China claims to be the world's largest democracy. It considers America to be less democratic. However, we don't believe that the Chinese leadership will change as a result of an election. We do believe that even a Trump will be forced out of office if he loses an election. By this criteria, India is a democracy. Elections have, in the past, caused a transfer of power. However the existence of a Dynasty is a vitiating factor. Modi, however, is not a dynast. He won two general elections on the basis of his perceived skill as an administrator.
Ram Guha takes a different view. Writing for FP, he says there is a 'personality cult' of Modi and that Modi has dismantled Indian democracy.
India claims to be the largest democracy in the world, and its ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claims to be the largest political organization in the world (with a membership base even greater than that of the Chinese Communist Party).
Congress sometimes claims to have 130 million members which is about 40 million more than the CCP.
Since May 2014, both the BJP and the government have been in thrall to the wishes—and occasionally the whims—of a single individual, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Only in the sense that America is in thrall to Biden.
An extraordinary personality cult has been constructed around Modi,
There is nothing extraordinary in a big political party promoting its very popular leader. But Congress is spending more on promoting Rahul though he remains a moon-calf.
its manifestations visible in state as well as party propaganda, in eulogies in the press, in adulatory invocations of his apparently transformative leadership by India’s leading entrepreneurs, celebrities, and sports stars.
Modi is successful and popular. You may say there is a Modi 'cult' just as there was a 'Sachin' cult when Tendulkar was the best cricket player in India. However, the Modi cult is nothing like the Gandhi or Nehru or Ambedkar cults.
This essay seeks to place the cult of Modi in comparative and cultural context.
There is no such need. Modi is an Obama who can have a third term.
It will show how it arose, the hold it has over the Indian imagination, and its consequences for the country’s political and social future. It draws on my academic background as a historian of the Indian Republic,
Guha has a 'Great Man' theory of History. It is foolish.
as well as on my personal experiences as an Indian citizen.
Guha lives in Karnataka where the BJP just lost an election to Congress because the latter was better organized and the incumbent regime was tainted by corruption.
However, since I am writing about a distinctively Indian variant of what is in fact a global phenomenon, what I say here may resonate with those who study or live under authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in other parts of the world.
If this is genuinely the case, they will realize India is nothing like their own country because the ruling party may be turfed out next year.
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The term “cult of personality” was popularized, with regard to Joseph Stalin, by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in his now famous speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. According to an English translation of Khrushchev’s speech, he remarked that it was “impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior.”
Stalin could kill anybody he wanted. His regime was authoritarian- i.e. forbade the emergence of any criticism or rival. Thus anyone who said 'there is a personality cult of Stalin' would have been killed. It is obvious that no such 'personality cult' obtains in India or America. Otherwise, Guha would have been killed for writing this.
Guha does not mention the Emergency era when Indian journalists were jailed if they dared to criticize Indira or Sanjay Gandhi. Without authoritarianism you can have popularity but not a personality cult.
A partial listing of these elected autocrats would include: Russia’s Vladimir Putin,Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Modi, and, not least, the autocrat temporarily out of favor but longing for a return to power, former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Lula is back in power. If Bolsanaro was an autocrat why not Lula? If Trump, why not Biden? Erdogan survived a coup. His country has a different tradition to India. The same is true of Poland and Hungary. What about Macron? Is he an autocrat? Arguably, the French system concentrates more power in his hands. Modi's writ does not run in Chennai or Bangalore of Kolkata or even Delhi. Indeed, you'd be safer attacking than praising him in such places.
These leaders have all personalized governance
Macron has certainly done this.
and admiration to a considerable degree.
Macron may be less popular than Modi- but then Modi is probably one of the most popular leaders anywhere.
They all seek to present themselves as the savior or redeemer of their nation, uniquely placed to make it more prosperous, more powerful, more in tune with what they claim to be its cultural and historical heritage.
By contrast Biden promises to fuck up America and to make it poor and weak- right?
In a word, they have all constructed, and been allowed to construct, personality cults around themselves.
No. All political leaders since the Nineteen Sixties have hired image consultants and used Advertising and PR techniques to boost their popularities. Was Kennedy an autocrat?
While recognizing the existence and persistence of such cults of personality in other countries, this essay shall focus on the cult of Modi in India, for three reasons. First, and least important, it occurs in the country I know best and with whose democratic history I am professionally (as well as personally) engaged.
Guha does not get that it is unusual for the foreign born widow of the PM, who was the son of the previous PM who was herself the daughter of a previous PM to rule a country albeit through a political nonentity she had appointed PM.
Second, India is soon to be the most populous nation in the world, surpassing China in this regard, and hence this cult will have deeper and possibly more portentous consequences than such cults erected elsewhere in the world.
Why? Is Guha saying India will try to conquer its neighbours? No. He is saying the BJP is going to try to convert Americans to Hinduism. Vivek Ramaswamy is their Trojan Horse.
Third, and perhaps most important, this personality cult has taken shape in a country that until recently had fairly robust and long-standing democratic traditions.
