Religious Nationalism: Narendra Modi’s 2019 Election Victory Speech

Abstract

The ideology of nationalism is permeating and ascending across societies, eventually manifesting materially in several nations across the world. In this essay, I analyze the religious manifestation of nationalism within the context of India’s Hindu nationalism. I argue that Modi, in his 2019 election victory speech, constructs a grand narrative of Hindu nationalistic unification by positioning himself as a Hindu sanyasi (ascetic) and by alluding to Hindu mythologies. First, I present the historical context of India’s Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). Second, I explicate the formation of an ideological discourse through Kenneth Burke’s focus on identification and the constitutive rhetoric of calling into being the second and third persona. Third, I critique the ideological formations of Modi’s speech for its grand narrative of Hindu nationalistic unification. Fourth, I conclude within a broader context of national collective imaginings and the ideological formations of nationalistic rhetoric.

1. Introduction

The 2019 general elections in India witnessed a historic mandate from the people of the country. The incumbent Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which translated into English is “India’s People’s Party”, led by Prime Minister Narendra Damordas Modi won 349 out of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house) of the Indian parliament (Pong and Shrikanth 2019). Emerging as the single largest party with no help from other party alliances, the BJP won a landslide victory, allowing Modi to retain his Prime Ministerial position for a second term. Modi and his party members embody a Hindu nationalist ideology, and Modi’s rhetoric has several nuances that underscore his ideological inclinations. Perhaps the most important attribute of his rhetoric can be observed through the construction of a “grand narrative” for India.

A grand narrative or a metanarrative “is a term developed by Jean-François Lyotard to mean a theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various historical events, experiences, and social and cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or universal values” (McNab 2013, p. 33). To illustrate, the grand narrative of the Bible is the story of God: “How God revealed himself through particular encounters with individuals and nations, particularly through people from the nation known as Israel and the community formed around Jesus, known as the church” (McNab 2013, p. 33). Grand narratives or meta narratives call for an assertion that several scattered events in history are meaningful and can be explained through a universal truth. American exceptionalism, for example, is a grand narrative that links several ideas regarding the destiny and actions of the USA. Constructing a narrative around a unique American ideology and destiny, this grand narrative places America and its people on a pedestal. According to this grand narrative, the USA is considered to be a unique and distinct nation where generalizations that apply across the world find no meaningful application.

In similar tones, Malhotra (2018) defines the grand narrative of a nation as the overall story of its people: who they are, where they came from, what their philosophy and way of life is, what makes them one people, what was their past story and what is their future trajectory, and so on. Like all self-developed narratives, the narrative of a nation’s collective identity is made up of a selective use of genuine facts, many exaggerations, as well as outright fabrications. It is a self-image consisting of facts and fiction that has been passed down from generation to generation (p. 4).

Throughout history, several nations have attempted to build a grand narrative that places them on a pedestal. Embracing a narrative that a country is unique and much more “exceptional” than others is the essence of nationalism. The grand narrative of a country becomes the identity entrenched in the collective consciousness of the people living in the nation.

In this paper, I analyze the religious manifestation of nationalism within the context of India’s Hindu nationalism. I argue that Modi, in his 2019 election victory speech, constructs a grand narrative of Hindu nationalistic unification by positioning himself as a Hindu sanyasi (ascetic) and by alluding to Hindu mythologies. First, I present the historical context of India’s Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). Second, I explicate the formation of an ideological discourse through Kenneth Burke’s focus on identification and the constitutive rhetoric of calling into being the second and third persona. Third, I critique the ideological formations of Modi’s speech for its grand narrative of Hindu nationalistic unification. Fourth, I conclude within a broader context of national collective imaginings and the ideological formations of nationalistic rhetoric.

2. Literature Review

2.1. National Imaginings

A primordial view of nations and nationalism posits that affinity toward the nation state comes from the individual’s roots through factors such as place of birth, religion, and ethnicity. This idea of nationalism is upheld through a conviction that these nations are essentially “natural” communities sharing ethnicity, location, history, belief, language, and economic interest that should “naturally” enjoy political sovereignty in a “nation state” (Collins 1991, p. 157). For the proponents from a primordial perspective, national identity cannot be created, modified, or destroyed. It is entrenched in the conscious awakening of each individual, unshakable and unyielding.

In times where the assumption of a primordial nationalism is once again ascendant, it is necessary to synthesize the constructed nature of nationalism; that is, nationalism is not inherent but rather a creation of the cultural elite. I use the term “cultural elite” in a very broad sense as it incorporates political actors, the state, media, the entertainment industry, carrier groups, “intellectuals”, etc. The speech of a world leader, the “text” for this paper, is a commanding manifestation of the cultural elite. Therefore, I first establish that the idea of a nation state is essentially a manufactured one. Nationalism, at its core, is an ideology that legitimizes power by promising an avenue greater than oneself, demanding an unyielding loyalty towards the nation. In other words, it is an ideology that is wielded by the political elite, taking attention away from other plaguing societal issues (Fuchs 2019, 2020). At the same time, these constructions are embraced by individuals who wield their agency to be part of an affective, collective exaltation of national identification.

