Is the ‘cult of Modi’ starting to lose its lustre?

When India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to Varanasi to file his candidacy for a third five-year term last week, tens of thousands of people waited patiently in scorching spring heat for a glimpse of the man. 

Jostling for a view, some balanced precariously atop concrete road dividers, or crowded on to rooftops and balconies. As the sun fell low in the sky, the 73-year-old, dressed in an orange kurta and white vest, appeared and waved from the top of a platform wrapped in orange, the colour of his Bharatiya Janata party. In every direction he turned, people cheered and lifted their arms to capture the moment on their phones. 

“Narendra Modi is the avatar purush, an incarnation of God,” declares Abhinandan Pathak, a lookalike of the prime minister who is following the real Modi on the campaign trail for a third time. “He will definitely win again handsomely.” 

Modi bestrides the world’s most populous nation with a mass following and a potent political brand honed over decades, giving him power that few other world leaders can match.

But opposition figures and some independent commentators have seized on initial figures from the six-week-long election that show turnout is lower than in 2019, speculating the BJP will fall short of Modi’s ambitious goal of further increasing its majority in parliament.

They say many ordinary Indians are increasingly focused on day-to-day issues such as soaring food prices and unemployment rather than the country’s rapid growth and rising global stature. If they are right — the full results of the six-week election will not be known until June 4 — it would indicate that the Modi wave had peaked.

During a decade in office he has promoted a Hindu-first agenda and reached the homes of hundreds of millions of poor Indians with massive welfare schemes branded in his name. In campaign speeches, he has spoken of his vision to make India a developed economy by 2047, when it celebrates its centenary.

Whether performing yoga on the lawn at the UN or attending a vegetarian banquet at the White House, abroad he is courted as the living symbol of India at a time when its geopolitical status is increasingly recognised. 

At home, his office presides over a carefully curated image-making operation involving multiple daily changes of clothes or headgear and a robust communications machine. He also enjoys praise from a support network of politicians and businesspeople. 

“Modi’s persona is very well crafted, a kind of product — a very well groomed, well chiselled product put on the stage,” says Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a Modi biography. “He is performing at every moment; he is one of the most performative leaders in the world.” 

Modi is performing at every moment; he is one of the most performative leaders in the world

On the campaign trail, the prime minister is continuing a series of roadshows under the main slogan “Modi’s guarantee”. Another BJP slogan is “Modi’s family”, presenting the prime minister as a benevolent paterfamilias.

Indians say one of Modi’s most powerful assets is that he is single and childless, making him a symbol of ascetic moral probity in a region known for corrupt political dynasties. 

“The head of the family wants to leave a legacy for their heirs,” he declared during a recent speech in West Bengal. “Who are Modi’s heirs? Who do I leave anything for? For me, all citizens are my heirs.” Sugata Srinivasaraju, a Bengaluru-based analyst and author, says Modi “has a halo where the people tend to believe he is selfless . . . He has nobody to promote.”

But Modi’s opponents say he has engineered his rise by weakening parliament, the courts, the press and civil society and jailing key opponents, including two state leaders who have been detained ahead of the vote. 

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, recently warned of a need to save India from “dictatorship” after a court granted him bail, but only for the duration of the campaign. His Aam Aadmi party says the corruption case against him is politically motivated.

Ramachandra Guha, a historian of modern India, described in a 2022 essay what he called a “cult of Modi” that he compared both to present-day autocrats like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and 20th-century dictators such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. 

Critics also say India’s 2024 elections are a referendum on whether Indians endorse Modi’s model of pro-business, majoritarian strongman rule — or want a return to more traditional parliamentary democracy and India’s multicultural, secular values.

Modi arrived on the national scene in 2014 when Manmohan Singh’s coalition government, led by the long-ruling Indian National Congress, was plagued by corruption scandals and being criticised as weak on security.

“Modi was seen as an incorruptible and decisive strongman who could boost development, guard India’s frontiers and enhance the prestige of Indians globally while subduing inimical forces within,” says Mukhopadhyay. “He was successful in convincing a significant section of Indians, especially Hindus, that he was the solution to every problem, the spoken and the unspoken.” 

