Global Profile: Narendra Modi - Prime Minister of India
How India’s Prime Minister is turning Dharma into a state project
In the last Future Brief, we saw how India’s success will not just be measured in GDP but also in social obligation. Where the EU spreads universalism and China spreads Confucianism, India is set to spread Dharma: a worldview where business, politics, and daily life are organized around duty.
When Narendra Modi became prime minister of India in 2014, he inherited a system built for pluralism. India’s constitution was designed to hold together castes, religions, languages, and regions by balancing secular law against spiritual diversity. But Modi, shaped by the Hindu nationalist movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), saw this pluralist framework as a liability.
His project has been to move India toward a Hindu majority cultural state, aligning political institutions with the dharmic logic that duty and identity are inseparable.
Themes outlined in the Future Brief reflect Modi’s politics, where ideas of duty and identity, central to Hindu Dharma, appear in society and in the language and framing of the state.
Modi’s Method: Embedding Duty into Power
The Future Brief showed how Indian contracts and commerce are becoming duty lists: pay on time, train workers, fund schools, and maintain temples. Modi is doing the same at the state level.
Centralization of Authority: Modi has transferred power from India’s states to the central government. The Goods and Services Tax stripped states of much of their revenue control, giving Delhi command over collection and redistribution. In 2019, he revoked Kashmir’s autonomy, replacing local self-rule with direct rule from Delhi. Both moves were framed as acts of national duty, unity, and order above regional exception.
Redefining Citizenship: The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) tied citizenship to religion by offering fast-track naturalization to non-Muslim refugees. In contrast to the EU’s universalist approach, where one rule applies to all, Modi’s law reflects a differentiated model, where belonging is shaped by community identity, with some groups granted more recognition than others.
Welfare as Obligation: Modi’s flagship programs, subsidized gas cylinders for rural women, tens of millions of new toilets, and direct digital cash transfers, are not pitched as handouts. They are framed as the state fulfilling its duty, much like firms in India earn legitimacy by serving community obligations, not just chasing profit.
Cultural Symbols as Policy: Modi has turned symbolism into governance. The Ram temple in Ayodhya, built on the site of a long-disputed mosque, was presented as a historic correction and a marker of Hindu pride. Cities with Muslim names were renamed to reflect Hindu heritage. Even economic campaigns like ‘Make in India’ were wrapped in cultural language, linking industrial growth to national tradition. In each case, legitimacy came not just from the success of the policy but from the state showing it worked for the majority of people.
India’s Test: Exporting Dharma Through the State
The Future Brief argued that as India grows, Dharma will spread through payments, platforms, and trade standards. Modi is already accelerating that process by framing India’s diplomacy as a civilizational duty.
India’s digital payment system, UPI, is being exported to Singapore, France, and the UAE. Development projects in Africa and South Asia now come with training and service obligations, not just contracts. Foreign companies seeking India’s market face dharmic expectations: build schools, repair products, transfer skills.
This is Modi’s true global strategy. Washington sells security guarantees. Beijing sells infrastructure. Brussels sells rules and regulations. Delhi sells a duty-driven model of governance and business, where legitimacy comes from fulfilling obligations to people and communities.
For the United States, this is disorienting. American capitalism is built on individualism, contracts, and profit. So was India’s. Before Modi, India’s economy after 1991 looked more like an American-style market system, liberalized, profit-first, and individualist. Modi’s Hindu view continues this but also adds the element of social duty to capitalism. Profit is still pursued, but legitimacy now depends on serving community obligations and national identity
Cultural and Archetypal Profile
Modi reflects India’s collectivist and high power distance orientation. His politics are built around loyalty to the group and deference to a strong leader. His use of symbolism shows a high-context style: temples, silence, and dress all his ideas and goals. His governance follows particularism, different rules for different groups, and a long-term orientation, embedding obligations into policies for generations. Yet unlike Europe’s rules-first model, Modi’s India often embraces ambiguity, signaling that uncertainty can be used to his advantage.
In Schwartz’s terms, Modi embodies embeddedness and hierarchy, rooting legitimacy in tradition and authority, while pushing India toward mastery, asserting itself globally through pride and cultural strength.
Modi fuses Hornby’s North (Power-Seeker) and Blue (Guardian) archetypes: the centralizer who commands loyalty and the protector who frames authority as moral duty. His Worker origins, the tea seller story, still resonate, giving him populist credibility. This mix explains both his authoritarian style and his cultural appeal: Modi doesn’t just lead a government, he presents himself as the custodian of a civilization.
Learn more about Hornby’s archetypes here
Why It Matters
American companies may have problems adjusting to this if they want access to the Indian market. American democracy elevates rights above all; Modi’s India elevates duty. Where American business maximizes profit, Indian business under Modi maximizes legitimacy through obligation.
But international observers describe a darker side. Freedom House has downgraded India to “partly free,” and many scholars classify it as an illiberal democracy, more similar to Turkey or Russia than to Canada or the EU. Modi’s dominance of courts, media, and agencies has narrowed checks and balances. Opposition leaders face legal pressure, minority rights are eroded, and elections remain competitive but uneven.
The global question is whether Modi’s India is pioneering a new cultural form of democracy or eroding democracy altogether. Where the EU still frames democracy as rights-based, Modi’s India elevates duty above rights. That may look like innovation, or like backsliding, depending on where you stand.
In a world where America exports individualist capitalism, China exports hierarchy, and Europe exports rules, India, under Modi, will be exporting Dharma. Whether that becomes a respected global model, or another warning sign of democracy’s decline, will define how Modi’s legacy is remembered.
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