Fears that Modi’s arrival in New Delhi would prompt an upsurge in sectarian savagery proved unfounded. Indeed, the richer India has grown, the less violent it has generally become, with steadily declining rates of communal rioting over recent decades.13 Even so, since 2014 there has been a growing drumbeat of alarming episodes involving Hindu chauvinists, almost all of whom are staunch Modi supporters. Some have involved symbolic strikes against secularism: removing Nehru’s name from school textbooks, for instance, or banning works on Hinduism by liberal Western scholars, whose ideas were said to offend mainstream sensibilities.14 Others have featured jingoistic campaigns against “anti-national” elements, from students to human rights activists, and even those who resist chanting patriotic slogans or standing when the national anthem is played in cinemas.
There was then particular animosity directed at Islam, beginning with trumped-up campaigns against what was often called “love jihad,” in which Muslim men were accused of using surreptitious marriage proposals as a tool for the conversion of Hindu women. In 2015, around a year before they changed the name of Modi’s own street, authorities in New Delhi changed another major artery, Aurangzeb Road, renaming it after the country’s revered former president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The decision swapped one Muslim icon for another, but still removed a prominent symbol of the capital’s Islamic heritage under centuries of Mughal rule. More prominent still was a spate of violent campaigns to protect cows, which are considered sacred by conservative Hindus. Some involved legal changes, for instance to tighten rules governing slaughterhouses, most of which are run by Muslims. But at their worst they devolved into Islamophobic thuggery, leading to a rash of murders and lynchings conducted by gau-rakshaks (cow protectors) against those suspected of eating or selling beef.
None of this was caused directly by Modi, or indeed condoned by him. But almost all these incidents were linked in one way or another to a constellation of fanatical Hindu groups that had grown bolder after Modi’s arrival, most notably the RSS, whose leaders remained tied closely to his government. Sometimes Modi spoke out against these forces of division, but he generally did so reluctantly and belatedly, as if unwilling to dress down his more fervent supporters. For all his undoubted rhetorical skills, he also almost never deployed them to win over worried liberals, or to reassure minorities fearful about the rise of newly partisan Hinduism. Instead, his speeches preached a gospel of growth while dropping in dog whistles that only the attentive would hear. “Almost for 1,000 to 1,200 years we were slaves,” he told a cheering crowd of well-heeled diaspora Indians at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2014.15 The implication was clear: Indians were subjugated not just during British rule but also under the various Muslim empires that preceded it. Only now under Modi were they—meaning the long-suffering Hindu majority—becoming free.
Even more than Modi himself, liberal critics were alarmed by Amit Shah, a tall and heavyset politician who was both BJP president and the prime minister’s enforcer. An adept strategist, Shah won a Machiavellian reputation, both for his acute grasp of the intricacies of caste politics and for his unerring ability to use them to stir up communal tensions. His talents in this second domain were such that the Election Commission of India took the unusual step of banning him from making public speeches in the run-up to the 2014 election, as punishment for a series of earlier inflammatory remarks.16 Ugly though they were, Shah’s methods were also effective, scripting for Modi a run of state-level election triumphs, notably his crushing Uttar Pradesh win in early 2017, which left the BJP in a position of unprecedented national dominance.
More than a decade younger than his mentor, Shah met Modi first through the RSS as a teenager. A framed picture of Savarkar, their mutual inspiration, hangs in his home in New Delhi.17 His notorious public image stemmed from his time as a power broker in Modi’s Gujarat administrations. As the state’s home minister he was accused of involvement in extrajudicial police killings, and spent three months in jail in 2010. The case against him eventually collapsed, but not before it buttressed the reputation as henchman and hard-liner that he would later take with him to New Delhi.18 In person, as I discovered when I met him briefly in UP, Shah shared many of his boss’s traits, not least a distrust of the media and hostility to questioning. In his public speeches, he stuck mostly to Modi’s script of economic development. But there was also clear logic to his darker methods, which stirred up religious passions as an election-winning tactic. Hindu voters were divided by caste, region, and language. Modi’s electoral odds improved greatly when they were united—an approach that political scientists like Ashutosh Varshney dubbed “Hindu consolidation.”19
The BJP was far from the only party to play politics with communal identity: “The Congress is opportunistically communal while the BJP is ideologically communal,” as writer Mukul Kesavan once put it.20 But whatever its ideological leanings, in practice the BJP most often used communal tactics to build common cause against non-Hindus, Muslims in particular. “If land is given for cemetery in a village, it should be given for cremation ground also,” the prime minister thundered at a mass rally in UP as the 2017 state election campaign began, making reference to the funerary practices of Christians and Muslims on the one hand and Hindus on the other.21 “If electricity is supplied during Ramzan [Ramadan], it should be supplied during Diwali also,” he went on. “There should not be discrimination.”
What appeared to be a plea for equality was actually a transparent wedge issue, likely to agitate Hindus who feared Muslims were being given special government treatment. Shah had already made a series of earlier incendiary speeches, one of which claimed that Hindus in one UP town were being ejected forcibly from their land.22 Modi’s Svengali showed a particular gift for making Hindus feel as if they were under threat from shadowy outside forces, most linked in some way to Islam. What many feared in Modi they saw clearly enough in his most trusted lieutenant: a talent for skulduggery and a radical ambition to reimagine India as a Hindu nation.