Because a nice Italian lady should rule India if she happened to be married to the grandson of the first PM- right?
Before Modi came to power in May 2014, India had in all respects a longer-lasting democracy than when Erdogan came to power in Turkey, Orban in Hungary, and Bolsonaro in Brazil.
It had been ruled by one dynasty for 80 per cent of the time. But assassination tempered autocracy.
The 2014 general election was India’s 16th national vote, in a line extending almost unbroken from 1952.
So what? Sri Lanka has had regular elections under universal franchise since 1931.
Regular, and likewise mostly free and fair, elections have also been held to form the legislatures of different Indian states. As the historian Sunil Khilnani has pointed out, many more people have voted in Indian elections than in older and professedly more advanced democracies such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
Because the population is much much bigger. Khilnani is a khretin.
India before 2014 also had an active culture of public debate, a moderately free press, and a reasonably independent judiciary.
As it still does. The only thing which changed in 2014 was that the Dynasty had no PM candidate. Still, it expected Rahul to get in by 2019. They still think Rahul will win in 2024.
It was by no means a perfect democracy—but then no democracy is. (In my 2007 book, India After Gandhi, I myself had characterized India as a “50-50 democracy.” Perhaps some countries in Northern Europe might qualify as “70-30 democracies.”)
What Guha means is that White peeps are better than Brown peeps. No wonder he thinks true democracy in India means the rule of a nice Italian lady.
Before I come to the cult of Modi, I want to say something about the cult of a previous Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi. She was the daughter of the country’s first and longest-serving prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In March 1971, Gandhi and the Indian National Congress party won an emphatic victory in the general election; that December, India won an emphatic victory on the battlefield over Pakistan, in part because of Gandhi’s decisive leadership. She was hailed as a modern incarnation of Durga, the militant, all-conquering goddess of Hindu mythology. The idea that Gandhi embodied in her person the party, the government, and the state—and that she represented in herself the past, present, and future of the nation—was promoted by the prime minister’s political allies. Congress party leader D.K. Barooah proclaimed, “India is Indira, Indira is India.” Equally noteworthy is a Hindi couplet that Barooah composed in praise of Gandhi, which in English reads: “Indira, we salute your morning and your evening, too / We celebrate your name and your great work, too.”
Nothing wrong in that. Hindi is a flowery language. Vajpayee, an opposition leader, used flowery language to praise Indira when she won a war.
Shortly after the Congress leader read those lines at a rally in June 1975 attended by a million people, Gandhi imposed a state of emergency,
because of a Court judgment barring her from holding office by reason of irregularities in her election.
during which her regime arrested all major (and many minor) opposition politicians as well as trade unionists and student activists, imposed strict censorship on the press, and abrogated individual freedoms. A little under two years later, however, Gandhi’s democratic conscience compelled her to call fresh elections in which she and her party lost power.
She was afraid, Sanjay's friends would arrange a nice little accident for her. Also, Mujib and his whole family had been massacred after he turned his country into a one-party state.
Now compare Barooah’s short poem with an extended tribute, in prose, to Modi by BJP leader J.P. Nadda, offered on the occasion of the former’s 71st birthday. These words appeared in an article published in September 2021 in India’s most widely read English-language newspaper, the Times of India:
Modi has evolved into a reformer who passionately raises social issues plaguing India and then effectively addresses them through public discourse and participation.
True enough. His toilet building program is evidence of this.
… [He] believes in the holistic development of our society and country through good moral and social values.
Who doesn't?
He always leads from the front in addressing the nation’s most complex and difficult problems, and doesn’t rest till the goals are achieved.
We might say the same of a good CEO or the head of a local charity.
… Modi is the only leader who has an electrifying effect on the masses and on whose call the entire nation gets united.
Yes. Other leaders are regional and Rahul is a moon-calf.
During the [COVID-19] pandemic, his appeals have been religiously followed by every citizen.
Unless they thought the local government was utterly useless and would not provide them with food and shelter. Millions migrated back to their villages. But this phenomenon also occurred in opposition ruled States.
… His stupendous success is the result of absolute dedication to people’s welfare and wellbeing. His only aim is to make India a Vishwaguru [teacher to the world].
Whereas previous leaders aimed to make India a Vishwavidhushak or laughing-stock of the world- right?
Nadda’s piece is entirely representative.
It is boring and not flowery at all. Why? The Indian voter is focused on 'deliverables'. Saying nice, but boring, things about a successful CEO signals commitment to better 'last mile delivery'. That's all that matters.
New Delhi’s newspapers are replete with op-eds by cabinet ministers offering sycophantic praise of the prime minister. Indeed, “Modi is India, India is Modi” is the spoken or unspoken belief of everyone in the BJP,
No. It is unspoken because it is foolish. Indira was popular in the South and East and even in Punjab or J&K. Modi and the BJP have a lot of work left to do in the South. On the other hand it has done well in the North East- but there are deep ethnic divisions in some states and it is not clear how successful it can be in healing those divisions.
whether minister, member of Parliament, or humble party worker. As I was finishing a draft of this essay in late September, India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, told an audience in Washington that “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.
