Constitutional values vs personality cult: Probing PM Modi’s letter and political legacy

In this Capital Beat episode, senior journalists Anand K Sahay and Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay analysed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Constitution Day letter to citizens, focusing on his emphasis on duties, democracy and the role of the constitution in contemporary politics.

The discussion began with a summary of the prime minister’s message. In his letter marking the 76th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, Narendra Modi urged citizens to fulfil their constitutional duties and described them as the foundations of a strong democracy. He underlined the responsibility of strengthening democracy by exercising the right to vote and suggested that schools and colleges mark Constitution Day by honouring first-time voters turning 18.

The prime minister recalled Mahatma Gandhi’s belief that rights flow from the performance of duties and described duties as the basis of social and economic progress. He wrote that policies and decisions taken today would shape future generations and asked citizens to place their duties foremost as India moves towards the vision of a “Viksit Bharat”. On X, he stated: “Our Constitution gives utmost importance to human dignity, equality and liberty. While it empowers us with rights, it also reminds us of our duties as citizens which we should always try to fulfil.”

Duties, democracy and elections

Anand K Sahay described the letter as coming from “the office of the prime minister of India, the biggest democracy in the world”, but assessed its substance as minimal. He stated that it “amounts to very little” and “amounts to nothing at all”, placing it against ongoing controversies over the election process and institutional independence.

Also Read: Constitution Day: Modi writes to citizens; here is PM's full letter

He pointed to concerns that “the election process in India has been taken for a ride in many important ways” and that “the sanctity of the election itself is violated”. Sahay referred to the change in law in December 2023, ahead of the 2024 general election, which altered the committee to select the chief election commissioner and election commissioners by removing the Chief Justice of India and including a cabinet minister, thereby, in his view, tilting the balance towards the executive.

Mukhopadhyay highlighted what he described as a paradox: fundamental duties were inserted into the Constitution during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi.

Sahay described an “independent election body” as critical to any self-respecting democracy and called the change “a complete negation of the very idea of our constitution”, which he linked to India’s anti-colonial movement. He noted that organisations of “Mr Modi’s persuasion” were “non-participants in the movement” and recalled that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had rejected the Indian Constitution when it was first proclaimed, something he said was recorded in official RSS publications at the time.

Religion, Ayodhya and the Constitution

Sahay connected these points to Prime Minister Modi’s recent role at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. He said that during the May 2025 India–Pakistan conflict, broader questions about constitutionalism and social unity had come under discussion, and he argued that the way the poor and minorities were being treated had “riven apart India’s social unity”.

Referring to Modi’s participation in the Dhwaja Rohan ceremony at the Ram temple, Sahay said the prime minister was “the sole star hero protagonist” of the event. He asserted that “every word he uttered there… flies in the face of the Indian Constitution”, comparing it to his remarks at the inauguration of the half-constructed temple a year earlier, which focused on “the ancient past and the consciousness of a particular religious group of people”.

Also Read: Constitution Day: Why November 26 demands introspection, not celebration?

Sahay stressed that the Constitution “is not about any group of people” or any particular class, caste or religion, but “about equality of every single Indian born in India, residing in India, male or female”. He argued that fundamental duties derive from a general awareness that citizens are “equal participants in the great history and drama of this land” and that “the most fundamental duty is of course to respect the Constitution”.

Fundamental duties and Emergency legacy

The discussion then turned to Prime Minister Modi’s repeated focus on duties. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay noted that the prime minister had often spoken about duties since 2014, urging citizens to fulfil duties before demanding rights. He pointed out that former President Ram Nath Kovind had also emphasised fundamental duties in a ceremonial address.

Mukhopadhyay highlighted what he described as a paradox: fundamental duties were inserted into the Constitution during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi. He remarked that those same Emergency-era amendments are now invoked positively when duties are promoted, even though the period is frequently criticised in political discourse.

Raising questions about the government’s own responsibilities, Mukhopadhyay asked how the prime minister’s duties towards citizens’ rights were being fulfilled. He suggested that the letter appeared “written just to have a few headlines” on the day and in the next day’s newspapers, and then be forgotten.

