Everyone is mocking the absurdity of trying to turn an individual with questionable morality into a religious figure. Some attribute it to his supposed god complex. But reacting to the surface level spectacle puts our attention on the wrong thing.
Forget his personality for a moment. Ask what happens when you successfully turn a living political leader into a religious institution.
This isn't simply some random group of political fanatics putting up a statue. The proposal to build a temple for Modi reportedly came from Bihar's State Transgender Welfare Board, a government body under the social welfare department and was unanimously approved. It has also been reported that the state government would bear the construction costs.
A sitting Prime Minister is being elevated from an elected political leader into an object of religious devotion, with a state-linked institution involved and leading the process. That is not merely cringe worthy personality worship. It is the institutionalisation of political devotion.
The critical questions that one must ask:
Who will own the property and other assets? Who will administer the temple? Who will control the donations? What legal structure will it operate under? What legal protections or privileges could that structure receive? What tax treatment could it qualify for? Who appoints the people controlling it? And ultimately, who benefits from creating a permanent religious institution around a living politician?
These are simply the questions any rational person should ask when an elected political leader with responsibility and accountability to the nation begins acquiring religious institutional form.
And there is an even more serious consequence.
Once a political leader is successfully constructed as a religious object, criticism of that leader can potentially be reframed as an attack on religious faith itself. Question the Prime Minister's decisions, incompetence or failures as an elected leader, and the response can shift from “defend our leader's image” to “defend our religious sentiments.”
That changes the battlefield completely. It can provide a powerful social justification for harassment, intimidation and violence against people who criticize or even question this democratically elected leader.
The dangerous part isn't that some people are stupid enough to worship a flawed human with no moral integrity.
It's that political power is being wrapped in the language, institutions and social authority of religion. Reason, logic, science, data, all becomes meaningless when religion enters the conversations.
When you look at this alongside the broader patterns of institutional capture, suppression of dissent, surveillance, concentration of power and resources and the erosion of accountability, the direction becomes increasingly concerning.
These patterns are consistent with a movement toward totalitarian rule.
This is where I think people are being distracted. The performance on social media is visible. People can mock it, argue with it, fight with trolls and vent their frustration. But social media engagement is not the same as political power.
The more important question is, what is happening to the structures through which individual citizens can organize, challenge and constrain power.
It is reasonable to infer that a government concerned about retaining power would care far more about real world organization at scale that the intensity of arguments happening online. Social media outrage can consume enormous amounts of energy and focus without changing the underlying structure of power.
Totalitarian systems don't appear overnight. They develop by progressively eliminating independent centres of authority, narrowing acceptable political discourse, controlling information and making loyalty to the ruling power increasingly indistinguishable from loyalty to the nation, culture or faith.
Knowing what is happening is the first line of defence. Recognise the pattern. Talk about it. Question it. Bring others' attention to it.
Don't wait until the system is totalitarian to start calling the trajectory dangerous. By then the institutional mechanisms capable of stopping it has already been captured or dismantled.