Manmohan was liked but then foreign Ambassadors in India reported back that he had no influence in his own Government. He could do nothing about 'retrospective taxation' or the Defence Ministry's settled policy of inaction on moving forward with procurement. Jaishankar is a professional diplomat. He knows that he should say things which are obviously true and which are in India's favour.
The anti-colonial movement led by Mohandas Gandhi, the persistence (against the odds)
The Army would not take over, Commies were easy to kill if they wagged their tails, and 'assassination tempers autocracy'. India is a democracy because it can't be anything else.
of electoral democracy since independence, the dynamism of its entrepreneurs in recent decades, the contributions of its scholars, scientists, writers, and filmmakers—all this (and the legacy of past prime ministers, too) goes entirely erased in these assessments. India’s achievements (such as they are) are instead attributed to one man alone, Modi.
Who is saying that? Not Jaishankar. Not Nadda. Guha has no evidence to back up his claim. The fact is the BJP learnt the lesson of Vajpayee's 'India Shining Campaign'. There is no point trying to fool Indian voters by claiming that everything is wonderful. You have to compete with other parties on the basis of either your track-record or credible promises re 'deliverables'
Meanwhile, in February 2020, a then-serving Supreme Court judge called Modi an “internationally acclaimed visionary” and a “versatile genius who thinks globally and acts locally.”
Modi had just showered praise on the Bench, so, in his response, Mishra returned the compliment. That's how a 'vote of thanks' works. If the other guy said you are the tops, you say he is super-cool, not that he regularly shits his pants.
And India’s richest and most successful industrialists compete with one another in publicly displaying their adoration of, and loyalty toward, the prime minister.
Some may. Others don't. Birlas and Bajajs don't kowtow to anybody. Still, if a guy is popular, it makes sense to jump on the bandwagon.
In February 2021, Modi joined the ranks of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussain in having a sports stadium named after him while he was alive (and in office).
So what? It was obvious that the stadium got a boost by having the Modi tag. People thought it might be well-designed and worth visiting.
The cricket stadium in the city of Ahmedabad, previously named after the great nationalist stalwart Vallabhbhai Patel, was henceforth to be called the Narendra Modi Stadium,
Because the sports complex as a whole was named after the latter. Gujarat benefits by highlighting two popular leaders from Gujarat.
with the inauguration of the refurbished premises conducted by then-Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, no less, alongside Home Minister Amit Shah and other officials. Later that year, as Indian citizens received their first COVID-19 vaccines, they were given vaccination certificates with Modi’s photograph on them. As second and then booster doses were offered, the official certificates also had the prime minister’s photograph. I know of no other country in the world that has followed this practice.
It was a good idea because Modi's face is associated with honesty and competence. The old fear of 'adulteration' is removed.
Indians asked to show their COVID-19 certificates when traveling overseas have since become accustomed to being greeted with either mirth or disgust, sometimes both.
This is only true of Ram Guha who, it must be said, excites mirth or disgust or, indeed, both.
Any egalitarian democrat would be dismayed by
Dynasticism
Modi’s extraordinary displays of public narcissism.
It is wrong to try to increase a people's confidence in the Government.
However, the scholar’s job is as much to understand as to judge.
Guha is not a scholar. He is a hysterical fool.
The cold, hard fact is that, like Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s, Modi is unquestionably very popular.
Indira was more popular, that too all over the country for two reasons- firstly she promised to end poverty and implemented far-reaching Socialist measures. Secondly, she did the right thing in East Pakistan. Sadly, as the economy deteriorated, there was growing unrest in some northern states.
Why is this so? Let me offer six reasons.
First, Modi is genuinely self-made as well as extremely hardworking.
So is Gehlot or Kharge. The difference is Congress would never draw attention to their achievements for fear that their stature might grow and thus they would overshadow the dynasty. Pawar and Mamta are examples of leaders who did much better by breaking away from Congress. By contrast, the BJP knows that it gains by seeming to be above factionalism though Gadkare, for example, is known to be disgruntled.
Folklore has it that he once sold tea at a railway station—while some have questioned the veracity of this particular claim, there is no doubt that his family was disadvantaged in terms of caste as well as class. He takes no holidays and is devoted 24/7 to politics, which can be represented as being devoted 24/7 to the nation.
Unlike Rahul. But there are plenty of workaholic Indian politicians.
Second, Modi is a brilliant orator, with a gift for crisp one-liners and an even greater gift for mocking opponents.
Most professional politicians are excellent speakers. Modi is careful to avoid flowery Vajpayee type language.
He is uncommonly effective as a speaker in the language most widely spoken in India, Hindi, and is even better in his native Gujarati.
Third, in terms of his background and achievements, Modi compares very favorably to his principal rival, Rahul Gandhi of the now much-decayed Congress party.
It has revived under Kharge.