To describe these various constructions of national identity and nationalism, I begin with Benedict Anderson’s (Anderson 1983) Imagined Communities in which he asserts that nations are imagined and created. These communities are imagined in the sense that their presence is not realized until their “creation” is recognized. From a modernist perspective pertaining to new nationalism studies, Anderson (1983) explains that people in a country consider other people as their fellow citizens, with a perception of a shared sense of commonality; this commonality among heterogenous citizens, however, is imagined. Compared to Anderson, Gellner employs a much more critical view of the affinity towards the nation state. While Anderson stops at “imaginary”, Gellner asserts that nations are “fabricated” entities, and nationalism is by no means a rendering of a nation’s “self-conscious awakening”. Gellner conceptualizes the nation as “a modern linking of centralized political authority, mass education, and print capitalism” (Wiley 2004, p. 82; Gellner 1983).

The views of Anderson and Gellner could be positioned as a response to the fetishist primordial view of nationalism (Fuchs 2020). Although Anderson’s Imagined Communities is comparatively less critical of nationalism, as can be seen from his categorization of nations as “imaginations” rather than sheer “fabrications”, adopting a view of a nation state that is either “imagined”, “constructed”, or “fabricated” by a perceived sense of commonality rather than a material commonality, it primes us to employ a much more critical view of the ideology compared to the primordial view. These views are a departure from a primordial perspective towards nationalism that unilaterally states that nationalism is manifested from one’s roots and can encompass place of birth, religion, culture, and traditions. Nevertheless, the unification of primordial nationalism with religion plays a significant role in the resurgence of modern-day nationalism.

2.2. The Religious Manifestation of Nationalism

Naturalistic or primordial attitudes towards nationalism are further strengthened with the union of religion. Spohn (2003) writes, “religion, despite the various forms of secularization, remains a constitutive basis of national identity and nationalism” (p. 268). The forces of religion and nationalism together have become an essential feature of politics in several countries around the world. Religious nationalists believe that religion is not a separate entity from nationalism (Rieffer 2003). An assumption of religious nationalists is that people belonging to one religion must wield the power to obtain political influence, participate in political activity, and drive political change (Rieffer 2003; Friedland 2011). In such a scenario, the nation is constructed and run as an extension of religious beliefs.

At the heart of religious nationalism is a grand narrative of absolute Truth. I use Truth with a capital “T” to point consciously to the construction of religious nationalism as the ultimate reality of both the individual and the nation’s collective consciousness. This narrative is in tandem with that of God and religion, an affinity towards “divine law and religious authority” (Juergensmeyer 2010, p. 468). This essentially religionizes politics, placing political issues and rhetoric in a sacred context (Juergensmeyer 2010).

In the case of India, the collective identity (both national and religious) was in a state of severe crisis during British colonial rule (Baber 2000). The Indian nationalist movements that finally led to independence were essentially the new beginning of India, giving a new lease on life to the country’s identity. However, a conflict remained on the substance of the new Indian identity.

Secular Indian nationalism has been characterized by ideas of syncretism, pluralism, and tolerance. In contrast, in Hindu nationalism, Hinduism or Hindutva is the source of Indian identity. Muslims are the principal adversary; Hindu extremists believe that Muslims should be excluded, while more moderate Hindu nationalists believe that they must be assimilated, which involves accepting the central importance of Hinduism to Indian civilization (Charnysh et al. 2015, pp. 276–77).

This conflict between the secular Indian and Hindu nationalists is not surprising if one considers their respective psychological appeals; both invite individuals to position themselves as higher and greater than their constraining mortalities. In other words, embracing these concepts provides the “imagined communities” a deeper meaning of a divine order while “claiming to provide identity for their followers and demand various degrees of loyalty in return; finally, both seek to provide the authority that gives social and political order a reason for being” (Baber 2000, p. 64; Anderson 1983).

2.3. Hindutva

The concepts of Hindutva (Hinduness) and Hindu nationalism manifested in the Indian national debate even before India’s independence from the British. Baber (2000) states that a sense of Hindu community had become even stronger during the colonial rule. Essentially, the “divide and rule” policy of the British established deeper communal divides, particularly seen among the Hindus and Muslims. Baber (2000), however, advocates against incorporating an orientalist approach where colonialism is touted (and blamed) as the grand narrative for the communal discord in India. One reason for not taking this approach, as Baber (2000) mentions, is that doing so would “adopt an argument that would concede little by way of agency to Indians” (p. 64).

India was ruled by the Mughals before the British rule. The Mughals were a dynasty of Muslim Turkic–Mongol origin who ruled a majority of India for over two centuries before the British considerably reduced their influence. This essentially meant that Hindu nationalism would be constructed on the aspect of nativity:

In general, Islam in India was regarded as culturally identical to and part and parcel of the Islamic civilization centering on the Middle East. The Hindus, on the other hand, were represented as the true natives of India, whose ancient, pre-Islamic civilization was worthy of attention but whose present condition had been rendered deplorable as a consequence of “Muslim” rule.

(Baber 2000, p. 65)

For the Indian identity that was struggling with colonization and ethnic/religious fractionalization, a grand narrative was constructed by the British, which sought to legitimize the colonial rule of India surrounded by the discourse of a native Hindu nation. This grand narrative was exploited “to legitimate colonial rule [and] revolved around the idea that the British constituted an enlightened ‘race’ who, under the conditions, had no choice but to lead the Indian people out of the problematic situation they were in” (Baber 2000, p. 65). The divide and rule policy of the British certainly aided the communal conflict. Yet, most of the intellectual work of legitimizing colonial rule and aiding the communal conflict was conducted by elite Hindu and Muslim leaders on the opposing sides. The grand narrative that sought to legitimize British rule was discarded, although some of the conceptualizations from the narrative were adopted by leaders on both sides to further legitimize communal differences in the society. Competing memory narratives by elites on both sides had a catalytic impact on the conflict between the two imagined communities (Baber 2000). Hindu nationalist movements were initiated and were advocating for a Hindu nation free from colonialism (Baber 2000).

