He started his public career in the RSS in the 1970s as a pracharak (RSS missionary). He was deputed by the RSS to their political arm, the BJP in the 1980s. Dating as back as the early 1990s itself, analysts found in Modi the makings of a classic fascist.
Modi's skills at organising successful political campaigns saw him rise in the party hierarchy through the 1990s in his native state of Gujarat. He served as the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. The beginning of this tenure saw the pogrom of 2002 and the subsequent visa ban by many foreign governments — including the United States. The ban remained in force for many years and was lifted shortly before he became prime minister in 2014.
After the Gujarat pogrom, Modi embarked on a strategy to make the state a friendly place to set up business and rebrand his image from being a Hindu hardliner to a development-oriented leader. This led to him being dubbed Vikaspurush (Development man) — a central theme during his successful campaign in the 2014 general elections. Despite having a penchant for announcing harmful policies or policy changes at short notice, Modi remains the most popular politician in India, and the BJP builds its national and regional election campaigns with him in the centre.
Modi has been an early adopter of communication technology since his days as the chief minister of Gujarat. In 2007, he hired Washington-based APCO, one of the largest PR and lobbying firms in the world to help with his communication strategy. Since then, Modi has used multiple approaches to build his image, including the use of Social media, government media outlets, and careful control over his appearances.
Although India is a parliamentary democracy, Modi has a penchant for passing laws with minimum or no debate in the two houses of Parliament. The controversial farming reform laws were passed with less than three hours of debate in either house in September 2020. After year-long protests, Modi in November 2021 repealed the laws in three minutes in the Lok Sabha and nine minutes in the Rajya Sabha, without any discussion.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced an incredibly grotesque democratic backsliding. His administration is responsible for introducing the shocking Citizenship Amendment Act, the abrogation of Article 370 and the National Register of Citizens — which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy over his Hindu nationalist beliefs. He has also been characterised as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014. Emboldened by his robust relationship with the US government, under Trump and Biden, Modi has evaded meaningful international scrutiny of any kind.
Modi has also drastically altered India’s relationship with Israel during his time in power. From the onset of the Indian anti-colonial movement, India strongly supported the Palestinian cause and notably did not grant full diplomatic recognition to Israel until 1992. India grew closer to Israel in the new millennium (largely due to Israel’s supply of arms in support of India’s state violence in Kashmir), but it was not until Modi’s election that India declared itself an unequivocal ally of Israel. Modi visited Israel in 2017, becoming the first Indian prime minister to do so; the same year, Israel approved the sale of Pegasus to the Modi government as part of a $2 billion weapons deal, allowing India to wield the world’s most powerful surveillance weapon. India remains the top client of Israel’s arms exports.
