Václav Havel was one of the more fascinating politicians of the last century.
I would like to ask whether this sentence is correct. I would await the usage of superlative: Václav Havel was one of the most fascinating…
Learn English – one of the more fascinating
comparative-degree
Related Solutions
It would be more correct to write the second sentence as:
Ranjeet is as fast as, or perhaps faster than, Rohit.
Like your example, the sentence should surround its modifying clause with commas to separate it's logic from the logic of the sentence.
This is not exactly an answer. This is an explanation of how one native speaker thinks about this.
Hopefully this will stimulate someone to post a better answer, maybe disproving what I say below.
Not that rule
I do not think about -er vs. more in terms of a rule regarding the number of syllables. Some people say that one-syllable words get -er and multi-syllable words get more, except all words ending in -y get -ier. That's probably right most of the time, but it sounds to me like a pseudo-rule similar to "i before e except after c", another rule that's often right but goes against the spirit of the language. English is more origin-, precedent-, and conflict-oriented than rule-oriented.
It didn't me long to think of funner, which is not a standard English word. Sometimes people say it, but even the first time I heard it (as a teenager), I cringed. To my native ear, it sounds ridiculous, suggesting that the person saying it just doesn't "get" English. Even people who say it know it sounds silly. Unfortunately, I don't know how I know that.
I think that when you are learning a foreign language, you should mainly be interested in how to perceive it the way a native does. So, for this reason, I think you shouldn't think about this in terms of a rule that goes by the number of syllables, even if it's approximately correct. Somehow, through exposure to many examples in a lot of real usage, natives figure out which words don't sound right with -er. Learning it that way will take a while, but what you learn will be real—the spirit of the language, not a "rule".
Some exceptions
Here are some exceptions to keep in mind as you're considering hypotheses:
One-syllable adjectives that don't take -er:
fun, buff, lost, burnt
There may be a legitimate rule that past participles can't take -er.
Far sort of takes -er, but it becomes farther or further. Bad doesn't become badder (except in lower-class slang); it becomes worse. An interesting and unusual one is aft.
One hypothesis is that if the adjective is also a noun that you can "have", as in "have some fun", then it can't take -er, that's refuted by calm.
Multi-syllable adjectives that don't end in -y but can still take -er:
stupid, vapid, evil
Another observation: most adjectives that can take -er can also take more, but not all. For example more fast sounds weird--though you must say it in a weird comparison like "more fast than inquisitive".
A hypothesis
A hypothesis that comes to mind is that Anglo-Saxon adjectives naturally make comparatives with -er and Latinate or loan words don't. Anglo-Saxon words usually have a different "feel" than imported words, which might affect how we alter their forms even if we don't consciously know their etymologies. Adjectives from Latin usually have two or more syllables (like "terrific", "circuitous", "accidental"). And Anglo-Saxon adjectives are often one-syllable (like "red", "clean", high") or end in -y. Unfortunately, this hypothesis runs into the ground with fun.
You might think this hypothesis is, er, stupider than the number-of-syllables hypothesis, but it might actually be in the vicinity of a genuine explanation for why some words feel natural with -er and others can only take more. This would be an explanation, not a rule. An explanation can shed light on cases you haven't encountered yet without pre-deciding them; other factors may enter into other situations.
Sure enough, this ngram shows that stupider got started long after more stupid. Apparently, the need to compare levels of stupidity was so great that people granted stupid a sort of honorary Anglo-Saxon status in order to use the more-convenient comparative -er.
And once stupider is in, by analogy vapider eventually starts sounding more acceptable. Vapider doesn't show up on Google ngrams, but dictionaries accept it.
This is what I mean by English being more origin-, precedent-, and conflict-oriented than rule-oriented. Word with different origins follow different rules, conflicts result, they get resolved, the resolutions set new precedents that people apply to other words, and on it goes.
Regarding other factors that affect some other words, the word fun might not take -er because even though fun is an adjective, we usually use it as a mass noun when speaking of degrees: "that was a lot of fun", "we could have a bit of fun". This might explain the feeling of unease at giving it -er. If the noun is felt to be primary, that may conflict with -er; but more works with mass nouns as well as adjectives.
Evidence against this hypothesis would be two-syllable Anglo-Saxon adjectives which don't take -er.
Best Answer
This is not a rare use: it implies that Havel, although not perhaps one of the most fascinating 20th-century politicians, was among those who were more fascinating than ordinary politicians.