The Hindu nationalist organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was formed in the year 1925 by a physician named Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. Hedgewar started the organization based on the political environment around that time in British-colonized India. With the increasing unrest among Hindus and Muslims along with a rising independence movement, Hedgewar espoused the idea of a self-governed Hindu nation. Hedgewar started recruiting Hindus to fight for the cause of freedom from the British to establish a Hindu-dominant India. The organization initially positioned itself as more of a cultural group than a political group. Nevertheless, they believed and envisioned the principle of “Hindutva” (translated to Hindu-ness) for a free Indian nation (this seed of Hindu nationalism later gave rise to the Hindu nationalist political party, BJP, which is currently in power with Prime Minister Modi). Extremist ideas were employed by elites on both sides to legitimize not only the homogeneity of the Indian nation but also to identify colonial rule as part of the problem. V.D. Savarkar, a Hindu nationalist intellectual, had written several works that later became the principles of RSS and BJP. Savarkar argued the following:

India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims. There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India (as cited in Baber 2000, p. 68).

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was simultaneously running a Muslim nationalist independence movement, echoed similar views:

“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.” (as cited in Baber 2000, p. 68).

Post-colonial India has been largely defined by secularism. This secularism is formed on the basis of “equal respect for all, where the religions and the whole political process consisted of making concession to and accommodating a wide variety of religious demands and pressures from all religious communities” (Baber 2000, p. 72). Even within the constitutional significance of secularism, however, the contentious religious ideological discourse of leaders from opposing sides shaped the Indian political landscape.

Post-independence, the Indian National Congress (INC) party dominated the political landscape for over sixty years. Despite the INC’s emphasis on secularism and subsequent success in national elections, religious identity remained a powerful force in everyday public life. INC’s perceived minority appeasement, particularly of the Muslim community, further created fissures among the voters, with the Hindu-majority community increasingly feeling sidelined by the ruling party (Kidwai 2019). INC’s decline can be strongly attributed to its inability, over time, in creating a strong counter-narrative to the Hindutva narrative professed by a rising Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (The Economist 2024). Modi’s surge in the BJP further helped the Hindutva narrative, and consequently, he consolidated a strong base of Hindu communities across India (Bajpaee 2023). The religious, cultural, and historical differences between Hindus and Muslims were amplified by passionate discussions among people in their everyday lives. Modi’s grand narrative of Hindu national unification further exacerbated this divide (Dalal 2024). A broad section of Hindu voters, who previously felt neglected by INC’s secularist agenda, felt their “identity” aligned closely with Modi’s BJP, resulting in historic success for the BJP and the end of INC’s domination over national politics (Pew Research Center 2021). Religious identity and people’s “identification”, therefore, remain key forces of Modi’s discourse.

2.4. The Formation of an Ideological Discourse

Kenneth Burke’s conceptualization of “identification” as the key term for rhetorical discourse has a compelling connection to constructivist perspectives of nationalism. The root of Burke’s argument lies in the presumption that any individual’s identity lies in their perception of shared interests, similar to the constructivist perspective of nationalism. Burke (1950) explains this through a simple case:

A is not identical with his colleague, B. But as long as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so (p. 20).

The identification process according to Burke involves persuasion: a person must either identify themselves with another or must be “persuaded” to identify with another. Here, rhetoric plays a key role in the process of individuals identifying themselves with a nation. The call for a national identity incorporates a rhetoric of persuasion. As Burke (1950) notes, “identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division” (p. 22). The need for identification arises out of inherent societal divisions. According to Burke, the individual needs to overcome the “guilt” of division to be a part of an order and to assume a place in hierarchy. Burke (1966) writes that the individual is “goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order) and rotten with perfection” (p. 16). This is another compelling connection between Burke and constructivist scholars of nationalism, who referred to the nation state as a construction of the elites that serve to command loyalty from the individuals in a society. Individuals are further goaded into a hierarchy that is legitimized by the elites. The individual thrives for order and looks towards identifying aspects such as experiences, values, perceptions, material and spiritual values, and properties that are either shared or perceived to be shared between the said individual and other individuals. This need for identification legitimizes a hierarchy of power. Accordingly, we see world leaders applying this constructed identification of religion and nation to the individual grappling with her/his mortality. These identifications give the individual an avenue to chase perfection, as the individual is “rotten with” the notion of “perfection” (Burke 1966, p. 16). The inherent nature of individuals to discover order in hierarchy and immortality in constructs such as religions and nations provides a simpler avenue for the elites to constitute a rhetoric based on the same.

In such a scenario, we witness a two-way interaction (conscious or subconscious) between the rhetor and the perceived audience (or non-audience). The audience and the rhetor are in a constant ideological interplay. Charland (1987) views this rhetorical interaction as “constitutive”, and the audience is called into being through a rhetoric. Charland (1987) extends Burke’s conceptualizations of identity by arguing that a rhetoric does not simply respond to the ideological identifications of its audience but in fact constitutes a basis for the ideologies with which the audience identifies. In his words, the rhetoric interpellates subjects (p. 134).

