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The Modi phenomenon. Cult of the leader
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THE MODI PHENOMENON
Several factors explain Modi’s unique popularity. First and foremost, he embodies a Hindu-majoritarian backlash to decades of inconsistent secular politics. By the time the British exited India in 1947, secular politicians and ardent Hindu nationalists were engaged in an ideological battle over the future state’s relationship to religion. The secularists, including India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru of the Congress party, triumphed, and their vision laid the foundation for the new Republic of India.
India’s secularists championed an approach in which the state would maintain a principled distance from religious affairs. […] Over time, however, the Congress party and other secular parties came to portray themselves as neutral arbiters even while cynically treating religious communities as “vote banks, ” the term of art for supposedly uniform blocs of voters that politicians harness to win elections. Modi came to power by rejecting this brand of politics, stoked by the deeply held conviction that the secular order relegated India’s Hindus (according to the 2011 census, Hindus account for roughly 80 percent of India’s population) to a minority position in their own country. Many Indians—and Hindu nationalists in particular—came to disparage secularism (“pseudo-secularism, ” they called it) as a euphemism for what they termed “minority appeasement, ” the notion that political elites pander to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and other religious minorities to the detriment of the majority community.
Many Indians further look to Modi to centralize control of the country after decades of fissiparous coalition rule. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Congress party’s political dominance slowly unraveled, ushering in a period in which governments rested on often shaky alliances among competing parties. Political fragmentation, combined with economic liberalization and greater devolution of power in favor of state capitals, intensified the perception that New Delhi was not fully in control. Effecting large-scale policy change from the center became increasingly onerous. By virtue of his party’s current ironclad majority in Parliament, Modi has used his historic mandate to recentralize power. On issues from taxation to agriculture to elections, Modi has championed the idea of “One Nation, One India” as the solution to India’s fractiousness.
Modi projects a similar impression of purposeful, muscular leadership in his foreign policy. For decades, India has perceived itself to be a big, but not necessarily important, global actor.
Foreign policy has rarely been a mass electoral issue, crowded out by more quotidian concerns, including jobs, inflation, and welfare. But voters have rallied behind Modi’s claims that he has finally put India on the map. Modi has signaled that in today’s multipolar world, India can be both big and important. On matters ranging from containing China to combating climate change to delivering COVID-19 vaccines to other countries, Modi has embraced a larger role for India on the world stage. As a case in point, just consider last week’s leaders’ summit of the so-called Quad countries in which four Asia-Pacific nations—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—signaled their resolve to band together to counteract Chinese revanchism.
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CULT OF THE LEADER
The central axis of popular politics in India has undergone a significant shift under Modi. As the political scientist Neelanjan Sircar has argued, in 2014 Modi campaigned on a pledge to get India’s wayward economy back on track; in 2019, however, the BJP’s campaign rested on an appeal to the image of Modi as a tough, nationalist leader. According to this logic, voters didn’t necessarily judge Modi on his record in office. Instead, the force of Modi’s character inspired them to look forward and imagine what transformations he might engender.
Would the BJP’s dominance be as comprehensive if Modi were not in the picture? The answer is likely no. Modi has a unique hold on the country’s political imagination. His life story—a boy born to a poor, lower-caste family catapults over veteran BJP leaders to wrest control of the party and then the nation—is an underdog narrative that inspires many Indians. And his charisma makes him a compelling messenger for change. […] Furthermore, Modi’s take-no-prisoners approach to governance—whether ramming through recent agricultural reform bills without parliamentary debate or consultation with India’s states or invalidating nearly 90 percent of India’s currency in an effort to stamp out hidden, untaxed commercial transactions—resonates with citizens disenchanted with an unresponsive political class. Modi’s personal popularity has paved the way for a new political style in which mass support justifies any means used toward the end that the leader embraces.
The United States and other powers will struggle to steer Modi’s India back onto a more democratic course. Leaving aside the United States’ own damaged democratic credentials, outside powers have always had limited leverage over India’s domestic policies. During the Trump administration, human rights and democratic freedoms took a back seat in the making of U. S. foreign policy—in February 2020, President Donald Trump visited India and attended convivial events with Modi in New Delhi even as grisly communal riots took place a few miles away. The Biden administration has signaled a reversal of course—its March 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance starts from the assumption that an embrace of democracy at home and abroad is essential to meeting U. S. foreign policy objectives—but it is unlikely to elevate shared values above its primary interest of enlisting India in its larger strategic positioning against China. India serves as the lynchpin of Washington’s Asia strategy, and the new administration will not want to complicate the relationship.
India’s democratic renewal, therefore, must ultimately come from within. But the infirmities plaguing India’s political opposition are legion. The Congress party is a shadow of its former self, beset by crises of leadership, ideology, and organization. Rahul Gandhi, the erratic heir to the Congress throne, has lost the confidence of many of his party’s supporters. After leading the party to not one but two national election routs, Gandhi’s political credibility has suffered massively. Ordinary voters are unsure what the party stands for, with secularism on the ropes and Modi appropriating the Congress’s traditional pro-welfare ethos. Meanwhile, the party’s organization has atrophied as its finances have dried up and numerous second-tier leaders have quit—often defecting to the BJP.
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The BJP does face a number of credible regional opponents at the state level, where it has lost several major elections in recent years. Campaigning is currently underway for regional polls in five states, and it is possible that the BJP and its allies will fall short in several of these contests. But these setbacks will not threaten the party’s grip on power. In the national theater of politics, the opposition has failed to understand why Modi continues to prevail. He is a grassroots leader who has climbed his way to the country’s top job on his own merit—without the aid of a politically connected family. He has tapped into the aspirations of a restless country impatient for change and frustrated with political convention. And he has infused political discourse with a fierce nationalism that conveys a newfound assuredness. As long as Modi’s opponents live in denial about their own shortcomings and Modi’s immense strengths, his political supremacy will go unchallenged—and questions about Indian democracy will continue to mount.
Milan Vaishnav is a Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D. C.
[1] Flotsam and jetsam - rubbish floating in the water after a ship has been wrecked and rubbish washed on to the land
[2] To dwindle - diminish gradually in size, amount, or strength
[3] Discernible - able to be seen, noticed, or understood
[4] Unblemished – without any faults or mistakes to spoil your reputation or record
[5] Benign (fml) – gentle and kindly, harmless
[6] Agency - the ability to take action or to choose what action to take
[7] To dragoon smb into smth – to coerce smb into doing smth
[8] To corral – to capture
[9] Preordained – certain to happen in the future because God or fate has decided it
[10] The verb surrender can be intransitive, e. g. Eventually they had to surrender (= to capitulate).
[11] /ə ˈ tɜ ː ni/
[12] Jamboree - a party, celebration, or other gathering where there is a large number of people and a lot of excitement, fun, and enjoyment
[13] Remotely – in the slightest degree
[14] A first among equals
[15] Buff – a person who knows a lot about and is very interested in a particular subject
[16] To induct – to officially accept someone into a group
[17] To dabble in sth – to take a slight and not very serious interest in a subject
[18] Ark of the Covenant, in Judaism and Christianity, the ornate, gold-plated wooden chest that in biblical times housed the two tablets of the Law given to Moses by God (Ковчег Завета).
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