One hundred and seventy-one million people voted for Modi in 2014.23 It was hard to know how many did so enthusiastically and how many were to some degree reluctant, viewing the BJP leader as their least-worst option, or feeling some degree of alarm at the company he kept. Modi’s political family still included the RSS and its even more fanatical acolytes, all of whom campaigned openly for a Hinduized society. Yet it was Modi alone who took these ideas and remixed them with wider appeal. The Hindu nationalism of old was, if not entirely a fringe ideology, then at least a minority one. Before him the BJP had held power in New Delhi on only a handful of occasions. The party’s power base was restricted to particular stretches of Hindi-speaking northern and western India, while its more militant adherents were viewed mostly as cranks. Modi was different: he took Hindu nationalism and fashioned it into something popular.
At the heart of this appeal lay an ability to fuse the modern and the authentically traditional. Modi’s religious background was unimpeachable, but he built alongside it a broader coalition that reached from lowly villages and slums to the plush homes of the business elite, who were typically reliable BJP voters. His speech at Madison Square Garden had all the trappings of a contemporary rock concert. But his delivery that day was more impressive for coming in the middle of a nine-day fast, where he was said only to have drunk lemonade and tea, even during a formal dinner at the White House.24 His speeches touched on themes of ambition, talking about the importance of finding jobs and enjoying material comforts. But his public statements were also laced with allusions to Hindu mythology and examples of quirky village wisdom. “Plant five trees to celebrate a daughter’s birth, they will fetch you the funds for her marriage,” he once wrote on Twitter, the point being that the timber could eventually be harvested to pay for a generous wedding ceremony.
Where earlier prime ministers appeared indecisive, Modi was resolute, with a particular flair for communication. Even
his penchant for colorful outfits brought a dash of glamour to a country long used to politicians in dowdy, hand-spun white cotton. There was an undeniable masculinity about his appeal: the man who boasted of his “56-inch chest,” launched surgical strikes against Pakistan and stubbornly refused to apologize for his role in the violence of 2002. This muscular firmness seemed to hold particular allure for younger men, like Vivek Jain, the bank worker I met during Modi’s 2014 election day celebrations in Gujarat. Yet it was an incongruous kind of attraction too, given that it rested in large part on the implied virility of a leader who, were his official biography to be believed, had never actually had sex.
Modi’s taste for flashiness sometimes got the better of him. In 2015 he met President Barack Obama resplendent in a dark blue Savile Row suit, with gold pinstripes repeatedly spelling the words “NARENDRA DAMODARDAS MODI.” The costume was widely mocked for its expense and vanity. A rare public relations stumble, it was this episode that gifted his opponents the slogan “suit boot ki sarkar,” meaning a rotten regime run by the prime minister and his elegantly tailored cronies.25 Modi recovered only by selling the offending item off for charity, in the process raising Rs43 million ($672,000) and winning a Guinness World Record for “the most expensive suit sold at auction.”26 Such missteps remained rare, however. Halfway through his term in office, at a moment when many leaders find themselves at a low ebb, data from the Pew Research Center suggested that nine in ten Indians viewed their prime minister positively, making him easily the most popular leader of any major global power.27
The broader point was that Modi was neither a born-again technocrat nor a recovering Hindu zealot. Rather he was both those things, and he made their mix uniquely attractive. He proved politically canny in other ways, not least by adopting secular symbols. As well as lauding Gandhi in speeches, he adopted the Mahatma’s rounded glasses as the logo for Swachh Bharat, his campaign for public cleanliness. A devotee of early-morning stretching exercises, Modi launched International Yoga Day in 2015 with a gigantic public demonstration that brought some thirty-five thousand onto the streets of New Delhi, winning a further Guinness World Record.28 There were dozens more displays around the world, in an event that played a useful political double purpose: on the one hand displaying a new kind of Indian soft power, on the other firmly reclaiming a practice, rich in symbolism for Hindus, that had grown worryingly entangled in the secular lifestyles of the West.
The yoga event was typical of Modi’s ability to appeal to both traditional values and contemporary frustrations. The anti-corruption protests of 2011 erupted partly as a conduit for middle-class anger about governance. But they also spoke to wider disappointment at the amateurishness of the Indian state: the sense of shame that flowed from nationwide power cuts or delayed journeys in dilapidated trains or being shaken down for bribes by minor public officials. It was an anger that Modi shared. His was a vision of India with wide highways, solar parks and bullet trains; a country in which things were achieved and people got on, as he himself had done.
This appeal came across most clearly when he toured abroad, a process that shared more in common with a pop star than a politician. Madison Square Garden hosted his first big foreign rally in 2014, in an event freighted with extra symbolism, given that Modi’s arrival in New York that September marked the end of his exclusion from America in the aftermath of 2002. Nearly twenty thousand packed in to see him perform, the kind of crowd almost no global leader could match. Similar spectacles followed in Sydney, Silicon Valley, and London, where sixty thousand jammed into Wembley Stadium on a brisk November night in 2015, with Prime Minister David Cameron as his warm-up act. Modi reveled in the attention.