Gandhi has never held a proper job or exercised any sort of administrative responsibility. (On the other hand, Modi was chief minister of a large state, Gujarat, for more than a decade before he became prime minister.) Gandhi takes frequent holidays, and he is an indifferent public speaker. (English, spoken or understood by only 10 percent of the population, remains his first language.) He is a fifth-generation dynast.
Which would be cool if he weren't a moon-calf.
In all these respects, Modi shines by comparison.
Fourth, as Hindu majoritarianism increasingly takes hold in Indian politics and society,
It took hold in 1947.
Modi is seen as the great redeemer of Hindus and Hinduism. Reared in the hard-line Hindu chauvinist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),
Vajpayee too was from the RSS. But then the RSS was formed by Dr. Hegdewar in imitation of the Congress Seva Dal founded by his pal Hardikar. Both had been members of the Anushilan movement before the war. Nehru was an enthusiastic members of the CSD which killed lots of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.
Modi frequently mocks the past rulers of India, both Muslim as well as British. He speaks of rescuing the country from “thousands of years of slavery” and of ushering in India’s much-delayed national and civilizational renaissance.
Nehru spoke in similar terms. In his autobiography he stated that India needed to be re-Brahminized.
Fifth, Modi has at his command a massive propaganda machinery, sustained by the financial resources of his party and government and by 21st-century technology.
So does every other ruling Party in any State. Guha thinks Congress uses 19th-century technology.
An early and effective user of Twitter and Facebook, Modi has had his party use both as well as WhatsApp to build and enhance his image.
All parties have cyber-cells.
(The prime minister also has his personalized, and widely subscribed-to, Narendra Modi App.) Modi’s face, and usually no other, appears on all posters, hoardings, advertisements, and websites issued by or under the aegis of the Indian government.
A good thing if he is popular.
He is thus able to use public resources to burnish his personality cult far more widely and effectively than elected autocrats elsewhere (even Putin).
No. There is a virtuous circle whereby successful people want to be associated with successful people. The Modi 'brand' adds value. That could change.
Sixth, Modi is an exceptionally intelligent and crafty man.
Guha thinks politicians are usually stupid and naive.
While mostly an autodidact, in 14 years as a party organizer and 13 as chief minister of Gujarat, he assimilated a huge amount of information on all sorts of subjects—economic, social, cultural, political. He can speak with apparent authority on the benefits of solar energy, the dangers of nuclear warfare, the situation of the girl child, developments in artificial intelligence, and much else.
Manmohan was careful to prepare scripted responses for meeting with foreign leaders which is why they thought him smart. Sadly, he could not appear smart in India because then Congress knives would have been out for him.
He is also extremely shrewd in manipulating the political discourse within his party, and the country at large, to favor himself and diminish his rivals or opponents. (The likes of Trump and Bolsonaro are mere demagogues in comparison.)
They are amateurs. Lula and Biden are professionals. Had Lula not been in jail, Bolsanaro would not have won. Had Biden run against Trump, Trump wouldn't now be facing felony charges.
Having outlined the elements of the cult of Modi, let me speak of its consequences for democratic functioning. The cult of Modi has led to the weakening, if not evisceration, of five crucial institutions that, in a democracy, are meant to hold unbridled power to account and to prevent the personalization of political power and the growth of authoritarianism.
They were eviscerated long ago. But, in any case, they couldn't check shit in India or anywhere else.
The first of these institutions is the political party.
Congress became Dynastic. So did some Samajwadi (caste based Socialist) parties. In Tamil Nadu, the son of a previous CM is the current CM. The same is true in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa where the ruling party is purely dynastic.
In part because so many of its leaders were jailed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, Modi’s party, the BJP, had previously stoutly opposed cults of personality.
But Advani saw that Vajpayee was electable and thus got behind him. Sadly, he didn't get that he himself was not electable at the age of 90 and thus Modi should be the BJP candidate in 2014.
The BJP’s sister (some would say parent) organization, the RSS,
It's fine to say 'parent'.
has always insisted that it does not believe in vyakti puja (worship of an individual). Since 2014, however, Modi has established his total and complete authority over the BJP.
Because the example of Manmohan's disastrous second term was fresh in everybody's mind. Modi had to be seen as the CEO running things. But promotion on the basis of merit- e.g. of Guha's fellow Tambrams, Nirmala and Jaishankar- is fine.
Whether out of fear or adoration, all BJP leaders, even those senior to Modi in public life, have obediently fallen in line. There is not even a whiff of dissent within the world’s largest party in the world’s largest democracy; there is no Liz Cheney-like figure here at all.
Modi did not do crazy shit. Trump did. The latter is an amateur. The former is a consummate professional.
The second institution that has prostrated itself before Modi is the Union Cabinet.
What's wrong with that? Modi's style of functioning was always known- indeed, that's what got him the top job. We saw what happened when Pranab was doing what he liked and Manmohan was the last to be informed.
When Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP’s first leader, was prime minister between 1998 and 2004, he governed as first among equals,
No. Brajesh Mishra ran the show.
giving his senior cabinet ministers considerable autonomy, this in keeping both with his party’s ethos and with the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy that India had adopted.
If the PM enjoys the confidence of the House more than any cabal in the Cabinet, he prevails- that is the Westminster tradition. Guha does not understand British constitutional history.
However, Modi does not consult cabinet ministers about important government decisions and makes sure that all credit for state welfare schemes accrues entirely to him.
Again, that is his prerogative. Suppose Gadkare and other malcontents tried to topple Modi. How many MPs would they be able to get on their side? Ten? Twenty? India's strict anti-defection laws discourage rebellion against a PM or CM who enjoys the confidence of the house. Suppose like Rajiv Gandhi, Modi appears implicated in a corruption scandal. Then the knives will be out for him. He would have to resign.
The government is run largely, if not entirely, from the Prime Minister’s Office, which is staffed by unelected officials personally loyal to Modi, several from his home state of Gujarat.
This is misleading. They may come from different states but were part of the Gujarat cadre. However, there is nothing unusual about this at all.
Unlike with previous prime ministers (from different parties), in India today there is no consultation within the Union Cabinet.
How does Guha know? It doesn't matter if the consultation is informal and thus what gets on the minutes does not reflect discussion around the table.
What Modi says, goes. And there is little debate within Parliament either.
Because the Opposition went in for disruptive tactics even though they had no power to stall anything.
Whereas prime ministers such as Nehru and Vajpayee spent a great deal of time in Parliament, often listening with attention to the speeches of opposition MPs,
but both were shit.
Modi uses it more as a platform to make his own speeches.
Nothing wrong with that. It is his choice- a sensible one given the circumstances. It simply isn't true that any Indian thinks debates in Parliament aren't shit.
Unfortunately, the country has no tradition of Prime Minister’s Questions, an aspect of the Westminster model that India did not incorporate.
No other Commonwealth country adopted that convention which, in any case, only gained its present significance after live broadcasts began about 35 years ago.
Bills on crucial subjects such as personal privacy and farm reforms, which affect hundreds of millions of Indians, are passed with little discussion and without being referred for assessment to a parliamentary select committee, as tradition demands.
There is no such tradition. It has always been the case that a legislator may move an amendment that a Bill be referred to a special committee and then a vote is taken.
The speakers in both houses of Parliament are notoriously partisan, hastening the rapid conversion of an idea hatched in the Prime Minister’s Office into law, bypassing the cabinet and with no input from Parliament.
All of this is perfectly permissible. Different people have different 'styles' of functioning. One may as well take objection to their hair-styles.
Guha is missing a trick here. Stalin had hair. So did Hitler. Modi too has hair! This proves he is an autocrat!
During the 2021 monsoon session of Parliament, for example, it took an average of 34 minutes for a bill to be passed in the Lok Sabha, the lower house. Some were passed in less than 10 minutes.
A good thing. If the law turns out to be shit, it can be quickly repealed. .
The third democratic institution that has rapidly declined since 2014 is the press.
Yes. Subsidies from Soros & Co have turned a lot of news portals into shit.
In a democracy, the press is supposed to be independent; in India today, it is pliant and propagandist.
Where? In Chennai? Kolkata? Delhi? The plain fact is that if Modi is popular in the market where you sell your wares, it pays to appear to be on his side. But plenty of Indian States are opposition ruled.
In eight years as prime minister, Modi has not held a single press conference involving questions from the media.
So what? Guha just said the Press is shit. Why take questions from them?
He conveys his views by way of a monthly monologue on state radio and by the occasional interview with a journalist known to be favorable to the regime, these conduced with a cloying deference to Modi.
If it works for him, what's wrong with that? On the other hand, Guha is right that Modi is showing Dictatorial tendencies in that he combs his hair. So did Hitler and Stalin!
Furthermore, because most of the country’s leading newspapers and TV channels are owned by entrepreneurs with other business interests, they have quickly fallen into line, lest, for example, a chemical factory also owned by a media magnate does not get a license or an export permit.
Guha will now give examples of this happening- NOT!
(Indian media also depend heavily on government advertising, another reason to support the ruling regime.
In your State- sure. But, in Bengal, the bigger incentive is to avoid getting beaten up by Mamta's goons.
) Prime-time news channels exuberantly praise the prime minister and relentlessly attack the opposition—so much so that a term has been coined for them, godi media.
Some channels exuberantly praise the CM and attack the PM. I assume Guha's mother tongue is Tamil. Which Tamil channel is pro-Modi? Polimer, I suppose, could be called even-handed but then what's good for India is also good for TN. Tamils aren't to happy with Stalin's obsession with Rahul. Why call that Brahmin 'Sir'? Thankfully, he has toned down the sycophancy.
These two words require a longer translation in plain English
No. Godh means lap. Godi media is in the lap of Modi.
