All hail the Emperor: The rise of Narendra Modi

“Modi only thinks of winning—and winning all the time,” a former chief minister of Gujarat tells Vinod Jose in his Caravan cover story, “Other politicians can imagine that they will someday lose, and plan accordingly. But this attitude may get him into trouble, because in the future he can only be at one of the extremes: either he will be prime minister or he will go to jail. If I live long enough, I would be surprised to see him anywhere else—it has to be one or the other.” [ Read the Caravan story here] There have been buckets of ink spilled over Narendra Modi in the media; most of it predictable in both theme and content. Jose’s epic 7-page effort, titled The Emperor Uncrowned, also covers familiar territory but what makes it mandatory reading is his eye for exhaustive detail. The article starts in Vadnagar with the eight year old boy, son of a tea-stall owner, who joins the local RSS shakha and ends with this priceless quote from a local RSS leader: “Shivling mein bichhu baitha hai. Na usko haath se utaar sakte ho, na usko joota maar sakte ho.” (A scorpion is sitting on the Shivling, the holy phallus of Lord Shiva. It can neither be removed by hand nor killed with a shoe.) [caption id=“attachment_227680” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] Jose is clearly no fan of Modi who he damns, not with the usual array of liberal critics, but with voices drawn from his own constituency. Here he is raising hackles as a young pracharak in the RSS: “Modi had firm opinions on even smaller things, and the senior leaders thought that he was attention-seeking… The Sangh leaders did not like it.” For a man who brooks no dissent, Modi has displayed a lifelong aversion to authority, which often got him into trouble with his own party leaders, both in Gujarat and in New Delhi. Over and again, insiders paint him as devious, ruthless, and somewhat frightening – even to a sitting Prime Minister:

In December 2002, when Modi was campaigning in his first statewide elections, he bluntly told the party that Vajpayee and the other senior leaders should come early in the process, because he did not want anyone else to take credit for his victory by claiming they provided the final push. “So fearful was Vajpayee of Modi,” the BJP insider told me, “when we went for electioneering to Ahmedabad with Arun Jaitley and Uma Bharati, he told us all in the flight, ‘Usually when the prime minister and the leader of the party come to a state, the chief minister would be waiting in anticipation. Here, forget about Modi coming to receive me—my heart is throbbing wondering what the hell Modi will say at the rally.’” Everyone laughed. Vajpayee also laughed, but he was very serious.

While the profile is filled with many such colourful anecdotes, the lines that come closest to capturing a more subtle truth are these: “It is a tired cliche to call him ‘divisive’, but in fact his lovers and haters share an essentially identical impression of the man and his personality. Both believe Modi possesses an almost absolute authority and a willingness to defy institutions and rules, as a strong and charismatic leader who ‘gets things done’ without concern for protocol or established hierarchies.” One man’s virtue is another’s vice. The F-word makes its inevitable appearance, not as vituperative abuse but as clinical description deployed by Ashis Nandy: “I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category… Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality.” Fascist or not, there is little doubt that Modi’s fortunes are trending ever upwards. And a big win in this year’s elections will undoubtedly set up the impending prime ministerial bid. In Gujarat, Modi’s trailblazing mix of Hindutva and “Vikas. Vikaaas. Vikaaaaaas” has been unbeatable. It remains to be seen if the rest of the country is ready to take up that signature Modi chant. We highly recommend you read Vinod Jose’s excellent piece on the Caravan website.