Six months on, Modi’s scorecard on the development front is mixed. India’s GDP slowed from 5.7 percent to 5.3 percent in the first full quarter of his prime ministership. Industrial output is down, and Modi’s plan to imitate East Asia’s export-oriented economies with a government-directed push to “Make in India” looks anachronistic at a time of increasing automation and slow global growth. Fixed investment has barely budged in recent months.

Critics of “Development Man” are arguably being unfair, or at least hasty. India’s economic problems are structural and deep-rooted; they stem from, among other things, poor investments in education and infrastructure, and excessive reliance on crony capitalism.

However, Modi’s extended family of Hindu nationalists assesses his six months as prime minister differently. It measures progress by the steps India has taken towards purging foreign influences and becoming a “Hindu nation.”

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent outfit of Hindu nationalists (Modi is a lifelong member), has long wanted India’s religious minorities to call themselves Hindu.

A senior minister in Modi’s cabinet claimed recently that there are two kinds of Indians: children of Lord Rama (Hindus) and bastards (Muslims and Christians).

Rajnath Singh, the home minister, claimed recently that Werner Heisenberg (whom Singh called “Eisenhower”) had derived his uncertainty principle from the ancient Vedas. Leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party now routinely propose revisions in modern science as well as history.

How to reconcile this eruption of know-nothing chauvinism and sectarian lusts with the great expectations from Modi’s Development Man? Modi as prime minister has actually toned down the demand that he focus on economic modernization and suppress his followers’ retrograde cultural politics.  But it betrays a perilous naivete about Modi’s past as a missionary of the RSS, as well as disregard for the organization’s openly-avowed long-term project: the Hindu nationalization of Indian society.

In the minds of many politicians, think-tankers and journalists, pragmatic interests (narrowly defined as economic) trump ideological beliefs. But such quasi-rationalistic assumptions have led to a consistent failure to appreciate the potency of ideological zeal in the world today.

It should not be surprising at all that Modi has failed to deplore wholeheartedly his supporters’ statements, let alone to make them firing offenses. A politician called Giriraj Singh who earlier this year advocated banishing Modi’s critics to Pakistan has been given a ministerial position. Banned briefly during the elections for hate speech, and still facing trial for murder and kidnapping, Amit Shah, Modi’s closest aide, is now president of his party.

For these implacable culture warriors who have spent their lives fighting for a Hindu nation, “acche din” — good days — have been here since May. And regardless of what the GDP figures say and investors think, they are getting better all the time.