—perhaps “the media that takes its instructions from and obediently parrots the line of the Modi government” would do. Many independent-minded journalists have been jailed on spurious charges related to their work; others have had the tax authorities set on them.
If a government body receives information that the law is being broken- e.g. foreign donations are not being properly recorded- they have to take action. But plenty of journalists have been harassed in Opposition ruled States. The difference with the BJP is that their goons won't beat you or make you watch as they rape your kids.
The fourth key institution that has become less autonomous and independent since May 2014 is the bureaucracy.
Guha wants India to be ruled by the ICS. But even the ICS had to answer to the Viceroy.
In India, civil servants are supposed to work in accordance with the constitution and be strictly nonpartisan.
This is where the BJP scores over other parties. Civil Servants won't be scapegoated by Modi.
Over the years, they have become steadily politicized, with many officials tending to side with a particular political party or even with a particular politician.
This had happened by 1946, when Muslim officers tended to side with the League while Hindus were almost all secretly reporting to Congress.
However, since 2014, whatever independence and autonomy that remained have been completely sundered.
Modi did reduce the influence of the IFS by pushing out the Foreign Secretary. But he had a good reason to do so and the cadre bears him no ill-will because his foreign policy turned out to be very successful.
In choosing his key officials, Modi places far greater emphasis on loyalty than on competence.
No. Competence is all that matters. Incidentally, a competent civil servant fulfils the task set for him by the elected politician in charge of his Ministry.
Every ministry now has a minder, often an individual from the RSS, to make sure that, when a senior civil servant retires, his or her replacement will have the right vichardhara, or ideology.
Only Rahul babbles about 'vichardhara'. Still, it would be interesting to know who Nirmala's minder is? What about Gadkare? Does he need a minder- that too from the RSS?
Furthermore, state agencies have been savagely let loose to intimidate and tame the political opposition. (According to a recent report by the Indian Express, 95 percent of all politicians raided or arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation since 2014 have been from opposition parties.)
Which may mean the BJP is the party of clean and honest politicians.
These raids are held out as a warning as well as an inducement, for a slew of opposition politicians have since joined the BJP and had cases against them withdrawn.
That is counter-productive. It pisses off the grass-roots. Karnataka should be a wake-up call.
Finally, the judiciary has, in recent years, not fulfilled the role accorded it by the constitution.
The judiciary says it and only it can interpret the Constitution.
District and provincial courts have been very energetic in endorsing state actions that infringe on the rights and liberties of citizens.
Whereas what worries most people is having their rights and liberties violated by homicidal rapists.
More disappointing perhaps has been the role of the highest court of the land. The legal scholar Anuj Bhuwania has gone so far as to speak of the “complete capitulation of the Supreme Court to the majoritarian rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
One may as well speak of Modi's complete capitulation the Bench which forced him to build a Temple for Hindus in Ayodhya.
It has delayed the hearing of crucial cases;
which weren't crucial at all.
even when it does, it tends to favor the arbitrary use of state power over protecting individual freedoms.
Indian judges will still have to live in India after they retire. State power is what protects them from the freedoms of individuals who want to chop of their infidel heads.
As Bhuwania writes in Scroll.in, “During the Modi period, not only has the court failed to perform its constitutional role as a check on governmental excesses,
There are no excesses and, anyway, no Indian Bench has curbed the massive extra-judicial killing which has had to be carried out from time to time.
it has acted as a cheerleader for the Modi government’s agenda.
Because it is a good agenda. Bhuwania's isn't. Nobody is cheering for him.
Not only has it abdicated its supposed counter-democratic function as a shield for citizens against state lawlessness,
whereas it is the lawlessness of criminals which is what worries most people. Guha & Co prefer to live in a fantasy world where all crimes are carried out by jack-booted stormtrooper under the command of Amit Shah.
but it has also actually acted as a powerful sword that can be wielded at the behest of the executive.” And furthermore, he writes, the Supreme Court “has placed its enormous arsenal at the government’s disposal in pursuit of its radical majoritarian agenda.”
The Bench has no fucking arsenal. It can't even punish Prashant Bhushan who says it is corrupt and stupid.
As suggested by my earlier formulation of India as a 50-50 democracy, none of these institutions performed flawlessly in the past.
They were wholly irrelevant when they weren't a source of mischief.
They were occasionally (and sometimes more than occasionally) timid or subservient to the party in power. There was no golden age of Indian democracy.
Because things have gotten better not worse.
However, since May 2014 these institutions have lost even more—one might say far more—of their independence and autonomy and are now in thrall to Modi and his government.
Has Guha produced any evidence of this? No. He merely quotes sources funded if not founded by foreigners to defame India. But that is a stupid thing to do. The West needs India.
It is important to note that the capture of these five institutions—the party,
the leader of a party captures the party- that's just wrong!
the legislature,
the party which gets the majority in the legislature captures it! That's naked 'majoritarianism'!
the press,
hasn't been captured because it just shits on everything.
the civil service,
which became subservient to elected politicians in either 1937 (in the Provinces) or 1946.
and the judiciary—has been crucial to the consolidation of other personality cults, too.
