KK Srivastava delves into Jungian psychology's influence on Modi's leadership, unveiling its role in societal renewal and global impact for a prosperous future
Democracy is a psychological institution as much as it is a political, social, economic, or cultural one. It necessitates the assimilation of human psychology, and one way to comply with this requirement is to delve into the past, particularly the past of the country in question. There are two classes of people for whom meeting this requirement is mandatory: first, political leaders. For any leader, the past serves as a valuable teacher; understanding it provides clarity regarding their vision and mission, enabling them to handle collective human psychology efficiently and effectively for the greater welfare of all. Second, writers. Let me begin with a writer who speaks of India: “India is old and India continues.” This sentiment is expressed in the book “India: A Wounded Civilization”, a title that reflects the anguish of a young writer — VS Naipaul's mind.
One might recall the TV serial “Ek Din Ek Jeevan”, hosted by the eminent media personality Tavleen Singh, in which she used to converse with well-known personalities. In one of these programmes, VS Naipaul, when confronted with a parting question from her, “What is it about India that draws you?” said, “Well, I suppose my religion is... is... being Indian. But that's my background, and I just have to explore it in various ways...” Furthermore, in 2004, when he was a Nobel laureate, Naipaul visited the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Delhi, and people saw in this visit a symbol of ideological moorings.
Much more amplification about his enquiry into India, i.e., “the residue of old history” as he calls it in his novel “Magic Seeds”, is available in some of his indispensable books. In “Literary Occasions: A collection of Naipaul’s essays,” he reiterates, “We were an immigrant Asian community in a small plantation island in the New World. To me, India seemed very far away, mythical, but we were still full of the instincts of people of the Gangetic plain... The Ramayana was the essential Hindu story... and even with the divine machinery, the matter was very human... the epic was like a moral education for all of us.”
Naipaul’s ancestors left India in the late eighteenth century, and he was born almost five decades later, in Trinidad in 1932. He visited India for the first time in 1962, roughly eighty years after his forefathers left the country. He did not have a personal, direct memory of his religion and culture as they existed in India. Naipaul continues in “Literary Occasions”, “The two Indias were separate. The political India, of the freedom movement, had its great names... The other, more personal India was quite hidden; it vanished when memories faded. It wasn’t an India we could read about... It was to this personal India... that I went when the time came.”
But Naipaul was aware of the limitations that lay beneath the unconscious place of human memories. So, he admits in another novel, A Way in the World, “I can give you that historical bird’s-eye view. But I cannot really explain the mystery of inheritance... We can go back and back, forever; we go back all of us to the very beginning; in our blood and bone and brain, we carry the memories of thousands of beings... We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.”
What could be the explicable reasons for Naipaul’s pursuit of India, his culture, and religion? To answer this question, let me turn to Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most significant psychiatrists of the last century, and some of his concepts: “the collective unconscious”, “inner self-experience”, “wholeness”, and “shadow”.
Out of the two layers of the mind — conscious and unconscious — Jung splits the unconscious into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious implies contents that were previously conscious but have become dormant, forgotten, or repressed. On the contrary, the collective unconscious is home to all accumulated historical, collective memories, and experiences of humanity. It refers to the pattern of deep unconscious instincts held collectively by human beings, which are retained in what Jung calls archetypes. Archetypes connote ancestral, inherited experiences that are collectively registered in the human brain, manifesting as the collective unconscious. Jung believed that in addition to one's personal unconscious, each individual also has a collective unconsciousness. Naipaul's repeated return to his country had deep roots in his personal and collective unconscious. When he talks about “the instincts of people of the Gangetic plain” or “We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited”, instincts here refer to the Jungian collective unconscious.”
Jung believes that the collective unconscious plays an enormous role in both personal and cultural growth. He says a person’s destiny is “the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious”. Individually, access to the collective unconscious leads to personal growth and the integration of various aspects of the self. As a group, the collective unconscious influences the development of culture, symbols, and rituals. By understanding and exploring the collective unconscious, individuals and societies gain insights into their own past, identities, and the broader human experience. The collective unconscious influences every aspect of our lives, especially the emotional ones.
While Jung talks about “inner self-experience”, he stipulates that everything within the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, necessitating the integration of the collective unconscious, which implies taking cognisance of the world and adapting to it. Individuals achieve “wholeness” when things repressed within the collective unconscious become available to the conscious self. Full development of the self is not attained by individuals who live out their lives in the safe confines of luxury. Only those who achieve selfhood attain wholeness and fulfillment.