This process of interpellation, according to Charland (1987), happens in three stages of ideological effects. First, the process begins with “constituting a collective subject” (p. 139) wherein individuals are called to identify themselves as part of a collective, and individual interests are replaced by collective interests. Second, the process continues with the “positing of a transhistorical subject” (p. 139), where the individuals are led to believe that the constituted collective identity has been in existence since the ancient past. Within the context of nationalist perspectives, this is similar to the primordial notion, where national identity is perceived to be inherent and transhistorical. Third, the ideological effect culminates with the “illusion of freedom” (p. 141) wherein individuals believe that they have the freedom to act as they wish to, even as they remain under the constraints of the constitutive rhetoric of the collective identity imposed on them.

In essence, Charland’s (1987) work is closely aligned with the constructivist conceptualizations of national identity, where the ideological effect of nationalism is a construction of the cultural elite. This is not to say that the audience does not have any agency. The audience can choose not to participate or act on this ideological effect and can chose to discard the constitutive rhetoric. But as Burke (1966) implies regarding human nature, individuals without identification will be left to deal with the guilt and discontent of the unidentified. The inherent need for identification further powers constitutive rhetoric.

Within this constitution of the audience, the identification or negation of a specific audience is a significant aspect that further builds our understanding of the ideological discourse. Here, I bring attention to Black’s (1970) and Wander’s (1984) conceptualizations of the “second and “third persona”. Personae are an integral part of political ideology and rhetoric. Black (1970) emphasizes the significance of ideological notions in speech by stating the following:

It is not age or temperament or even discrete attitude. It is the ideology—ideology in the sense that Marx used the term: the network of interconnected convictions that functions in a man epistemically and that shapes his identity by determining how he views the world (p. 112).

Black (1970) describes the second persona as the intended audience of a rhetoric. The audience is an artificial construction of the rhetoric; the rhetoric itself is shaping ways for the audience to identify themselves, either through positive or negative associations.

For the purpose of critiquing Modi’s speech, I further focus on the significance of Wander’s (1984) conceptualization of the third persona. Wander (1984) builds on Black’s (1970) second persona by categorizing the “third persona” as the audience that is negated by the speaker’s discourse: “What is negated by through the second persona forms the silhouette of a Third persona—the ‘it’ that is not present, that is objectified in a way that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are not” (p. 209). These audiences are the ones the rhetor ignores and, in the process, disempowers. In other words, rhetoric not only consists of what is said but also what is not said. This contestation leads us to the creation of both the second persona (the intended audience) and the third persona (the ignored audience). I frequently evoke these conceptualizations though the course of my critique of Modi’s speech.

3. Rhetorical Analysis of Modi’s 2019 Election Victory Speech

I acknowledge that few readers may not be familiar with the Indian Prime Minister. To completely understand Modi’s rhetoric, it is necessary to be acquainted to the man behind the rhetoric. I provide a background of Modi before diving into the critique of the speech.

Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 in a town named Vadnagar, in the western Indian state of Gujarat (Biography 2020). Modi’s father was a poor street merchant, and the family struggled to make ends meet. Modi helped his family by selling tea in the railway station of his town during his after-school hours. This became an important aspect of his persona and political appeal to the “common” citizen of the country. Modi had an arranged marriage at a very young age, but they soon split, stating that he had not envisioned a married life for himself. It was during this time that Modi claimed to have traveled to several spiritual ashrams (a place of spiritual/religious retreat) of various spiritual monks in India. Modi was said to be heavily influenced by the ascetic lives of the monks in the ashrams.

At the age of 20, Modi joined the Hindu nationalist organization RSS. Modi steadily rose the ranks of the self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist organization. He was soon identified as a charismatic leader and recruited by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1987 (Goyal 2019). Modi steadily rose through the ranks, working in various party leadership roles. In 2001, Modi became the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat after the incumbent BJP candidate resigned due to poor health (Goyal 2019). Modi was elected to remain in power for three consecutive terms, gaining following from the people of the Gujarat state for his policies on businesses privatization and Hindu values (Goyal 2019; Biography 2020). Modi’s massive following in the state of Gujarat propelled the BJP to nominate him as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the Indian election in 2014. The BJP won the election with a majority of 282 of the 534 seats in the lower house of the parliament. This was a historic victory due to the fact that the Indian National Congress (INC) party, which controlled Indian politics for over 60 years, was defeated, marking the beginning of an idea that Indians were leaning away from a socialist secular state to an increasingly capitalist Hindu nationalist state (Biography 2020).

Modi’s reelection in 2019, with an even bigger majority of 349 out of the 542 seats in the lower house, further illustrated India’s transition to a nation of Hindu consciousness.

With over 22 different languages and 29 states, the Hindu-majority community within itself has high fractionalization and inequality based on caste, region, and language. The new ideology professed by Modi and his party aims to achieve a sense of unity among Hindus, with a grand narrative that is driven by Hindu principles and tradition rather than differences in region, caste, and language.

For his speech after a historic election victory, Modi takes the stage on a raised platform, standing behind a lectern on a stage embellished with the color saffron. Saffron is the color of Modi’s BJP and the symbolic color of the Hindu religion. At the headquarters for the party, in the Indian capital of New Delhi, the stage was finally set for Modi to address the gathering (and the nation) to build the grand narrative for India by making allusions to Hindu mythology and positioning himself as a Hindu nationalist sanyasi.