But Stalin, Guha says, had a personality cult without capturing any 'institution'. He just killed lots of people.
My analysis of what Modi has done to democracy in India would broadly hold for Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, and even to some extent Trump in the United States.
But it would also hold of Macron and Biden and Rishi and any other elected leader.
I should briefly note two additional features of personality cults in such partially democratic regimes. The first is that they tend to promote crony capitalism, with a few favored industrialists making windfall gains owing to their loyalty and proximity to the leader and his party.
But Adani and Ambani and so forth were rich before Modi came to power. There are new billionaires- like the Kamath brothers who have a discount brokerage- but they are not 'crony capitalists' by any means.
The second is that they tend to promote religious or ethnic majoritarianism.
Fuck off! Stalin came from Georgia- Georgians were a tiny minority in the Soviet Union.
The majority ethnic or religious group is said to represent the true essence of the nation, and the leader is said to embody, with singular distinction and effectiveness, the essence of this majority group.
Saddam and Assad were from minorities. So was Tito. So what?
On the other side, religious or ethnic minorities, such as Kurds in Turkey, Jews in Hungary,
Hungarians were cool with Magyar speaking Jews
or Muslims in India, are said to be disloyal or antithetical to the nation.
Britain and France keep a closer watch on their Muslims. I wonder why.
Majoritarian arguments singling out minorities for harassment or stigmatization are rife on social media, made often by ruling party legislators and, on occasions when he feels politically threatened, by the leader himself.
Guha is cool with such statements made by Kannada politicians though they target people like himself.
Even while they were in office, it seemed to me that Modi was more dangerous to the interests of his country than Johnson and Trump were to theirs.
Guha was wrong. Still, if you believe White Christian ladies are superior to Brown Hindus, you would naturally become very distressed when power shifted from Sonia to Modi.
From July 2019 to January 2021, the world’s largest, oldest, and richest democracies were all led by charismatic populists with authoritarian tendencies. Boris Johnson
was not authoritarian. He was shambolic.
and Trump are now both gone, yet Modi remains.
Because Modi is good at his job.
Even while they were in office, it seemed to me that Modi was more dangerous to the interests of his country than Johnson and Trump were to theirs. The reasons for this are both structural as well as biographical. As the preceding discussion would have made clear, democratic institutions intended to act as a check on the abuse of power by politicians are far more compromised in India than in the United Kingdom or the United States.
Not under Modi. Under Sonia, the supposed head of government didn't head shit.
In the U.K., the press, Parliament, and the civil service all sought to thwart Johnson’s authoritarian tendencies.
They failed. He was brought down by his Cabinet colleagues.
As for the United States, even if Trump sought to pack the Supreme Court, lower courts remained independent;
But lower courts get overruled by the Supreme Court.
so did the tax authorities and other regulatory institutions.
As is the case in India. But 'regulatory agencies' tend to get captured and there's always a way around the tax-man.
Influential sections of the press did not capitulate to the cult of Trump;
As was the case in India.
the universities remained crucibles of freedom and dissent.
No. They were shit. Obama warned against their promotion of 'wokeness' which played into the hands of the Republicans.
Even the person Trump chose as his vice president acted to endorse the results of the 2020 election, in consonance with the U.S. Constitution and in defiance of his boss.
Because Trump, an amateur, did crazy shit. Modi has done no such thing.
Democratic institutions are far weaker in India than in the U.K. or the United States.
The Indian Election Commission is much stronger than anything which exists in America.
And as an individual, too, Modi represents a far greater threat to his country’s democratic future than Johnson or Trump ever could.
But there is no threat to democracy in any of these countries.
For one, he has been a full-time politician for far longer than they have been, with much greater experience in how to manipulate public institutions to serve his own purposes.
Boris and Modi became legislators at about the same time.
Second, he is far more committed to his political beliefs than Johnson and Trump are to theirs.
How does Guha know?
While Johnson and Trump are consumed almost wholly by vanity and personal glory, Modi is part narcissist but also part ideologue.
He is neither. He is just very good at his job.
He lives and embodies Hindu majoritarianism
just as Nehru, Shastri, Indira, Rajiv, and janeodhari Rahul did or do.
in a much more thoroughgoing manner than Trump lives white supremacy or Johnson embodies xenophobic Little Englandism.
Johnson embodies nothing of the kind. He was an American citizen and may become so once again. The fact is he went out of his way to charm foreigners including those of the dusky persuasion.
Third, in the enactment and fulfillment of his ideological dream, Modi has as his instrument the RSS, whose organizational strength and capacity for resource mobilization far exceed any right-wing organization in the U.K. or the United States.
because the Tory or Republican party are actually composed of three elderly spinsters and a cat- right?
Indeed, if it lasts much longer, the Modi regime may come to be remembered as much for its evisceration of Indian pluralism
which happened at Partition and the departure of the Brits
as for its dismantling of Indian democracy.
which would be a new departure- unless you count the Emergency.
