SOTER D’SOUZA
In recent years, a famil iar pattern has come to dominate India’s politics. Democracy is now about per sonalisation of power, con flation of leader and nation, narrative management, loy alty-centred politics, and the elevation of spectacle over institutional accountability. This is a style of politics centred less on institutions, policies, and collective prob lem-solving than on identi ty, attention, spectacle, and emotional gratification. Such politics thrives on the culti vation of leaders who pres ent themselves as singular saviours, victims, or embod iments of the people’s will. The features of contempo rary Indian governance re semble patterns that political psychologists associate with ‘narcissistic politics’. A political atmosphere now prevails wherein disa greement ceases to be dem ocratic participation and be comes evidence of disloyalty. Criticism of the government is equated to criticism of the nation itself. Every question posed to the ruling establish ment, criticism of policies, protest movement, uncom fortable international report, and dissenting voice is quick ly framed as sedition and part of a larger foreign con spiracy to destabilise the na tion. It instantly gets framed as externally manipulated, while supportive narratives are treated as expressions of authentic nationalism.
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Political theorists some times describe this as “se curitising dissent”, whereby ordinary democratic disa greement is twisted into a matter of national security. Once criticism is moved into that category, governments gain moral justification for surveillance, crackdowns, censorship, or public vilifi cation. The danger of such a “foreign conspiracy” frame work lies in how easily it absolves governments of ac countability. It merely has to discredit the critic under the guise of protecting national interests. When power con tinuously frames criticism as sabotage, democracy slowly ceases to function as a sys tem of accountability. It be gins functioning as a system in loyalty testing. Patriotism becomes conditional upon political conformity. Narcissistic political au thority thrives on spectacle. It encourages people to view politics not as a collective ef fort to solve shared problems but as a stage upon which identities are performed and affirmed. From a political and sociological perspective, the relentless display of leaders’ faces on government ban ners and publicity materials reflects a deeper problem. This phenomenon may get ignored as a harmless fea ture of modern politics. It is anything but harmless. Sup porters of such displays may argue that leaders deserve recognition for their work.
However, there is a differ ence between recognition and glorification. Recogni tion informs citizens about who is responsible for deci sions. Glorification places the leader at the centre of every public activity, regardless of relevance. When governance is mar keted through carefully cu rated images, public debate can become more concerned with optics than perfor mance. Leaders are reward ed for visibility rather than effectiveness. Constant visual glorification of political lead ers sends the opposite mes sage: that institutions matter less than the individuals who temporarily occupy positions of power. The personal image increasingly overshadows institutions, policies and col lective governance. Citizens come to view governance through personalities rather than institutions, making the constant projection of po litical faces seem inevitable rather than problematic. In that sense, public acceptance of such practices may itself be a symptom of a narcissis tic political order. The warn ing sign is the emergence of a political culture in which one individual becomes the centre of reality, criticism becomes heresy, and loyalty matters more than truth.
The rise of narcissistic pol itics—with leaders cultivat ing exaggerated self-images, demanding personal loyalty and dominating public dis course through spectacle— poses a profound challenge to the quality of electoral choice. Instead of evaluating candidates based on policy competence, administrative record, or constitutional val ues, voters are encouraged to focus on personal narratives. Elections become emotional contests. When politics be comes personality-centric, supporters may overlook pol icy failures because criticism of the leader is perceived as a personal attack. Narcissis tic politics, by contrast, often encourages the replacement of facts with narratives tai lored to preserve the lead er’s image.
Voters may find themselves making decisions based less on verifiable per formance and more on emo tional identification, fear, or admiration. Such political phenomena may be better understood through a different frame work: the psychology of abuse. The deeper impact of such narcissistic politics is not merely restricted to leadership. When politics begins to mirror the logic of abusive relationships, the greatest danger is not that citizens become convinced, but that they become condi tioned. The consistent prac tice of such politics gradually drives citizens into adopting similar patterns of political engagement. It reshapes cit izenship itself. Individuals are encouraged to interpret compromise as humiliation, criticism as persecution, and political loss as an existential threat.
Under such condi tions, democratic institutions remain formally intact while the psychological founda tions of democratic citizen ship erode. This can weaken critical thinking, encourage tribalism, and reduce ac countability. In healthy democracies, participation is grounded in deliberation, compromise, and a recognition that polit ical life is necessarily plural. Higher engagement, louder public voices, and greater ac tivism are generally taken as signs of democratic health. A nation of 1.4 billion people cannot remain intellectually secure if every contrary opin ion is treated as evidence of betrayal. In fact, democracies are enriched by citizens who are willing to question pow er, regardless of which party governs. The strength of a democracy lies not in unan imous applause, but in its ability to withstand disagree ment without seeing ghosts behind every voice. Govern ments change, the republic endures. In an age increasingly shaped by such personal ity-driven politics, not all participation strengthens democracy. Public discourse in a narcissistic political en vironment may become cen tred on personalities, sym bolic victories, emotional gratification, and group loy alty.
As a result, the political solutions that emerge may address symptoms, identi ties, or immediate emotional needs rather than underlying structural causes. Citizens can be drawn into forms of engagement that feel like movements for change while actually reinforcing unhealthy political cultures. People become more politi cally active while becoming less politically empowered. When narcissistic politics dominates the electoral land scape, democracy risks be coming a mirror reflecting the ambitions of its leaders rather than the aspirations of its people. (The author has worked with community initiatives related to Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention, HIV/AIDs Prevention, Panchayati Raj, Anti-Corruption, Environ ment Protection and Social Justice.)
