The careful calibration of the Modi mystique

It would probably take years before we know the cost of the prime minister’s personality cult to India's democracy

Remember the jingle the BJP released a fortnight before the 2014 Lok Sabha election voting — “Hum Modi ji ko laane wale hain, achhe din aane wale hain.” The 150-second song ended with the assertion, “abki baar Modi sarkar.”

Nine months into the job, on a bracing January afternoon in 2015, the Prime Minister sat on the lawns of Hyderabad House, dressed in a pinstriped suit serving tea to the visiting US President Barack Obama. The stripes of his navy blue bandhgala suit were tiny letters spelling out Narendra Modi’s name over and over again.

The BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar have spent the last nine years nourishing and propagating Modi’s personality cult, ignoring its past criticisms of ‘vyakti pooja’, when its leaders criticised Congress’ sycophancy of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Modi’s mystique looms large over his party, India’s bureaucracy, media, the Union cabinet and Parliament. It has diminished, if not the RSS, at least its chief, Mohan Bhagwat.

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The RSS chief recently told Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece, that Giuseppe Garibaldi, the 19th-century hero of Italian unification, left the job of running the country to others after realising his aim. But as senior journalist Bharat Bhushan says, the hierarchical superiority that the RSS chief enjoyed over the leaders of the BJP, because of his age, experience, and organisational ability no longer holds with Modi. “Now, the PM towers over everyone else in the RSS family of organisations of which he is as much of an éminence grise as Bhagwat. Bhagwat’s interview may be expressing regret at this definitive shift,” he says.

The BJP has an indifferent governance record, especially on promises of more jobs, reforms and reining in inflation. It has delivered on its Hindutva commitments — building a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, repealing Article 370 and banning triple talaq.

The Uniform Civil Code is too treacherous a subject, as it would eventually involve uniformly applying laws that might upset Hindus.

The BJP, therefore, hopes to win most of the nine Assembly elections of 2023, but more importantly, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, on the back of Modi’s charisma.

If it has to accomplish a third successive term in power, the Sangh Parivar needs Modi’s appeal to survive unblemished and grow, at least for the next 15 months, making the year 2023 crucial. The work on this started in earnest in the final months of 2022 with the Gujarat Assembly polls.

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The BJP fought it in Modi’s name and attributed the massive win to him, as did the PM in his speech addressing party workers after the results were in on December 8. However, the losses in the Himachal Assembly and Delhi civic polls were blamed on local party leaders and factors even when the BJP had contested both in Modi’s name.

In Himachal, the PM had urged the people to think they were voting for him, not the party candidate.

The year ended on a note of personal loss for the PM, who performed the last rites of his mother on December 31 but was back in Delhi later in the day, minding the affairs of the State.

BJP chief ministers, Union ministers, party leaders and sections of the media extolled the PM as a true karmayogi
who “returned to the service of the people just two hours” after cremating his mother.

Of the Assembly polls in 2023, the BJP is a minor player in Nagaland and Meghalaya but would hope to retain Tripura, scheduled for February and Karnataka, slated in April. However, it is nervous about both.

The rest of the Assembly polls — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram — are in November-December, which is why several other events after the Karnataka results in May could help shore up the PM's popularity ratings.

The 100th episode of the PM's 'Mann ki Baat' broadcast, sometime in March-April, will be marked with fanfare. In the 96th episode, broadcasted at the end of 2022, the PM termed the 100th episode an "unprecedented milestone", stating that he has "received letters from many countrymen in which they have expressed great inquisitiveness about the 100th episode". Modi sought suggestions from listeners "for what we should talk about in the 100th episode and how to make it special."

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Burnishing the image

Several events scheduled for 2023 could help the BJP burnish Modi's image as a statesman and a world leader. In March 2016, M Venkaiah Naidu, a Union minister then, said the name Modi stood for the 'Maker of Modern India'.

In February 2020, justice Arun Mishra, who was still serving as a Supreme Court judge, called Modi an "internationally-acclaimed visionary" and a "versatile genius who thinks globally and acts locally," at an international conference.

More recently, Amruta Fadnavis, wife of Maharashtra's deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis said Modi is the father of new India, while BJP MP Saumitra Khan said he is a reincarnation of Swami Vivekananda. In September, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told an audience comprising Indian Americans in Washington, "the fact that our [India's] opinions count, that our views matter, and we have actually today the ability to shape the big issues of our time," is because of Modi's leadership and policies. At the concluding ceremony of the Kashi-Tamil Sangamam in mid-December, Union Home Minister Amit Shah credited the PM for making a "great effort for the renaissance of India's cultural unity.”

We shall know if more voices from the Sangh Parivar issue such appeals with PM Modi slated to inaugurate more Vande Bharat Expresses, several expressways, ISRO slated to launch Chandrayaan 3 in June and the inauguration of the new Parliament building for a 'new India'. The highlight will be New Delhi hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and the G20 summit in September and the Board of Control for Cricket in India organising the world cup.

The PM is also slated to inaugurate some more redeveloped religious sites. His strategists would hope voters would continue to remember his photograph on the Covid-19 vaccine certificates, that there is a cricket stadium in Ahmedabad named after him, or schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana or PMJAY, literally 'glory to the PM' and PM Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana.

Precedents and parallels

The cult of personality is not new in Indian politics. BJP leaders didn't tire of reminding the electorate of Congress leader D K Barooah's 'India is Indira' comment in the 1970s when she was at the height of her popularity after her March 1971 Garibi Hatao electoral win and creation of Bangladesh in December of that year. Interestingly, just as India under Modi is hosting the Voice of Global South Summit and will also host the G20 and SCO summits, the Indira years of the early 1980s saw New Delhi hosting the 7th non-aligned movement summit and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1983, barely a year after it hosted the Asiad in 1982.

In 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru led Congress to an electoral win. Michael Brecher, who wrote a biography of Nehru, described the election as "Nehru, Nehru and more Nehru", where he was the "chief of staff, field commander, spokesman and foot soldier." As Modi prepares to beat Nehru's record of leading his party to three successive Lok Sabha wins, the BJP would hope for something similar. It would probably take years before we know the cost of the personality cult to India's democracy.