Populism and the Strongman: From Modi to Yogi

One of the central features of populism is dependence on a strongman and Indian politics is once again at the cusp of debating how to have a strong leader who does not undermine the significance of the political party he or she belongs to. In the popular perception, a good leader is someone who is decisive and clear-minded. But the leader is also expected to be amenable to public opinion, approachable, and accountable. These popular perceptions of leadership influence the manner in which political leaders manage their parties and the way they project themselves.

Indira Gandhi was lauded for her strong, almost authoritarian, personality and was portrayed as ‘Durga’. But she was also chastised for undermining inner-party democracy, for initiating a process of de-institutionalization, and for making demands for a ‘committed judiciary’ that finally landed Indian democracy in the crisis of the Emergency in 1975. This tension and friction, between the rather opposing imaginations of leadership, is a continuing thread of Indian politics and democracy.¹⁸

Arvind Kejriwal was touted as an honest and approachable leader who cared about public opinion. But when he sat on a dharna and did a sit-in while being the chief minister of Delhi, he was roundly criticized. The general opinion then was that a leader cannot bring down the prestige or garima of an official position by taking to the street as a ‘commoner’—He needed to maintain the dignity that comes from keeping a distance from the street. Looking approachable was no longer perceived to be an act of bringing power closer to the common citizen—read direct democracy — but as a violation of the sense of self as a citizen. Kejriwal himself has agreed that what he did came as a ‘cultural shock’ to the aam aadmi in Delhi and elsewhere.¹⁹

Ascetics and Celibate

A ‘good leader’ also cannot be a ‘part-time’ politician; he has to be a professional and committed to spending all his time with the machinations of party and government. This view coexists with the idea that a good and strong leader is ascetic, who believes in renouncing his personal and private pursuits for the larger cause of the nation. By this logic, those without a family are often, ipso facto, considered, to be honest leaders. Power has to be managed with a single-minded pursuit and without personal attachments. This is the gift of the Gandhian imagination of brahmacharya, which means celibacy in the immediate sense but also indicates a sense of detachment, in the broader sense.²⁰

It is, therefore, more than a coincidence that Narendra Modi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik, and Mayawati are considered popular leaders. They pursue power single-mindedly all the time and never display private emotions. Even leaders who work outside the institutions of state are often gauged by these very standards.

There is deep discomfort among Indians with the idea of the private and with being ordinary. The leader has to be larger than life and, perhaps, masculine to gain the ‘respect’ of fellow party men and the cadre. In this mode of imagining, the leader should not ever have to face dissent or difference of opinion, which are considered signs of weakness and disrespect.

There is a serious problem for those who lead an active public life to retreat into the anonymity of the private. This seems to be something specific to the culture of our nation. Nelson Mandela, who led a tireless public life as part of the anti-apartheid struggle, very seamlessly slipped into a quiet private life.²¹ Even George Bush preferred to pursue painting, after rather ‘eventful’ two terms as president of US.²² However, mass leaders and politicians in India rarely ever announce retirement from public life.

Given the dominant public morality in India, it only looks logical that leaders and their lifestyles assume a greater importance over parties and procedures that are seen as necessary to keep them democratic and open. Personality cult is not, therefore, that which emerges merely from certain ideological proclivities; its source may well lie in the way public morality is structured. What we are witnessing in Indian politics today has a long history and deep socio-moral base. What it has done under the current populist regime is to grow into a full-fledged personality cult that is presumably crafted by the media and its associated campaign. It began with Modi as the larger-than-life leader who is a ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ and moving into placing Yogi as the next-generation Hindutva idol.²³

From Modi to Yogi

There are now definitive signs of the next major shift in the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (BJP-RSS) combine in times to come. While Modi broke the ranks by shifting the tag of the BJP as a ‘Brahmin-Baniya’ party by invoking his backward class/caste status, the induction of Yogi Adityanath will lend the next major shift to creating a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. The BJP-RSS also perhaps believes that this carefully crafted image of a yogi becoming the head of state will revive the age-old Hindu tradition of a sannyasi taking up political power to cleanse the system of its inertia and revitalize it with valour. Yogi himself believes that sannyasis are necessary for politics to cleanse it.²⁴