3.1. The Hindu Nationalist Sanyasi

It was a rainy evening when Modi took the stage to deliver his speech. The rain did not hinder the crowd who gathered in large numbers; the BJP headquarters was consumed by the chants of “Modi, Modi, Modi”. Charland (1987) viewed this as “constitutive rhetoric” where the audience comes into being from and through rhetoric. The presence of this specific audience, chanting Modi’s name, within itself is a rhetorical process, as the audiences were born from the narrative that Modi created and built. Nevertheless, this does not undercut Bitzer’s (1992) work on the rhetorical situation. In this context, the situation presents certain exigencies that Modi cannot avoid. Bitzer (1992) writes “the rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question, or a solution to a problem” (p. 5). Here, the situation is that of a major political victory for Modi and an opportunity to further invite the audience to champion his grand narrative for India. The situation that an election victory speech provides is unique and different from other rhetorical situations such as, for example, campaign speeches. Modi was facing a large gathering constantly chanting his name, presenting another rhetorical exigency that had to be addressed. He begins his speech:

This is the 21st century and this is new India. Our victory in today’s election is followed by chants of ‘Modi, Modi, Modi’. But, today’s victory is not a victory for Modi. This is a victory for the aspirations of every citizen of this country craving for honesty.

(Business Insider 2019, p. 23)

This excerpt forms the beginning of Modi’s speech. Modi had to respond to the chants from the audience and turn it into an opportunity to construct an image of humility for himself. This aspect of humility in Modi’s rhetoric illustrates the core of the characteristic “sanyasi”, which translates into English as a saint or an ascetic. In the same lines of humility and ascetism, Modi begins his speech by calling himself a “fakir” (a saint in poverty):

For the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, we went to the people for a mandate for a new India. Today we can see that crores of India’s citizens have filled the jholi (satchel) of the fakir (a saint who has taken a vow of poverty).

(Business Insider 2019, p. 4)

With these words, the speech begins not only with a nationalistic appeal but an appeal of sainthood and ascetism that is unique to India. The speech’s rhetoric embodies this age-old Hindu tradition of renunciation with an ultimate goal of reaching God through the complete renunciation of worldly attractions and serving the society, albeit with a nationalistic touch.

The Hindu tradition exalts saints and ascetics for their philosophy on the Truth of life and rebirth. All the scriptures of ancient Hindu tradition speak of one ultimate goal for all humans:

The one goal is liberation or moksha, a setting-free of the soul—in one way or another—from the bonds of the round of existence, the round of death after birth and of birth after death.

(Lanman 1917, p. 135)

Moksha (liberation) is the core of Hindu religious philosophy. Several Hindu saints have propounded the idea of liberation as the one and only Truth of human life. This philosophy asks its followers to renounce material and worldly luxuries to follow a path of self-realization (Yogananda 2000). Indian saints such as Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Vivekananda who traveled to the west have espoused this philosophy of self-realization. Self-realization is the idea that the individual is one with the omnipresent God in body, mind, and soul (Yogananda 2000).

Modi’s ascetic rhetoric, in contrast, was an amalgamation of nationalism with several references to a nation being greater than the self. Modi is a politician and the Prime Minister of India, with heavy pro-capitalist leanings toward the economy (Kaur 2020). The image of a pro-capitalist Prime Minister is very different from Hindu ascetics that renounce their material wealth for the pursuit of enlightenment. It is at this juncture that religious “nationalistic” sanyasis differ from other religious sanyasis. As alluded to in a previous section, the identity of India was in a state of crisis during the period of British colonialism. The Indian nationalist movements that finally led to independence was essentially the new beginning of India, giving a new lease of life to the country’s identity. Nationalistic sainthood and ascetism categorized several freedom fighters who took the path of renunciation to serve for a singular purpose: freedom from colonization. Hindu nationalist organizations such as the RSS and other ascetics such as Rabindranath Tagore (India’s first Nobel laureate), Mahatma Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda played a key role in reconstructing the detached spiritual ascetism of Indian sainthood to a more politically aware role. Chakraborty (2011) credits this reconstruction of the Hindu sanyasi to the colonialist narratives on the effeminate Indian male sanyasi who wanders without purpose. The colonialist narrative stripped the sanyasi of his spiritual and philosophical significance of “moksha”, leaving him to be categorized as an uncivilized nomad (Chakraborty 2011). The colonizers viewed Hindu masculinity and religion as weak, and this perspective further reinforced philosophers and revolutionaries such as Gandhi, Savarkar, and Tagore to reconstruct a politically and materially aware Hindu nationalist sanyasi who is still focused on the achievement of moksha (liberation), but only through service to the Hindu-conscious nation free from colonialism and colonialist discourses.

Modi is aware of the colonialist discourses as he comes from the lineage of the RSS organization, which espoused the construction of the politically charged Hindu nationalist sanyasi. The speech implicitly reminds the audience of these colonialist discourses. At the heart of the speech, Modi asks his intended and created audience to think of the next few years as the rebirth of the nation:

This duration like the time between 1942–1947, when the whole of India had one common goal in mind: freedom. We have to emulate this spirit of freedom during 1942–1947 for a prosperous India, then we can take the country to new heights.