‘Event manager’ politics and personality cult

Mukhopadhyay described Narendra Modi as an “event-oriented prime minister” and recalled that former BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani had once referred to him as an “event manager”. He pointed out that in the letter, Modi took pride in having introduced Constitution Day into the national calendar and organising Samvidhan Gaurav Yatra in Gujarat as chief minister, during which, he wrote, the Constitution was placed on an elephant and carried in procession.

He noted that Modi used this account to contrast himself with the Congress, stating that the 60th anniversary of the Constitution passed without celebration, which Mukhopadhyay characterised as a way of suggesting that the Congress “does not really respect the constitution”.

Commenting on the tone of the letter, Mukhopadhyay described the prime minister as “a ‘me, myself’ kind of a person”, pointing out Modi’s frequent practice of speaking about himself in the third person. He recalled that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had, in a series of remarks without naming Modi, criticised traits such as the promotion of the self and personality cult-building within the ruling establishment.

Vande Mataram, symbols and selective history

Mukhopadhyay also referred to Modi’s recent celebration of the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram, which the prime minister mentioned in the letter. He noted that while Vande Mataram was designated the national song, the Constituent Assembly and the Congress had decided that only the first stanza would be used in that capacity, with Jana Gana Mana adopted as the national anthem.

Also Read: As Maoism reaches dead end, vulnerable tribals face an uncertain future

He said that no formal reasons were recorded, but the decision aligned with a perception that the full song, as it appears in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath, compares the nation to a Hindu deity and could cause unease among Muslims. He argued that the letter’s framing did not reflect this broader historical context.

In this context, Mukhopadhyay viewed the letter’s references as part of a pattern of selective presentation of facts, used to project the current leadership as the principal guardian of constitutional values while downplaying earlier constitutional debates.

Who guards the Constitution?

The panel then examined how the Constitution features in current political discourse. Both major sides had marked Constitution Day publicly, with leaders sharing images of the Preamble and messaging on social media. The discussion raised the question of who could claim to be a true custodian of the Constitution.

Anand K Sahay argued that “it is the people of the country who are the custodians of the Constitution”, not any individual leader, intellectual or religious figure. He credited Rahul Gandhi with giving the Constitution a central place in the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign by carrying a copy across India and telling poor citizens that “if you have any right today, it is not because of any other factor or force but this Constitution”.

Vande Mataram was designated the national song, the Constituent Assembly and the Congress had decided that only the first stanza would be used in that capacity, with Jana Gana Mana adopted as the national anthem

Sahay linked this to the 2024 result, in which the BJP government lost its single-party majority. He described this as “built by the people of India who found their voice through the Constitution” and characterised the document as having been revived against earlier opposition from those who identify with Hindutva.

Leadership, process and party constitutions

Sahay noted that while Narendra Modi is a democratically elected MP and leader of the House, there were questions about internal party processes after the 2024 election. He pointed out that there was no formal meeting of the BJP parliamentary party to elect its leader and that “Rashtrapati Bhavan never questioned him”. He said a meeting of National Democratic Alliance parties was instead called to demonstrate majority support.

He suggested that when the period is written about, “Prime Minister Modi’s name will not shine as a great constitutionalist”, and that attention would instead focus on concerns of a different nature.

Mukhopadhyay added that the BJP’s parliamentary party and parliamentary board had not met after the 2024 polls to take decisions, asserting that “everything is being done purely by the whims and fancies of just a single individual”. He cited the recent Bihar oath-taking ceremony, where several ministers took the oath simultaneously, as an example of what he described as disregard for constitutional process.

RSS, bans and constitutional faith

Mukhopadhyay traced Narendra Modi’s “political gene” to the RSS, pointing out that the organisation had no written constitution until 1948, when it was banned in the aftermath of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. He recalled that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, then Home Minister, insisted that the ban would not be lifted until the RSS adopted a constitution.

He noted that the RSS drafted a constitution in haste, which was then returned by the government with remarks and corrections before being accepted. In his view, this history raised questions about how deeply constitutional values were internalised by political traditions emerging from that background.

(The content above has been transcribed from video using a fine-tuned AI model. To ensure accuracy, quality, and editorial integrity, we employ a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) process. While AI assists in creating the initial draft, our experienced editorial team carefully reviews, edits, and refines the content before publication. At The Federal, we combine the efficiency of AI with the expertise of human editors to deliver reliable and insightful journalism)