There are parallels and subtle shifts in the symbolism of the imageries of Modi and Yogi. Both have sacrificed their family lives to adopt the nation as their family. Both have led ascetic lives detaching themselves from worldly temptations. While Modi as ‘Bal Narendra’ fought crocodiles and was a fearless child,²⁵ Yogi took the tough decision of taking up a life of a sannyasi without informing even his parents, even though he was close to his sisters.²⁶ While Modi joined as a pracharak and emerged as a Hindu Hriday Samrat, Yogi joined the Gorakhpur math. Both are considered good orators with the ability to issue open threats against Islamic jihadi forces.²⁷ Both seemingly understand human suffering, Modi on account of his poverty and eking a life by selling tea, Yogi by taking up voluntary poverty.²⁸

The shift is obviously from Modi as a social and political symbol of Hindutva to Yogi as perhaps the decisive religious symbol of Hindutva. There has been a very carefully designed and planned move from a centrist-humanist sounding Vajpayee to the more robust Advani to the militant Modi to the explicit religious symbolism in the rise of Yogi.

From Hindu Hriday Samrat to Hindu Samrat

Yogi is taking the discourse and politics of Hindutva many steps ahead. Modi cleanses politics through demonetization and Yogi purifies politics as a sannyasi.

Modi had already introduced an everyday language in popular mobilization. He crafted simple symbols, coined acronyms, and articulated everyday concerns of the citizenry through his Mann ki Baat. Yogi takes it a step further in talking about even personal habits of cleanliness, bathing and brushing regularly, and keeping surroundings clean, among others. It gives a sense of a return to an ancient Hindu way of life.

Gandhi had a similar mode of articulating and linking the every day to the political. He had similar interests in personal ethics, personal habits of cleanliness, and symbolism of an ashram, among others. Gandhi had already occupied the space that the figureheads of Hindutva are experimenting with today in bridging the gap between the private and the public. The symbolism of a yogi allows for politicizing everyday emotions of fear, anxiety, alienation, anger, and hatred.

Added to this shift in the model of leadership is the near-absolute clarity of the BJP-RSS combine in how a Hindu Rashtra should be ushered in. Yogi is the first step under whose tutelage the remaining agenda can be carried out, including the building of a Bhavya Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, repealing Article 370, implementing the Uniform Civil Code, amendment of the Constitution, reconfirming reservation from caste to economic criteria, and finally perhaps disenfranchising religious minorities.²⁹ Right is the only political force today that has near-absolute clarity of agenda and purpose in comparison to the rest of political groups in India.

‘Fascism in Us All’³⁰

It has now become commonplace to compare Hindutva with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, though in spite of all the comparisons, we do not have a clarity as to where does this kind of a mass consent to militant Right-wing politics comes from, except from a perceived construct of a hurt pride, of being victims of histories of invasions, a sense of inferiority, and humiliation. Both the Germans then and the Hindus now continue to suffer the sense of being ‘taken for granted’ for being polite, accommodative, and peace-loving. Further, the economic crisis of the Second World War and the current global crisis marked by a massive rise in inequalities are also comparable to why Hindutva has become a viable project, including the blatant use of fear, street violence, physical attacks, and elimination of those opposed to their politics, but this again too has some degree of social consent, if one is to believe the social media. Beyond this, we need a more in-depth understanding of how a social psyche is being created that replicates itself from political and institutional heads to the common man on the streets. The social has a deep psychological root and an ability to reproduce itself, what Michel Foucault refers to as ‘Fascism in us all’.³¹

Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, was forced by the British to write his autobiography in the interim period between his capture and execution. Hoess was in charge of a concentration camp in Poland that murdered over three million Jews. Some of his early reflections include self-observations such as, ‘My two sisters were attached to me… But I never wished to have much to do with them… I was never able to have any warmer feelings for them. They have always been strangers to me.’ He further adds, ‘I had the greatest respect for both my parents… but love... I was never able to give them. Why this should have been, I have never understood. Even today I can find no explanation.’ He narrates his memory of being repeatedly deceived and double-crossed; as a result ‘my only desire then was to run away… and be alone, and never see anyone again’.³²

Finally, his chilling account of mass killings where he admits ‘the killing of this Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time. The order had been given, and I had to carry it out’.³³

What other lessons need to be learnt from histories of secrecy, conspiracy, violence, masculinity, and misogyny, hatred and genocide, suffering and humiliation continues to remain open to scrutiny, as long as we have possibilities of politics of hatred gaining mass consent, out of fear or admiration. In understanding the phenomenon of the strongman, be it Modi or Yogi, the interface between fear and admiration is difficult to track. Right-wing populism has attempted, as we discussed, a complex maze of symbolism in producing its leaders, drawing connections among ascetism, vulnerability, and selflessness. The popular support they draw is connected to the way these aspects are perceived to become connected to an individual, which are otherwise disparate and work at cross-purposes in our everyday life.