(Business Insider 2019, p. 41)

The speech’s grand narrative for India is to take the audience back to the time when the struggle for freedom (India received freedom from colonization in the year 1947) was picking traction. During this time, several Hindu nationalist ascetics were taking the reign over the freedom movement. The speech invites the audience to reminisce upon the idea of “freedom” (against colonial discourses of the British) proclaimed by the Hindu nationalist sanyasi during the Indian nationalist independence movement. By referring to himself a “beggar” whose interest is only to serve the nation and by making implicit references to the culmination of the colonization period, the speech evokes the Hindu nationalist sanyasi in both the material plane (Modi himself as a sanyasi) and the memory plane (the end of the colonization period and the pinnacle of the Hindu nationalist sanyasi philosophy).

This image of the Hindu nationalist sanyasi who foregoes his earthly pleasures for the selfless service of the nation is, therefore, a decade-old philosophy that has been cultivated by the right leaning institutional Hindus (Hausner 2017). Chakraborty (2019) writes, “Nationalist asceticism is valorized by the Hindu right, but it also holds appeal for a broad section of Hindus” (p. 6). Modi’s embodiment of the nationalist sanyasi fulfills the purpose of calling the second persona into being: the Hindus who identify with Hindu nationalism and perceive Modi to be the epitome of a selfless giver to the nation (Charland 1987; Black 1970).

Burke (1950) writes on this aspect of identification as a means for persuasion:

We might well keep it in mind that a speaker persuades an audience by the use of stylistic identifications; his act of persuasion may be for the purpose of causing the audience to identify itself with the speaker’s interests; and the speaker draws on identification of interests to establish rapport between himself and his audience.

(p. 46)

Drawing on his audience’s identifications, this aspect is so significant to Modi’s rhetoric, and he not only begins his speech by calling himself a beggar but also ends his speech in similar tones:

Brothers and sisters, this country has given us a lot. Today, in front of the country, I want to say something. I want to make Indians believe that you have filled the bowl of this beggar—with expectations, hopes and dreams. And that’s why I want to tell you—with the duty you have given me—I will not do anything with bad intentions. I might make mistakes but none of them would be with a bad intention. Secondly, I want to reiterate that I won’t do anything just for myself. Thirdly, every second of my time and every cell of my body is dedicated solely to the citizens of this country.

(Business Insider 2019, pp. 46–47)

By bringing back this age-old reconstructed aspect of a selfless Hindu nationalist sanyasi whose only aim is to serve the nation, the speech invites the second persona of the Hindu-majority audience (of the nation) into being and accepting their role in the order as part of a grand narrative for a Hindu-unified collective identity.

3.2. Allusions to Hindu Mythology

The speech’s grand narrative for a Hindu-unified India further manifest from several references to Hindu mythology. An illustration of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation manifests when Modi states, “today, even the Meghraj (the rain god) has decided to join us in the celebration of victory” (Business Insider 2019, p. 3). The aspect of the “rain god” is unique to the Hindu religion in India. Hindus frequently pray to the god of rain for better harvests and respite from summer heat. Modi was evidently responding to the exigencies of the rainy ceremony while turning it into an opportunity to further his Hindu valor through allusions to Hindu gods.

Right after Modi makes a pitch positioning himself as a Hindu nationalist sanyasi, at the beginning of the speech, he declares the following:

I bow my head before India’s 130 crore citizens. There have been so many elections since the country’s independence but since then, after so many elections, the highest voter turnout was in this election, and that too, amid temperatures of 40–45 degree Celsius. On this occasion, in the celebration of democracy, to those people who have sacrificed for the sake of democracy, those who were injured, I offer my condolences. In the history of democracy, they have set an example that will inspire coming generation to lay down their lives for the sake.

(Business Insider 2019, pp. 5–8)

Modi is referring to the people who have died from heat stroke during the election days and those that were injured in minor scuffles during the election time. According to Modi, the people who have died during the elections are martyrs of the nation. The idea of the nation as the ultimate Truth that immortalizes people who die for the imagined community is a popular construction of nationalism. Allow me to quote again (from the Macron’s speech) Anderson’s (1983) definition of nationalism that includes the psychological phenomenon of killing or dying for a country:

The nation is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

(p. 50)

Immortalizing the deaths of people in the elections for a greater construct (the nation) is also an implicit reference to a paragraph in an ancient Hindu mythology text of Mahabharat:

For the sake of a family, an individual member may be sacrificed; for the sake of a village, a family may be sacrificed; for the sake of a province, a village may be sacrificed and yet for the sake of one person’s soul, the whole earth may be sacrificed.

(Malhotra 2018, p. 20)

This passage, seemingly paradoxical, defines the Hindu tradition of dharma (the cosmic law) and the balance between collectivism and individualism (Malhotra 2018, p. 20). Dharma is the omnipresent law that guides the individual and the nation. This reinforcement of “Dharma” in Modi’s speech supports his grand narrative of Hindu unification.

The spiritual philosophy of “Dharma” was conceptualized in the Hindu mythology text of Mahabharat by the Hindu god Krishna. Lord Krishna is one of the more revered Hindu gods and is considered as the creator of the conceptualizations of dharma. Modi, in his speech, alludes to this mythology of Mahabharat:

Friends, when the battle of Mahabharata ended, Lord Krishna was asked, “Whose side were you on?” At that time, the answer that Lord Krishna had given, today in the twenty first century, in the 2019 elections, the people of India, the 130 crore citizens, have given the same answer as Lord Krishna. Lord Krishna had said that he was not fighting for any side. “I was only on the side of Hastinapur”, he had said. The citizens of the country have stood on the side of India, voted for India.

