MOHAN GURUSWAMY: Narendra Modi’s pyrrhic victory. Will hubris make way for humility? Narendra Modi won an electoral victory on June 4, which can at best be described as a Pyrrhic victory. This term owes its origin to King Pyrrhus of Epirus whose army suffered irreplaceable losses while defeating the Romans in the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC. Closer to our times and nearer home we have the turn of events after the Battle of Gangwana between the armies of the Marwar Rathores and the combined forces of Jaipur and its Mughal overlord led by Jai Singh in 1741. In this battle the imperial army of over forty thousand massed in a field at Kunchagaon near Pushkar with its fabled artillery guns lined up to force terms on the rulers of Jodhpur and Nagaur. As it happened it fell upon Bakht Singh of Nagaur and his cavalry numbering about a thousand to take on the imperial forces. But that didn’t deter Bakht Singh and his horsemen charged into the massed imperial forces and quickly punched thro...