I have presented a qualitative narrative so far; allow me to append just a few figures that show how far India’s democratic standards have slipped in recent years. In Freedom House’s political and civil freedom rankings, India was among the countries with the largest declines in the last decade, dropping from “Free” to “Partly Free” in 2021. In the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index, India fell from 75th in 2015 to 119th in 2021. In Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, India fell from 140th in 2013 to 150th in 2022. Finally, in the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap Report, released in July, India ranked 135th out of 146 countries in overall score and lowest (146th) when it came to health and survival.
These are meaningless figures as I have explained elsewhere. The fact is, a country is not a Democracy if power rests in the hands of the Italian widow of a dynast.
I’d like to end my essay with two past warnings by Indians against the unthinking submission to charismatic authority. The first warning is relatively well known. It is from B.R. Ambedkar’s last speech to the Constituent Assembly of India in November 1949. In the speech, Ambedkar quotes the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, who cautioned citizens not “to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.” This warning was even more pertinent in India than in England, for, as Ambedkar points out:
in India, bhakti, or what may be called the path of devotion or hero worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, bhakti, or hero worship, is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.
Ambedkar supported the First Amendment which as Frank Anthony observed meant India could become a Dictatorship. Still, the comic aspect to this is that Ambedkar decided to become a 'Boddhisattva' which means that now, thanks to Mayawati's building spree, he receives worship as an avatar of Vishnu!
The cult of Modi the Superman, like the cult of Indira the Superwoman that preceded it, shows that Ambedkar was right to be worried about the dangers to Indian democracy of the religious practice of bhakti, or blind hero worship.
Guha has forgotten that 'personality cult' was a term applied by the atheist Kruschev to the atheist Stalin who presided over a genocidal, wholly Godless, regime.
The ruling party’s presentation of Modi as Hindu messiah-cum-avenging angel falls on fertile soil.
Actually, it was the mistake of Congress and the Left to paint Modi as a killer of Muslims and avenger of the Godhra atrocity on Hindus, which helped him initially. But, he only became PM because Rahul was shit and thus Congress had to be shit.
One would not expect the population of a free country to be so cravenly worshipful of a living individual—but, tragically, they are.
Guha used to get very angry when Indians or foreigners showed adoration of Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela.
The second quote is far more obscure but perhaps equally pertinent. It is from a letter written to Indira Gandhi in November 1969 by S. Nijalingappa, who was president of the Congress party when Gandhi split the party and made it an extension of herself. Born in 1902, Nijalingappa came of age in
1920 when India, which was a member of the League of Nations, held its first general election.
an era of imperialism and fascism while being part of a freedom struggle that stood for democracy, nonviolence, and pluralism.
Not in the view of Jinnah and the Muslim League.
The Congress party in which he had spent all his adult life was a decentralized institution with vigorous state and district units.
Nonsense! It was highly centralized and then the Kamraj planned had strengthened Nehru's grip on it even further.
It had many leaders, never just one.
Why then did Govind Vallabh Pant call Gandhi the 'Il Duce and Fuhrer of India'? Nehru would have quit Congress if Patel and others hadn't bent the knee to him. Indira showed she was made of even sterner mettle.
Now, as Gandhi sought to reshape the party and the country in her own image, Nijalingappa warned her that the history of the 20th century “is replete with instances of the tragedy that overtakes democracy when a leader who has risen to power on the crest of a popular wave or with the support of a democratic organization becomes a victim of political narcissism and is egged on by a coterie of unscrupulous sycophants who use corruption and terror to silence opposition and attempt to make public opinion an echo of authority.”
The poor fellow spent the next 30 years in the political wilderness while Indira's dynasty ruled- save when 'assassination tempered autocracy'. Why is Guha raking up this matter? Tamils though both Njalingappa and Kamraj were losers. Congress had lost TN permanently by the time this old fool wrote to Indira. Incidentally, Indira had gone against Kamraj and Bhaktavatsalam on the Hindi imposition issue. That's why Tamils were friendly to her.
History offers us a few lessons. One is that—as the cases of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, and others all show—personality cults are always bad for the country that fosters and encourages them.
So, Xi's China will come to a sticky end- right? Don't bet on it. The fact is cults don't matter. Do sensible stuff or kill your enemies or people who might become your enemies and you are likely to stay in power.
On the other hand, Dynasties tend to die nasty. Sooner or later the heir to the throne will turn out to be a retarded moon-calf.
Historians have passed their judgment on the damage that the cult of Indira Gandhi did to Indian democracy and nationhood.
No. Economists passed that judgment. Had she followed sensible economic policies, she would not have had to impose Emergency. But much of the fault for this lies with her father.
The day will come, though perhaps not in my lifetime, when historians will pass a similar judgment on the effects on India’s happiness and well-being of the cult of Modi.
Guha is alive. He is a historian. He has just passed exactly this judgment. I suppose he means a good, White, historian. But White historians are just as shitty as Brown ones. Sad.
