Why Modi's personality cult could hurt BJP and RSS

During the Himachal Pradesh election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that every vote for 'kamal ka phool' would 'come directly to Modi's account as a blessing'. The statement propagates a personality cult that undermines the formal party hierarchy and even the importance of its ideology. In electoral politics, it has been tried by many, and in the recent past, most successfully by Mamata Banerjee. During the 2021 campaign, Bengal's 'Didi' declared that she was the candidate for all 294 assembly seats of Bengal and won a big mandate.

This tendency to portray oneself as larger than life fits well with all charismatic leaders, for they try to sway people's minds with their credibility. It worked well for Indira Gandhi, Lalu Prasad, and Mamata Banerjee and is now working well for Narendra Modi. Some leaders, such as Lalu Prasad and Modi, often refer to themselves in the third person.

However, apart from Modi, all the others belong to a different structure of political setup where the legacy of the leader is transferred to someone from the leader's family. But in an open party, such a legacy transfer is not possible. This vital difference puts the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, in a tight spot in the face of Modi's personality cult.

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In short, cultivating a personality does not hurt family-based parties but is helpful. However, it is another question whether the subsequent leader would be as successful, as that is also a function of certain complex, extraneous factors, including the strength of the rivals and the political environment. But the cult factor does damage an open party by making the next leader's path—even if he is a close associate of the present leader (like Amit Shah)—encumbered by various impediments.
Let us examine why it works so differently for these two different categories of parties.

The phenomenon of legacy transfer is a characteristic of all family-based parties. Still, it often works better, at least initially, for the charismatic ones, as people consign their faith in them. This case has been exemplified by Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Abdullah and Lalu Prasad, among others.

This kind of cornering of the top leadership within a family has often been criticised as 'parivarwaad'. But, seen from a neutral viewpoint, it is just an alternative to open party setups and has often been ratified by the people. In our part of the world, it is also an extension of people's faith in the ability of successive generations of a particular family in various social spheres, including cultural, musical and religious.

For this precise reason, a personality cult does not harm the family-based parties. But it does harm the parties with greater internal democracy. At this moment, it is exemplified in the decline of the AIADMK, in which the race for the next leadership was open since charismatic J Jayalalithaa had no heir apparent.

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As for the BJP, its rise was associated with the RSS ideology, the promise of better development, and collective leadership. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani were projected as 'the top men' at different times but within broader parameters defining the party. Vajpayee and later Advani tried to delink themselves and the BJP from the RSS to some extent, but neither succeeded, as exemplified by the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha poll defeats.

Modi, too, violated the norm in 2019, but it worked. It has emboldened him further, and to change the trend of BJP getting fewer votes in assembly elections than in the general one, he is playing for high stakes now. He will use it to the hilt in 2024 for sure.

It will create a void in the post-2024 BJP, as with the 75-year cut-off age, 2024 will be Modi's last election. Thereafter, the next leader will face huge impediments on two significant counts: their credibility and the expectation levels of the voters. The new leader will face much stricter scrutiny from the voters about their credentials and ability as they will be weighed against Modi's. It happened with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, as Jyoti Basu became a cult figure for the Bengal CPI(M) through a natural process due to his long innings.

Such a situation can be overcome if only the next leader emerges equally charismatic as Modi. But how that will play out, for the good or the bad of the nation, is another matter.

(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a journalist and author based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.