(Business Insider 2019, pp. 10–11)

Hastinapur was the land that two sides in the war were fighting for, and Lord Krishna had espoused the aspect of rightful duty and “dharma” on the warriors. Modi, alluding to Lord Krishna’s being on the side of the land rather than the two opposing sides of people, further extends the idea of the land or nation being greater than the self. Essentially, the speech’s rhetoric emphasizes that nation comes before individuals. Furthermore, by saying that “130 crore citizens have given the same answer as Lord Krishna”, Modi equates the people of the Hindu nation to the Lord himself. Burke (1950) explicates this notion of persuasion not only through identification but also through flattery:

You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your way with his. Persuasion by flattery is but a special case of persuasion in general. But flattery can safely serve as our paradigm if we systematically widen its meaning, to see behind it in the conditions of identification or consubstantiality in general. And you give the “signs” of such consubstantiality by deference to an audience’s “opinions”.

(p. 55)

Modi’s speech thus involves the calling of a collective audience into being not only through identification but also through flattery by equating the people to a revered Hindu god. The second persona of the Hindu audience is called into being through identification with Hindu-driven philosophies (from sacred Hindu mythological texts) and by the flattery of equating the audience to a revered Hindu god (Charland 1987; Black 1970).

Modi’s Hindu mythological allusions provide an interesting juxtaposition as he utilizes mythological references to constitute what he terms as “New India”. Modi refers to New India as “Bharat”: “Crores and crores of workers have only one feeling, “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”. And nothing else” (Business Insider 2019, p. 18). The phrase “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” translates into English as “All Hail Mother India”. To provide context, India is frequently referred to as “Bharat” in the domestic social and political context. The name comes from an ancient Hindu mythological ruler named Bharat, who ruled a major part of the land encompassing what is now the modern-day India. Historians situate this period as far back as 3000 BC (McIntosh 2008). “Bharat” is thus a name given to the prehistoric Indian land, a land long before the Muslim rule of the Mughal empire and British colonialism. The usage of the word Bharat, to a large extent, is to reject the colonial symbolism of the name “India”. It is a reclamation of an old utopian land before colonization and Muslim rule. Using this term in the current milieu, however, emphasizes a Hindu utopian pre-colonial, pre-Mughal era. Malhotra (2018) writes, “Bharat: An ancient nation based on Vedic Hindu principles, and modern India based on the open architecture of Hindu dharma” (p. 14). Therefore, referring to India as “Bharat” in the current milieu symbolizes a construction of the land as a nation driven by a modern iteration of ancient Hindu philosophies and “dharma”. Through these allusions to Hindu mythologies through a modern iteration of “dharma” and “Bharat”, the speech calls the Hindu audience into being as part of the grand narrative.

As mentioned before, the Hindu population in India has inherent divisions of caste, region, and language. With over 22 different languages and 29 states, the Hindu-majority community is itself highly fractionalized. Referring to this division among Hindus, Modi states, “there are only two castes in India, one is rich and the other is poor, and the rich have to make contributions to help the poor” (Business Insider 2019, p. 37). By referring to caste differences, Modi is again calling into being the second persona of the Hindu, and by particularly positioning himself as a Hindu nationalist sanyasi who evokes ancient Hindu mythologies, Modi constructs his grand narrative based on the Hindu dominant unification of “Bharat”.

4. Discussion

The Collective Imaginings of Modi’s Ideological Rhetoric

The idiosyncrasies of religious nationalism in Modi’s speech, while unique to India, also have a unifying characteristic with regard to various forms of religious nationalism across the globe. Anderson (1983) writes the following:

The extraordinary survival over thousands of years of Buddhism, Christianity or Islam in dozens of different social formations attests to their imaginative response to the overwhelming burden of human suffering—disease, mutilation, grief, age, and death. Why was I born blind? Why is my best friend paralyzed? The religions attempt to explain.

(p. 51)

Religion provides a grand narrative of immortality, explaining several conditions of human life and in the process providing a sense of comfort by reducing the guilt of not associating with a collective, as Burke (1950) notes, on individuals who have an innate proclivity to be a part of a collective identity. Anderson (1983) undercuts the power of religion to survive in modern society and sees nationalism as a substitute to the religious grand narrative of Truth and immortality. However, religions have not vanished into oblivion, and modern constructions of nationalism have eventually manifested in several forms. The two grand narratives of religion and nation are then combined into a larger, more powerful grand narrative of religious nationalism as the new omnipresent guiding force of a nation’s collective consciousness.

The conflicting collective identities of India had created a need for a new grand narrative for the country. India has been under British colonial rule for over 200 years, and it was essentially an Indian nationalistic movement that granted its freedom. The idea of an independent nation state was what granted the nation’s freedom, and it is easier to embrace and even radicalize in the present from a Hindu nationalistic standpoint. With the presence of conflicting and polar narratives of a Mughal (Muslim)-historic India vs. a secular nation vs. a native Hindu nation, the collective identities are participating in a conflict of memory repositories. Modi and his Hindu nationalist party’s rise to the top displays the skewing of the collective identity of India towards a more Hindu-unified consciousness. With several conflicting narratives present to legitimize hierarchies of power and national imaginings, it is important to understand that elites on both sides of the spectrum have an abundance of memories from which to pick and choose from when reimagining the nation. Memories are always available to be wielded in conflicting narratives and are legitimized by the elites.

