New Delhi: On Republic Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ditched the tradition he had adopted for himself – ‘of wearing colourful turbans’ to attend the parade at India Gate.
Instead, Modi flaunted an Uttarakhandi cap with an image of the state flower, the brahmakamal, and a stole from Manipur.
According to a Times of India report, the prime minister’s sartorial statement at an official event was “seen as a nod to poll-bound states”. What can be seen from this is that even while officiating at an event as the country’s prime minister, Modi could not give up – for even a moment – his part as the poll mascot of his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP is in the fray to retain power in Uttarakhand and Manipur, two hill states where he couldn’t hold as many public rallies as he would have liked to, unlike, say, in Uttar Pradesh.
This is not the first time Modi has flaunted clothes and accessories representative of a community or state. That multiple news reports were filed on what he had worn to the Republic Day parade on January 26 is proof in itself that by now, be it in televised addresses to the public as the prime minister or in rallies as a party man, what he wears is watched by the Indian media to curate essential side stories. It is also a given that Modi, as prime minister or party man, has also made good use of that media gaze on him to send out a message or two to the voting public.
To appreciate better this established propensity, it is only advisable to go back to the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary elections in which the BJP had fielded him as its prime ministerial candidate. Let’s recall that voting day on April 30 in the Ranip area of Ahmedabad within the Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency from where Modi had contested those elections. Soon after casting his vote, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate held an ‘impromptu’ press conference outside the booth where he famously flaunted the party’s poll symbol, the lotus, in the form of a brooch.
File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking a ”selfie”after casting his vote during the 2014 general election. Photo: Reuters/File
That act of his splashed by television media across the country kicked up a storm, with the opposition demanding that the Election Commission of India (ECI) take serious note as this was clearly a case of canvassing for votes for his party near a polling booth – on a day when he was not allowed to do so. What happened thereafter must be carefully noted because the chain of events that followed essay perhaps the first chapter in India of what is essentially a political strategists’ tool in western democracies to influence voters – passive electioneering.
In that 2014 episode also lies the key to unlock why the Indian media has come to interpret Modi’s silent accessories on non-party occasions like Republic Day as ‘a nod to poll-bound states’.
In 2014, following opposition protests, the ECI filed an FIR at Ahmedabad against Modi for violating poll norms under the Representation of People’s Act. Typically, a lower court took up the matter and asked the Gujarat Police to investigate it further and file a report. The police force – which had been under Modi’s thumb for three terms in a row – duly told the court of additional chief metropolitan magistrate M.H. Patel that there was no violation of the norms under the Act because that brooch with the BJP logo was ‘part of Modi’s attire’ that day. The police’s logic was strange because even assuming the brooch was part of his attire, he deliberately chose to hold it up for a selfie in a way that was calculated to draw attention to it.
What must be deduced from that claim is that it was a legal technicality well thought out by BJP poll strategists which, in turn, helped the Gujarat Police script a closure report on the matter. Based on that report, the magistrate dropped the charge against Modi on August 22. By that time, Modi had become the country’s prime minister.
What defines passive electioneering
The 2014 charge against Modi might have been dropped on a technicality but what he did was a representative example of passive electioneering – ‘the act of wearing campaign paraphernalia or carrying signs to a polling place with the intent of influencing voters.’
In western democracies, passive electioneering is already generating a debate with several states in the United States clamping a ban on it – by restricting voters (including party candidates) from wearing, among other things, campaign buttons, to the booth.
Back in 2008, the State of New York was the first in the United States to bring in a law to discourage passive electioneering. The Huffington Post reported how in 2008, days before the presidential polls, the Board of Elections at New York had warned voters that the law brought against passive electioneering would be implemented and those wearing a campaign t-shirt or a campaign button to the poll booth would be asked to remove it.
The 2008 US presidential elections were noteworthy because of Barack Obama, in whom a large section of the electorate had taken interest, with hopes that he would usher change in American political history. Modi’s prime ministerial campaign strategists since 2014 have been unabashedly following the trajectory of American presidential campaigns – projecting him in 2014 too as the usher of a ‘new India’.
A devotee prays as he stands in front of a cutout of PM Narendra Modi during the Kumbh Mela on February 2, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
No wonder then, Modi wearing a brooch with the BJP logo to the poll booth featured as a campaign tool in the 2014 elections.
Modi’s strategists could use the power of it through the media then because in India, there has not been any debate on passive electioneering, nor any specific rule woven into the Representation of Peoples’ Act to discourage it – like it has been done in several states in the US.
That there has been no debate even after Modi successfully used the tool in the 2014 parliamentary polls has also encouraged the man and his advisers to take the strategy to newer levels.
Modi’s passive electioneering style
Since the BJP is forever in election mode, so is its primary poll mascot, Modi. That Modi is continually on the party’s campaign trail is also because the BJP knows only his image sells. Even in an assembly election, the party – precisely for that reason – goes to voters with him as the mascot.
It is not that it is impossible for a strong leader in the BJP to rise from a state. There are enough examples of it already within the party. Modi too rose through the ranks. But will that leader also have the appeal to pull off a win at the national level? The BJP seems unsure of that possibility after Modi’s grand success.
Also read: Modi’s Attempted Image Makeover After COVID Debacle Has Morphed into Worrying Sycophancy
Modi’s government constantly hammers on the federal structure with an aim to weaken it, and thereby dampens the appeal of any chief minister. This helps ensure that the Modi mania favours BJP at the state level too. It is the reason why no BJP chief minister is given the license to shine anymore. Every action of their government must be projected by them as the outcome of ‘Modi ji’s grace’.
Notably, the BJP strategists failed in the West Bengal assembly polls principally because a powerful chief minister from the opposition camp, Mamata Banerjee, took on Modi in the electioneering department based on a different model of governance than that of the BJP, the success of which is now prompting her to challenge him even at the national level – a phenomenon that Modi’s image strategists would rather not have to deal with.
It is within such a reality that Modi flaunting clothes and accessories representative of a community or a state must also be viewed.
‘Hardly any poll promise has been fulfilled by Modi anyway’. Photo: PTI/File
Modi’s image managers are always under pressure to continuously project him as the only political figure who can bring Sab ka Saath Sab Ka Vikas (‘taking everybody along, helping everybody develop’). Such a tall political slogan can’t be reached by policies and poll promises (not even with communal hate campaigns by a section of his supporters) alone.
Hardly any poll promise has been fulfilled by Modi anyway. He too knows that implementing a policy is not an easy route to ensure sab ka vikas. So the image of ‘people’s leader’ must be achieved through symbols emblematic of a communities. It is even better if that community is in a majority in a state and also voting in an election in which his party has a decent chance of grabbing or retaining power.
What has also helped Modi and his strategists is, in a vast country like India, it is a reality that some section or the other has felt marginalised by New Delhi some time or the other. National parties like the Congress have ignored that fact, while the BJP, under Modi, have been able to use it to its advantage simply by making some representative accessories of communities as part of his attire – much like the brooch with the BJP logo in the 2014 elections.
That Modi and his strategists have been successfully using the tactic of using his person as the election billboard for the last few years also points at them taking passive electioneering to an altogether newer level, one not quite seen in the West. That way, we can truly call this development the ‘Modi style’ of electioneering – different from other Indian political leaders wearing a particular dress or an accessory of a community while visiting a region during a poll campaign.
Significantly, what must be also noted is, by doing so, Modi has efficaciously reduced the centrality of the saffron lotus logo of his party.
Fundamentally, he has replaced that party symbol with himself – a reason why we also see his image on COVID-19 vaccination certificates.
