Anuradha Bhasin
If anybody believes he wasn’t biologically produced but descended straight from the heavens, he could be either extra-terrestrial or delusional. Narendra Modi is a megalomaniac enough to be the latter. But that alone was not the intended purpose of his declaration of divinity.
For a man, who is known to talk only through scripted interviews and teleprompters, every word he utters passes levels of scrutiny of his huge team of brand managers working constantly on his image makeover. Whatever he says is meticulously planned, howsoever, absurd and outlandish it may sound to a reasonable mind, and howsoever it may be bereft of logic.
By catapulting himself to the exalted status of God incarnate, he is seeking to fortify his voter base. He is not speaking to a logical-thinking being. He is addressing his faithful followers who already see him as a cult figure that demands their blind faith and absolute subservience. Before him they willingly oblige.
The road to this proclamation has been thoughtfully engineered through consistent steps of raising him on a pedestal, and this mechanism is guided by the laws of progression, each time creating the illusion of a loftier stature.
Men of little substance are compelled to aspire for a higher pedestal they are on, lest the distance between them and the rest becomes bridgeable, lest they come clambering down. Modi needs that distance to maintain neat lines of a hierarchy on which he is at the topmost rung, with faithful associates and workers a few notches below and the ordinary admirers far below at the bottommost rung. More than a sense of superiority, this desire is driven by a sense of fear of losing that superiority.
In the last few years, he has risen from a Pradhan Sewak to a powerful leader, from a strong leader to a Vishwaguru, from a devout protecting Hinduism to God himself.
His proclamation is not a bolt from the blue. It has been meticulously planned to make it look organic. For years, his sycophants have spoken about him as a super-human being, if not divine. Two years ago, a minister in Uttar Pradesh called him an ‘avatar of God’ who can perform miracles. “If he wishes that a poor man’s house be constructed, the house starts building on its own,” she said among other things. Similar remarks have been made by BJP leaders from time to time.
In 2019, after the Ayodhya verdict, the BJP publicized posters of a giant Modi leading a dwarfed Lord Rama by the hand to the temple. More recently, BJP’s Sambit Patra called Lord Jagannath a devotee of Modi but later back-tracked and apologized for what he called a ‘slip of tongue’. It’s more than a coincidence that his remarks came two days ahead of Modi challenging his biological existence and claim of divinity.
The remarks also coincide with his fifty-odd monologues on television channels that are projected as interviews in which so-called journalists are mere props, paying obeisance to him in eulogies framed as questions, their tone and body language reflecting they are in a moment of trance before their lord and master. It was in one of these interviews that he made the declaration of being a divine force.
This narrative of divinity has been engineered piece by piece for a pestilent purpose.
While the reasonable, educated, and liberal Indian citizen may be amused or appalled by his remarks, there is also a vast section of the Indian population that will believe every word he utters. His Hindu-first approach and the paranoia he whips about minorities especially Muslims already make him God-like for those who subscribe to this ideology. The frustrated and the disillusioned find hope in his creation of the enemy and his promise that only he (Modi) can deliver them from this rot. Consistently and bit by bit, they have been made to believe that Modi is powerful. Now there is an attempt to convince them that he has miraculous powers.
This is not difficult to achieve in a country like India, where fake Godmen exist and thrive in every nook and cranny, and are held in great esteem by their gullible followers. Ironically, even as the revelations of their scams of tax evasion, money-minting religious empires, and sexual abuse are made public, their fan following remains undented. The fake god-men continue to hold their followers under their spell and awe by demanding complete subservience and obedience which also sometimes includes self-inflicting injury. They perpetuate myths and reinforce superstitions and the devotees faithfully believe, daring not to challenge them.
Modi has already capitalized on this Indian weakness of blind faith and superstition in the face of adversity. No amount of hardships that stemmed from actions like demonetization, poor handling of the Covid crisis, rising inflation, hunger, and unemployment could shake the faith that his loyal followers reposed in him.
The unquestioned and unconditional faith can only be sustained if he moves on to the next pedestal.
Therefore, from promoting Godmen, he’s graduating to becoming the biggest of them all. Like the fake godmen, his relationship with his followers is strictly hierarchical. He is the supreme and the rest are the lesser mortals. He leads and they believe. He commands and they obey. Like the Godmen, he holds a hypnotic control that only a rational-thinking person can escape.
As a political leader and prime minister, he has tested and wielded that power. Modi believes that his survival and sustenance depend on further embedding himself in the minds of his faithful followers, who are trained to not just believe and obey him but also to fear him. He must instill that fear that without him, everybody else is doomed. For them to remain loyal and subservient, he must rise and magnify himself. For him to stay in control, he must be fully uplifted to a stature where he is beyond question, rebuke, scrutiny, challenge, and opposition.
He’s not aspiring to be an ordinary fascist. He’s aspiring to be a God. Modi’s ramblings are not just signs of madness. There is a method in this madness.
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