As the prime minister having secured a momentous third term with a clearly outlined vision for the next five years, Narendra Modi’s overarching legacy will be that of transforming his party into an electoral machine, a party that can win elections, says a new book.
In ‘Indian Renaissance – the Modi decade’ [Westland Books], editor Dr Ashwariya Pandit, Modi’s biggest contribution is in dismantling a perception that the BJP being a purely ideological party, had no mass base. “Modi is responsible for making the party and the RSS’s ideology palatable to a larger audience, both within and outside the country. The party’s ideology, which was seen as unsuited for the push and pulls of national and regional politics, had been a limiting factor to its growth so far. However, Modi has achieved the unthinkable by making the BJP hegemonic, commanding the narrative of elections and development, and ushering in a dynamism into the office of the prime minister that has few parallels across the world.”
‘Indian Renaissance – the Modi decade’ consists of a collection of essays written by many prominent figures such as Tony Abbott, Samir Saran, Penny Street, Don Ritter, Rajiv Kumar, Avatans Kumar, Grant Newsham, Cleo Paskal, Kartikeye Sharma, Priya Sahgal, M D Nalapat and others.
In her essay, Dr Pandit who teaches legal history at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, makes an interesting and astute observation. She says each time the election results were announced since 2014, the prime minister has always visited the central party headquarters to congratulate and interact with his karyakartas. “His messaging is clear; he is speaking directly to his cadres who form the backbone of the party. Modi has communicated that the party comes first. He reinforces it every time he visits the party office, reminding the workers that no matter how complete and stupendous a victory you may achieve, no individual—not even him, despite being the prime minister—is higher than the party. This is the enduring legacy he will leave behind: strengthening not only the party but the belief that the party is supreme.
To substantiate her argument, Dr Pandit quotes Modi’s speech to the party cadres after the election victory in 2019, when he had said, “We the workers of BJP, our friends in NDA we dedicate the victory in the feet of the people…. Just like what our president said, the crores of BJP workers, their efforts and the purpose, I feel so proud that my party that I am a part of are full of generous people…. We have to accept the election results with humility. A government is formed with people’s mandate we have to work with the spirit of inclusion.
Dr Pandit reminds the readers that Modi had inherited a BJP with no clear vision; a party unable to recover from the debacle of 2009. The loss had demoralised cadres—and more so the RSS, which many believe decided to fully back the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi in 2002.
Fighting the battle of perception had been a monumental task before Modi as the BJP was seen as an ideological party with little to offer to expand its base beyond urban voters in small towns and capital cities in India. This was a daunting task as leaders before him were tied up with a limited support base and had to contend with coalition partners, which nearly brought down governments. Modi’s expansion of the BJP base beyond caste, community and religion will be his enduring legacy, as the pressures of national politics have been very different from that of being the chief minister of Gujarat.
Modi, in certain respects, Dr Pandit succinctly argues, has been able to capture the imagination of Indians, much like Kennedy did for the Americans. Modi’s entry on the scene coincided with the explosion of social media. The period between 2014 to 2024 was also marked by a tense international situation exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic Caliphate in 2014, the Iranian nuclear programme and climate change crisis, a global pandemic in 2020, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among many other issues. It became very clear early on that the social media revolution ushered in by the digital revolution was fraught with unprecedented challenges. During Manmohan Singh’s term, social media was at best peripheral to the mainstream media, but Modi used it extensively for citizen outreach in Gujarat, as pointed out by Andy Marino in his unofficial biography of Modi. As prime minister and BJP icon, Modi has successfully used social media to communicate with voters of every age and region. This also pushed his party to use social media extensively, which also resulted in many of the debates on social media being led by the BJP.
However, there is a flip side too. Primacy and thrust on social media has changed the mode and manner of communication. In fact, Modi has also allowed social media to run free, conscious of the dangers it would pose for him in the long run. The mushrooming of YouTube channels has allowed different opinions to co-exist in what was earlier largely a preserve of a few—mainly legacy media channels.