The Indian diaspora were far from united in their admiration for the BJP. Most Indian-Americans tended to vote for the Democrats, while British Indians historically favored the Labor Party. Yet there was still undeniable Modi enthusiasm among a certain kind of émigré, typically upper-caste Hindus who had found success abroad and wanted the same to be possible back home. Modi deftly exploited these feelings, first filling his audiences with pride in their motherland, then subtly needling their grievances at its present condition. Yet for those Indians packed into foreign stadiums or watching back at home, there was a simpler reaction too: to see their prime minister up on stage, being cheered as a global superstar, was to suggest that India itself might soon achieve that same status too.
Brave Narendra
Modi runs India from a pale red sandstone building, tucked almost out of sight towards the end of the government secretariat complex on New Delhi’s Raisina Hill. There are few outside hints of its importance, beyond a single checkpoint and a small red sign reading “Prime Minister’s Office: Gate No. 5.” Inside there are layers of security checks, one involving an old dresser into which visitors surrender their phones. The corridors beyond are eerily empty, except for pairs of camouflaged soldiers, who stand quietly at doorways in blue caps, bearing conspicuous automatic weapons.
A grand staircase curves up towards Modi’s office and the nearby room where India’s cabinet meets. The upper-floor balconies are draped in a thin mesh to stop marauding monkeys from breaking in. There is no central heating, so civil servants keep portable electric heaters handy for the colder months. Modi is often pictured presiding over wintertime meetings wearing a warm jacket and thick woolen scarf. For a leader known to love technology the place is curiously antiquated, with barely a computer or flat-screen television in sight. It is all too easy to imagine the same draughty hallways in colonial times, when the viceroy had offices there, just over the road from his sumptuous imperial residence.
Those who work with Modi speak admiringly of his energy: a man who rises before dawn and has been never known to take a holiday. “He is a workaholic,” one civil servant told me when I visited the building in the summer of 2017. “Mostly he starts at 7 a.m., and works fourteen-hour days.” Officials remark less on his intellect—although he is said to be clever—and more on his endurance, as he sits through grueling late-night PowerPoint briefings. In public Modi is flamboyant: a maker of speeches and an entertainer of crowds. But in private he sits impassively: a good listener who sucks up detail, asks pointed questions and displays prodigious acts of memory, dredging up details from many months before. He has few distractions, with an estranged wife and neither children nor grandchildren. Instead, his companions are administrators: the joint secretaries, deputy secretaries, and officers on special duty with whom he shares the Prime Minister’s Office—or just “PMO”—many of whom have worked for him loyally since Gujarat. “It’s monastic, but that’s because he has a lot of time for bureaucrats,” I was once told by Arvind Subramanian, the government’s chief economic adviser, who spoke glowingly about his boss. “As a person who is interested in decisions, development, and making sure that he gets all the structures and decision-making in place, I think he’s quite extraordinary.”29
Whether there is another, softer side to Modi is hard to tell. A noted raconteur in his pracharak days, there are still flashes of humor in his speeches and genuine warmth in the bear hugs with which he envelops visiting foreign leaders. In public he has his quirks, not least an enduring love of corny acronyms. “My mantra is: IT + IT = IT,” he told an audience in 2017, explaining that the slogan meant “Information Technology + Indian Talent = India Tomorrow.”30 When meeting Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu later the same year he unveiled the slogan “I4I,” or “India for Israel and Israel for India.”31 In meetings, he displays an autodidact’s mastery of niche subjects, with interests ranging from animal husbandry to rural irrigation, many of which he picked up while running his home state. Modi’s approach to government promises unparalleled transparency, with his YouTube channels, hologram appearances, and tens of millions of Twitter followers.32 But of the man behind the mask there is nothing, beyond an inscrutable sense of “Modi’s unwillingness to be known,” as one account from his time in Gujarat
put it.33
As prime minister, Modi is even more guarded, a fact he occasionally appears to regret. “Earlier when I used to make speeches, I would make them so humorous,” he told Arnab Goswami, before blaming India’s journalists in general terms for their habit of distorting his remarks. “There is no humor left in public life because of this fear. Everyone is scared.”34 That same fear certainly extends to those who work under him, who are careful never to show even a hint of disloyalty. In New Delhi, tales of prime ministerial control have grown legendary, extending to matters both weighty and trivial. One example of the latter involves Prakash Javadekar, then a junior BJP minister, who is said to have received a surprise phone call one day on the way to the airport. He listened bemused as an official in Modi’s office upbraided him, having somehow discovered that the minister was leaving on an official trip dressed in jeans, rather than a formal suit.35 Javadekar denied the story but it circulated widely anyway, both as an example of the prime minister’s widely suspected megalomania, and as a warning to others that no perceived infraction, not matter how minor, could escape Modi’s all-seeing gaze.36
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