How To Write a Dictator

THERE WAS NO SHORTAGE of machismo at this year’s New Delhi World Book Fair. The theme was “Indian Military History: Valour & Wisdom @75.” There were men in fatigues, a pavilion with installations of tanks, jets and warships, and a tribute to Operation Sindoor. There were over a hundred events involving defence experts and former soldiers, and a visit from the chief of the army staff. Dharmendra Pradhan, the union minister for education at the time, inaugurated the fair and declared that “The Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji has transformed the culture of reading into a people’s movement.” The image of Modi was everywhere: from features already present in the book fairs of previous years, such as selfie points, to every promotional banner outside.

This scaffolding meant that the books, though everywhere, felt like a bit of a side act. That is not to say the fair did not see hordes of keen students, book lovers among the general public, or snotty intellectuals (I would really have liked to have been spared overhearing, in a queue, two Bengalis argue over whether Foucault or Derrida was more “grassroots,” for example.) But in the sense that a gathering focussed on books took on a different function, an officious one also visible in the Namo Book Festival in January—featuring over 400 books about Modi—where a book event is more a marketing fuss to promote the prime minister’s image. There is a lot of this around: a book exists to invite deification, sometimes quite literally.

A few years ago, Bluekraft’s Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery compiled articles praising Modi’s governance by ministers, a tech billionaire, a sportsman and an actor. One government of India blog, written by a young intern, said, “It’s no exaggeration to call it a guide like the Arthashastra for modern political aspirants.” The union home minister Amit Shah said, “This book will rise up to become equivalent to ‘Gita’ for those who believe in the path of building a complete persona and those who are in the field of social work and politics.” Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kerala unit accused Calicut University of being pro-Pakistan because it removed the book from its display of new books after two weeks, as it does with all newly released titles. The BJP state president said “the university authorities have insulted the Indian Constitution and the country’s democratic tradition.”

Six months after the book fair, at protests across the country, and online, Modi’s image was everywhere again, in placards, memes, graffiti, slogans and reels protesting against his government’s failures. This time, the theme was resentment and irreverence. A young man wandering around Jantar Mantar carried an X-ray report, trying to demonstrate that Modi’s chest is not 56 inches wide, as he had once claimed it to be. “Chhappan inch ka chhota bandar”—the 56-inch small monkey—was one of several older jibes to resurface, aimed at puncturing his carefully curated persona of a muscular leader.