resurgence is inseparable from its spiritual and cultural inheritance.
ॐ हमारे वेदों का, शास्त्रों का, पुराणों का, उपनिषदों और वेदांत का सार है।
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 10, 2026
ॐ ही ध्यान का मूल है, और योग का आधार है।
ॐ ही साधना में साध्य है।
ॐ ही शब्द ब्रह्म का स्वरूप है।
ॐ से ही हमारे मंत्र प्रारंभ एवं पूर्ण होते हैं।
आज सोमनाथ स्वाभिमान पर्व में 1000 सेकंड्स तक ओंकार… pic.twitter.com/GqHxt8sn9y
The chant of Om, the sonic distillation of cosmic order, resonates as both invocation and assertion. For Modi, invoking this civilisational vocabulary is also strategic. It seeks to forge cohesion in a pluralistic democracy by appealing to civilisational motifs rather than mere institutional ones.
Somnath’s relevance, then, lies not just in the story of destruction and reconstruction but also in the template it offers for national renewal. India, by this logic, does not claim stability through static identity but through its capacity to renew the ancient within the present.
Modi’s choice to frame the site’s history not as a call for grievance but as a witness to resilience, echoes the post-Independence legacy of Sardar Patel and K.M. Munshi, who spearheaded Somnath’s revival as a project of civilisational self-belief.
Jai Somnath!
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 10, 2026
Today’s welcome was very special. pic.twitter.com/Uc7GJdvPVI
In the global context, Modi’s visit comes as the world grapples with renewed geopolitical tensions, from great power rivalries to civilisational anxieties in the West and beyond. India, meanwhile, is positioning itself as a civilisation-state, an entity whose endurance gives it a distinct voice in international affairs.
Against the backdrop of declining cohesion in many modern democracies, India’s proposition, that civilisational depth offers a stabilising force, is being reasserted with growing confidence.
This does not mean India’s posture is uncritical or unchanging. Modi’s messaging, particularly in recent months, has sought to emphasise spiritual rootedness without retreating from modernity. The juxtaposition of Om chanting with cutting-edge drone visuals at Somnath is a rehearsed choreography meant to reject the binary of ancient and modern, and to instead advance a synthesis.
This is ideological. In Modi’s framework, India’s technological and strategic ambitions are not suspended above its civilisational soil, they are, in fact, nourished by it.
In Somnath this evening, chaired a meeting of the Shree Somnath Trust. We reviewed various aspects relating to infrastructure upgradations in the temple complex and ways to make the pilgrimage to Somnath even more memorable. pic.twitter.com/q9WHJ2crsx
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 10, 2026
The significance of this moment is also temporal. The Somnath Swabhiman Parv marks 75 years since the temple’s formal reopening in independent India, and 1,000 years since its first recorded sacking. But its political meaning is situated firmly in the present.
Modi’s civilisational lens is not universally shared within India, nor is it devoid of political calculation. But it is undeniable that the prime minister has consistently elevated civilisational rhetoric to the centre of India’s national self-presentation.
This framework offers India a distinctive proposition that states the ancient in the present continuous tense and that tells us that a civilisation that has survived a thousand years of upheaval is well equipped to sail through the next hundred with ease.