This image had been cultivated during Modi’s decades-long ascent in his native state of Gujarat. As a young man, he was a pracharak or worker for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist mass movement behind what was to become the BJP. 

Shankarsinh Vaghela, who would later become Gujarat’s chief minister, remembers the young Modi sported a beard and wore white knickers and a white shirt to stand out from the other pracharaks, who were mostly clean-shaven and wore khaki. 

From the beginning, Modi “demanded respect”, says Vaghela, who later fell out with him. “If someone came and didn’t do namaste [greeting] to him, he would say, ‘Why don’t you do a namaste?’,” Vaghela says. “He was saying, ‘I am NaMo — bow to me’.”

Yamal Vyas, a BJP spokesman in Gujarat who worked with Modi from 1991, remembers a young man with “absolute clarity of thought”. Vyas adds: “He’s very clear on decision making . . . he’ll either say yes or no. Not ‘we’ll see later’.”

“He was aiming for the top job and would leave no stone unturned to fuel his ambitions,” says Urvish Kothari, a writer and satirist based in Gujarat, who knew Modi before he rose to the state’s top political position. “He had a supreme arrogance, even when he was just a party functionary and not holding any position in the government.”

Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister in 2001 and was in charge the following year when religious violence erupted there. Over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. Inquiries were launched and he was temporarily banned from visiting the US.

But Modi, according to historians and analysts, turned the polarisation in his favour, styling himself as the “King of Hindu hearts” and deploying police to crack down on suspected jihadis. 

Modi’s body language, including his voice, took on a “distinctively masculine, muscular overtone” during his time as chief minister, political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot writes in his book Gujarat under Modi. 

In speeches, he made reference to his “56-inch chest”, and how it would protect the state. Modi courted big business and began hosting regular Gujarat investment summits. 

Modi was innovative in his use of technology and social networks. Ahead of a 2012 state election, he held virtual meetings with voters, appearing onstage around the state in hologram form. A TV station that bore his name, NaMo TV, was launched the same year.

While in Gujarat, Jaffrelot writes, Modi honed the notion that “the people are one and they and their leaders share the same consciousness and collective emotions”. Supporters and critics alike say this remains part of his appeal today. 

Mukesh Dalal, a BJP candidate in Surat in Gujarat, uses the word Modimay, which roughly translates as “full of Modi” or “fully absorbed in Modi”, to describe a nation at one with its leader. India, he says, is “full of Modi’s work, and full of the Ram temple” — a reference to the massive Hindu shrine in Ayodhya whose consecration Modi presided over in January. He later described how Lord Ram had addressed him during the ceremony, telling him a golden age had started. 

In his decade as prime minister, Modi and his allies, many of whom moved with him from Gujarat to Delhi, have further centralised power around his persona. 

Modi began recording monthly radio addresses, dubbed Mann ki Baat (roughly “a word from the heart”), that were also available via a NaMo app. In them, Modi addresses Indians directly and takes questions from listeners.

In speeches, Modi orates at high volume and uses simple, sometimes coarse language and wordplay to make points. Whereas past prime ministers moved around in bulgy Indian-made Ambassador cars, Modi is often seen at public events in a Range Rover (the company is owned by India’s Tata Group) and sometimes makes a point of sitting in the front.

Modi’s flair for sharp clothes was first noted in Gujarat, when he wore a short-sleeve version of the trademark Indian men’s garment that his former tailor still calls the “Modi kurta”. During a 2015 visit by Barack Obama, Modi wore a suit with pinstripes spelling out his full name. It was later auctioned, fetching over half a million dollars.

The prime minister’s social media operation, managed by the BJP and amplified by pro-Modi accounts, further spreads messages and images from the top: sitting in an Indian-made Tejas fighter wearing dark glasses and a green uniform, or holidaying in India’s Lakshadweep islands at the height of tensions with the Maldives over its election of a pro-China president. Modi generally shuns press conferences and gives interviews only under strict conditions, with his office typically demanding questions in advance and allowing quotations only from a written script afterwards.

