The modified Modi

Narendra Modi is not just a political fact, he is one of India’s most interesting political fables. He is a man who created his own style of politics by divorcing himself from politics. This statement might sound contradictory but it needs to be understood to understand the current success of Modi.

Modi is a political brand and the making of brand Modi is sociologically interesting. A politician to show he is a politician has to show that he is embedded in a culture. Modi, thus, had to display his roots in the RSS. He was a pracharak, a defiant organiser during the Emergency. He came to power as a BJP supremo, using communalism to create a wave of victories. But the genius of Modi lay in realising that this was not enough. Roots gave an authenticity to his image, the right kind of desi flavour, but roots have to be reworked for a new era. Modi’s roots had to be invoked to make him the man he was now. The brilliance of Modi lies in the fact that he has been redesigned as a politician. And the success of the redesign lies in the fact that the more
fabricated he is,
the more authentic he looks.
Modi and his PROs remade three things and wove them into an impressive weave. First, blood-thirsty communalism was now seen as out of date. Riots make a politician look downwardly mobile; they create a stigma which is hard to erase. What one needs is not violence but symbolic violence, a sense of threat which says that I have the power but need not use it. Paradoxically, Modi realised that to be a
successful politician he had to distance himself from his RSS and communal roots. He had to preserve the flavour but alter the contents. Modi’s politics demanded that he distance himself from BJP politics. From a swadesi pracharak arose the phoenix of Modi, the moderniser.
Modi realised that modernisation is a lot about images and one has to look user-friendly. A modernist cannot look anti-Muslim. He cannot look like an RSS ideologue that belongs to Madame Tussauds. He needs to be contemporary. Modi quietly abandoned his white khadi blandness and adopted colour. He presents himself in ethnic dresses which are colourful but evoke ceremonial power. His shawls would please a socialite diva. His choice of colour is immaculate. He modifies his language to speak World Bank dialects, realising clearly that modernity is a costume ball.
Modi is shrewd enough to realise that image can now rework the political. He now speaks the language of development and progress and claims that citizenship is an acceptance of the logic of development. He is clear that minorities, ethnics and marginal can no longer hide in old ways and identities. He challenges the Muslims to forget the riots and join the middle-class bandwagon, abandon the ghetto and join the new Gujarati middle class. He invites them to abandon ethnic identities and join the new republic of consumption. He is also shrewd enough to realise that consumption, development and progress are all modes of forgetting. He asks that people
forget his past to
accept the future he is offering.
To the new identity politics, he adds a vision of Gujarat that he has appropriated. Gujarat has always been a progressive state with a high rate of urbanisation. Modi takes the success of Gujarat and patents it. He appropriates a collective achievement and claims that he is Mr Development. Corporations happy with his concessions are happy to humour him. Ratan Tata claims him and the Ambanis, Adanis, the Aziz Premjis are quick to follow. They realise that land and other resources are for sale. Even the coastline is now getting privatised. They encourage Modi to talk about climate change and Davos. It is a cosy conspiracy that benefits both. It is a delightful reciprocity which other politicians envy.
The brilliance of the move has not been grasped fully. It is the politicians who are in panic. The Congress does not know how to attack Modi. Any attack will cost it the Hindu vote. Yet, Modi is also the moderniser. He has stolen the Congress ID kit.
The BJP also realises that it has been outplayed. Here is a man who is larger than the BJP, and is claiming that he is the BJP. For a party that has almost become regional, this man is attractive. Yet, his contempt for the BJP old guard is obvious. Old politicians relying on old-caste logic summon neither votes nor nostalgia. Modi represents a lethal vital combination of youth, middle class, diaspora, development, urban India and the global Indian.
People suddenly felt that he represents their desires and that he embodies them. Reality and image fuse skilfully in his politics. Modi realises that nothing succeeds like the image of success. Gujarat feels proud that they have a national and nationalist icon in the making. Modi has the entire system working for him. He does not have to do anything. He just has to be and he becomes front-page news. Modi understands populist gloss. He realises that an Amitabh
campaigning for Gujarat is, in a way, Amitabh campaigning for Modi’s chief ministership.
Indians have seen in him something more general. He has harnessed their anxieties, tapped into their fears, fantasies and desires and created a new image of strength. He is
Mr Security, Mr Development and now India’s answer to China. In erasing history and especially the history of violence, communalism, of everyday threats to marginality, Modi has created the fiction of a common future. It will be sad if India confuses it for the reality on the ground. Democracy has to return to complexity and diversity to destroy the simplistic fallacies of Modi. This, however, demands a return to the political and it will not be easy. Images, as Modi realises, are so convenient and soothing. It matters little if they destroy the future
polity.

The writer is a social science nomad