MUMBAI, Maharashtra The summer of 2014 found Vivek Oberoi at Bollywood parties, getting into arguments with fellow beautiful people over Narendra Modi s merits.

I busted a lot of their myths about Mr. Modi that night, Oberoi subsequently told the Washington Post . I also countered many of their traditional notions about secularism.

Five years later, in the summer of 2019, Oberoi has become Modi essaying the role of the Prime Minister in a hagiographic biopic that is so naked a pitch for Modis re-election that on April 10 2019, the Election Commission of India decreed that its release would violate Indias election laws.

The Commissions decision came a day before the film was due to hit cinemas and a day after the Supreme Court had refused to prevent the films screening.

Nonetheless, the brouhaha around the movies non-release has meant India has seen far more of Oberoi in the past week than in the decade-and-a-half since that press conference back in 2003 (but more on that later). Even the manner in which the film was almost released, and then not, seems cut from the so-close-yet-so-far arc of Oberois film career.

For much of the last fortnight, while the films fate was still up in the air, Oberoi revelled in his re-discovered relevance, traded zingers with news anchors and mugged smugly for cameras. Yet, beneath the well-tailored suits and well-crafted PR messaging, it wasnt hard to see why Oberoi has been inexorably drawn to the privileged-but-persecuted persona peculiar to Modi and his followers.

Whether it is Godhra riots or the SIT investigations, when someone has risen, for me, its how this guy went through all these experiences, Oberoi told HuffPost India, explaining why he was drawn to make this film. Without picking on a caste base, or playing on a family name, or being funded by somebody behind him, Modi achieved his political gains purely on merit and hard work.

Forget the psephologists hectoring us about social arithmetic: Oberois in-real-life performance on Twitter , TV studios and press interviews is perhaps the best explanation for Modis enduring appeal. The Prime Minister, after all, is the master of channeling precisely the sort of thwarted entitlement epitomised by Oberoi.