Modi’s rhetoric of positioning himself as a Hindu nationalist sanyasi and his allusions to Hindu mythology performs the three stages of the formation of the ideological effect that Charland (1987) delineates. First, the speech “constitutes a collective subject” (p. 139) where individual interests are replaced by a collective interest based on Hindu unification. Second, the speech constructs a Hindu-conscious nation as a “transhistorical subject” (p. 139). The speech presents the Hindu nation as preexisting, long before this collective consciousness has even been evoked by Hindu nationalists. In other words, the individuals, especially the second persona of the Hindu collective audience, are invited to believe that the Hindu nation has existed primordially. A primordial nationalist position is always evoked by elites to construct a hierarchy of power for the individual, who is looking for transcendental singular constructions, to cope with mortal anxieties and the guilt of societal division. Third, the audience members have an “illusion of freedom” (p. 141), even though in some way or the other they are part of the collective identity imposed upon them by the constitutive rhetoric of Modi’s speech.

With all the functions of the constitutive, rhetorical collective subject called into being by the speech, the speaker has certain exigencies to respond to: the exigencies of an election victory speech, the exigencies of a rainy day, and the exigencies of the “Modi” chants from the audience, all of which evoke Modi’s response. The audiences, who chant Modi’s name and create an exigency for Modi to respond, are the same audiences that were previously “called into being” through rhetoric. I contend that constitutive rhetoric and the rhetorical situation are not mutually exclusive phenomena but rather an inclusive circular force that acts upon each other. I therefore term these type of phenomena as “circular exigencies”. The speaker calls into being an audience through rhetoric, but at the same time, there are certain exigencies that the speaker must respond to. As illustrated by Modi’s speech, this response could be turned into an opportunity, as shown by his evocations of a Hindu god in response to the rainy environment, positioning himself as a “humble” sanyasi in response to the “Modi” chants.

As alluded to in my critique, the speech’s rhetoric on the grand narrative of India based on Hindu unification calls the second persona of the Hindu audience into being. The speech constructs this second persona without once referencing the names of the religions. There is no mention of the word “Hindu” or “Muslim”, although, by specifically positioning himself as a Hindu nationalist sanyasi who evokes ancient Hindu mythologies, the speech particularly alludes to the Hindu majority of India. There is no allusion of any kind towards India’s 182-million Muslim minority—the second-largest Muslim population in the world (Diamant 2019). Modi’s rhetoric of New India, with all its reconstructing elements from the identity struggle of a colonial past, ignores and disregards the Muslim population. Therefore, Modi’s rhetoric calls into being the third persona—the Muslim population.

Wander (1984) describes the third persona as

A being whose presence, though relevant to what is being said, is negated through silence… Operating through existing social, political, and economic arrangements, negation extends beyond the ‘text’ to include the ability to produce texts, to engage in discourse, to be heard in the public sphere.

(p. 370)

Modi’s ideological discourse calls into being not just the Hindu audience (the second persona) but also the collective third persona of India’s Muslim audience who is “negated through silence”. Wander’s (1984) conceptualization of the third persona is valuable for its broader implications, which is to acknowledge the “ignored” and “negated” audience, particularly in instances such as a speech delivered by the Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world. Modi’s New India does not appear to involve the country’s largest minority, but critics have an important role to play in acknowledging and empowering the voiceless and ignored.

To analyze Modi’s speech, I have referenced some of the ancient Indian saints that Modi actively claims to follow and revere, one of them being Paramahansa Yogananda. In one of Modi’s previous speeches, when he visited the ashram (a place of spiritual retreat) of the late saint Yogananda’s community, he evoked the teachings of Yogananda as an illustration of spiritual wealth in India (Tewari 2019). Ironically, in his book Journey to Self-Realization, Yogananda (2000) warns the world about nationalism by calling it “selfish patriotism”: “The politicians are blinded by their false patriotism, selfishness and love of fame and, disregarding the divine law laid down by God and great saints, they are bringing an avalanche of miseries upon the nations of the earth” (p. 199). Yogananda (2000) follows that up by emphasizing the importance of looking at the world as a family:

A person may be Christian or Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu, Muslim or Zoroastrian; he may proclaim that Jesus Christ is the only way, or Buddha, or Mohammed—as indeed, millions of believers do. He may insist that this ritual, or that place of worship, bestows salvation. But it all comes down to what he is, in himself. When we love our neighbors, we become bigger. When we love our country, we become bigger still. And when we love all nations, we become even bigger.

(p. 202)

Yogananda’s view of patriotism had a clear demarcation from nationalism, or as he terms it, “selfish nationalism”. Yogananda is one of the most celebrated Hindu sanyasis of India and one that Modi frequently evokes and reveres. Unlike Yogananda, the Hindu nationalist sanyasi/politician is not concerned with unity but rather with purity of a Hindu dominant nation, perceiving national identity as primordial and absolute. The constituted audience is under the “illusion of freedom” (Charland 1987), not cognizant of the imaginary constructions of the Prime Minister to legitimize power and unaware that nationalism is by no means a nation’s self-conscious awakening.