MODI AS IDEOLOGY

A couple of years ago, when Modi held complete sway, this is (an abridged version of) what I wrote:

"Mr Modi wields a charismatic authority, in the strict Weberian sense of the term, over his large number of followers. Adored by them as a man of exceptional skill, exemplary in many ways and even infallible, 'Modi Hai To Mumkin Hai' has been elevated to a gospel truth. As his stranglehold on power becomes firmer, Mr Modi himself has become the ideology – an ideology without words.

Karl Mannheim thought that ideology acts as an unseen glass that systematically distorts our perception of the social world. It also relieves, as Marx said, the masses of the burden of thinking for themselves and induces a state of mind in which conviction precedes the validating facts. A basic, constitutive naïveté is, therefore, an essential requirement, which Modi's followers possess in abundance. The stronger the belief in their leader, or the cause he espouses, the weaker become their rational and critical faculties and their ability to pose pertinent questions. A very large section of Indians refuse to see the tree for the wood and refuse to see anything other than what Mr Modi wants them to see.

Strongly held beliefs, after a period of time, become internalised to such an extent that attacks on these beliefs are treated as attacks on the person. It is not uncommon for friends of fifty years' standing to come to blows because of their divergent views on Modi. The Modi ideology is deeply divisive.

To hold his followers tethered to their beliefs, illusion becomes the chief reinforcer and drama becomes the key. Compelling and startling images, 'absolute, uncompromising and simple', fill and beset the mind. As Gustave Le Bon said in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, the 'art of impressing the imagination of crowds is at the same time the art of governing them.'

To keep hope in impossible promises alive, chicanery and mendacity have become important parts of statecraft; propaganda has become the main pillar of government. They are experimenting with an applied epistemology which Theodore Adorno once described as 'a lie experienced as truth.' Hand in hand with this strategy goes the public-relations campaign of tarring those opposed to the official point of view – a specific and compelling necessity."

Today, I would write:

THE RECOIL FROM FAITH

Mr Modi has not changed. He is what he was and has ever been: a private posing as the general, a home-grown cabbage loyally mistaken for a rose. Proving Shakespeare wrong – "it is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil" – it was the childlike instinct of Gen Z, fearlessly calling him out, that brought him down. They pointed to the complete invisibility of the Emperor's clothes. Once they laughed at the naked Emperor, others could no longer pretend they saw the robes. Suddenly, the world also saw what his truth managers had been hiding in plain sight.

When Gen Z demanded accountability and explanation, live and 24/7, Mr Modi found himself at his wit's end. His democracy is built around the idea of absolute and unquestioned obedience. His style of governance calls for a voluntary suspension of disbelief; it enforces obligations without explanations. Explaining himself or accounting for the situation was never part of his cue lines.

But when he recovered his wits, he compounded matters through an extraordinary display of openness. The man who had never felt called upon to explain most major issues of the day was suddenly releasing unsolicited videos and granting a general amnesty. The Colossus not only had feet of clay; he was made of clay through and through.

The recoil from Modi as ideology had been incubating silently before receiving a tremendous impetus. The irreverence of Gen Z dissolved the spectacle of unquestioned authority into a live farce of unrelenting mockery. Robbed of charisma, he presented a picture of utter banality.

But the faith of his millions of followers has not perished, nor is it likely to disappear overnight merely because he has been mocked or no longer appears as formidable. Arthur Koestler observed that the loss of faith is a long and painful process of "ups and downs, advances and relapses," an oscillation between "new certainties and old doubts." The believer initially distrusts the testimony of his own senses. Every contradiction is explained away, every failure attributed to enemies, subordinates or circumstances. Even when mortally wounded, faith continues to twitch.

But the twitch can be measured. Kayasths of Bihar have long been regarded by many as the avant-garde of the state's intellectual class, yet they have consistently voted for the BJP, not as a political preference but almost as a hereditary obligation. Bankipur – where Kayasths constitute the bulk of the electorate – rejecting that voluntary servitude and voting the BJP out by a huge margin is no ordinary event. One swallow does not make a summer, as one of his ardent followers protested, but it is a powerful indicator of the shape of things to come.

Is this the beginning of the end?