His circle includes both loyal political allies and top businesspeople. S Jaishankar, external affairs minister, recently described Modi as a “blessing” who asks for options before making decisions. “He consults, discusses and then takes a call,” he said. “Never seen a leader like him.” 

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, called him “the greatest global leader of our times” at this year’s Vibrant Gujarat investors’ summit. “When you speak, the whole world not only listens but applauds you.” 

Modi has also enlisted foreign leaders for image-boosting photo opportunities — such as when he took Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a spin around the Narendra Modi stadium in Gujarat before a cricket match between the two countries.

Some critics have cringed at the sight of foreign officials stroking the Indian leader’s ego, such as US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, who described him as “unbelievable, visionary” and possessed of an “indescribable” commitment to the Indian people at an event in Washington last year.

With the help of allies, even setbacks have been rewritten as triumphs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, millions are believed to have died and millions more lost work while India initially struggled to vaccinate everyone. But the prime minister grew out his beard, cultivating the appearance of a holy man, and his handling of the pandemic has been reframed as masterful. 

While Modi refrained from doling out fiscal stimulus — a move his government now boasts of — it repurposed a programme of subsidised food for the poor into a free scheme. The programme still provides monthly wheat and rice rations to more than 800mn people. Modi’s image appears in the shops that dispense them and on some of the bags. Since 2014, Modi has rolled out or renamed housing, farming and other schemes for the poor, linking them to himself as “prime ministerial” programmes.

“Modi is the leader who provides,” says Gilles Verniers, a senior fellow with New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research. “Public spending is now a gift from the centre.” 

Modi also increasingly appears in the role of a holy man. Over the past year, he has presided over public rituals alongside Hindu clerics and led the opening of parliament holding a gold ceremonial sceptre and accompanied by religious leaders. 

He prepared for the controversial Ayodhya temple consecration by touring temples across India, sleeping on floors and embarking on a coconut water fast. In January Modi — the son of a tea seller from a “backward” class — presided over the ceremonial lamp lighting at the shrine, a duty traditionally performed by upper-caste Brahmins. 

“Imagine the signal this sends out for castehood in India,” says Srinivasaraju. “It looked absolutely revolutionary.” 

Indians describe Modi as their most powerful leader since Indira Gandhi, who was also the object of a personality cult; Congress party president DK Barooah once declared that “India is Indira, Indira is India.” 

Available data supports the notion that the country prefers strongman leaders. A poll published in February by the Pew Research Center found 85 per cent of Indians supported authoritarian rule — the highest rate of any of the 24 countries surveyed — and Modi has brought the BJP an unprecedented mass following. 

However, other factors may sway voters this year, including an economy that is not creating enough jobs. Modi opponents have seized on polarising remarks aimed at Muslims in some campaign speeches, speculating that the BJP is underperforming and feeling insecure. 

Voters also have a record of turning on incumbents: Gandhi temporarily lost power to the BJP’s predecessor Janata party in 1977, while Singh came to power in 2004 after voters threw out Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP-led government.

“Indians do not tolerate authoritarianism,” insists Ajay Rai, candidate for the Congress-led I.N.D.I.A. alliance in Varanasi. “Since India’s independence, whenever anyone has tried to take control of the country, people have rejected them.” 

If Modi is feeling such insecurity, he is certainly not showing it, basking in the admiration as Indians flocked in huge numbers to see him. “ModiJi has done tremendous development,” says Dolly Shah, 25, a student waiting by the roadside to glimpse the prime minister, using the honorific most Indians do when referring to him. 

“I would vote for him again so that India can develop more. There’s no one like him.” 

Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh in Varanasi

Letter in response to this article:

An unfavourable critique of the FT’s India coverage / From Shashi Shekhar Vempati, Former Chief Executive of Prasar Bharati (India’s Public Broadcaster), New Delhi, India