Let us, in the light of Jungian literature, dwell upon the relationship between democracy, leadership, and people’s hidden strengths. Carl Jung, underscoring the value psychological factors have in a genuinely functioning democracy, writes in his book, “Essays on Contemporary Events”, “True democracy is a highly psychological institution which takes account of human nature as it is and makes allowances for the necessity of conflict within its own national boundaries.” Jung also speaks of the “shadow side of the self”. In the shadow, there are many undeveloped strengths. Jung says, “Most of the shadow is solid gold.” And he adds, “It is surely better to know your worst enemy is right there in your own heart.” This concept has been utilised by theorists dealing with models of leadership, leading to the concept of integral leadership, which can cope with issues amid complexity. An integral leader has a larger vision of the welfare of all, including global issues. Servant Leadership is a vital requirement for such leadership, where the leader becomes a servant of the whole. This leads me to the arena of leadership, particularly in the context of India.
Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi considers himself a “Pradhan Sevak”, whose visionary qualities have enabled the creation of platforms for synergistic and systematic solutions to emerge in various areas: be it economic, social, cultural, motivational, or international. This includes the abolition of Article 370, handling issues in the northeast region, tackling the menace of black money, focusing on investment strategies, reaching out to marginalised strata of society, digitisation, managing the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, and equally importantly, awakening old cultural ethos and values.
Prime Minister Modi has realised that the enemy is not only external but also within us. The best leaders are endowed with the capability to confront the unacknowledged or semi-acknowledged aspects of the collective unconscious and address them effectively. Such leaders are best suited to lead the transformation of historically inherited, complex problems like the ones mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Undoubtedly, Prime Minister Modi is such a leader.
When Jung asserts, “Most of the shadow is solid gold,” he suggests that the rejected material bequeathed to the shadow is a strength we possess, but we neither know we have it nor do we accept it. When a leader like Narendra Modi, through his creative leadership, enables people to harvest the shadow, he helps them reclaim those disowned, forgotten strengths. He enables people to achieve Jungian 'wholeness.' This is enormously empowering, as people free and develop additional gifts and strengths sequestered within the collective unconscious. Not only has Prime Minister Modi gained insight into the collective unconscious of people, but he has also managed the collective outpouring with charismatic competencies. When Jung asks, “Where are the superior minds capable of reflection today?”, he essentially searches for great leaders capable of successfully establishing a “collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious.” This also activates catharsis, which serves as an antidote. I think of the following example.
In the very first episode of the programme “Mann Ki Baat”, after saying, “We have forgotten ourselves. We have become hopeless,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a voyage into the collective unconscious by recounting what Swami Vivekananda used to say. “Once, a lioness with her two cubs spotted a flock of sheep. She chased the flock with one cub accompanying her and the other left behind. The cub left behind was reared by a mother sheep. Growing up among the sheep, he started speaking the language of sheep and adapted to their ways of life. When the fully grown cub reunited with his brother, who had been left behind, he was shocked to hear him speak like a sheep. 'What are you doing, brother? You are a lion’,” he said.
"But the brother left behind refused to believe, 'No, I am a sheep; I speak like a sheep. I was brought up by them.' The lion took his brother to a well, and both of them saw their reflection in the water. As soon as the lion saw the similarity of their faces, his self-esteem awakened, and he realised his true nature.” Having narrated this, the Prime Minister said, “My fellow countrymen, we, the 125 crore Indians, have tremendous strength and capabilities. We need to understand ourselves, carry our self-respect, and move forward in life to be successful, which will make our country a winning and successful nation.”
This is how Prime Minister Modi's “superior mind, capable of reflection,” began the exploration into the collective unconscious, thereby stirring, through such motivating speeches, a mass movement. In the first episode itself, glimpses of addressing the collective unconscious and catharsis are noticed, both intended to bring about positive change in individuals' and collective lives.
Such leadership has the effect of integrating compensatory moves of the unconscious into consciousness in an individual. This integration of unconscious contents by individuals leads to a greater understanding and knowledge of self and society. This is a very important psychological contribution of Prime Minister Modi to the strengthening of Indian democracy and making India’s contribution to world affairs unique. Now, India’s voice at the international level is not only heard but also respected. Last but not least, let me briefly address the restoration of cultural issues.
Let me turn to yet another highly celebrated book of Jung: The Undiscovered Self, where he explains his vision about the relationship between religion and the unconscious thus, “...the unconscious is the only accessible source of religious experience. This is certainly not to say that what we call unconscious is identical with god or is set up in his place. It is a medium from which the religious experience seems to flow.” The Jungian view has relevance in the context of what ensued after independence in 1947.
Somnath temple was renovated, and Hindus were overwhelmed with a sense of pride. History was badly in need of correction, and the renovation of Somnath temple introduced this correction. Similar discussions to rebuild the Ram temple at Ayodhya could have taken place, and historical wrongs corrected. But then politics assumed a different colour. The policy of appeasement became fashionable. Instances like the removal of the idol of Lord Ram or the halting of the rath train in Bihar or further ordering of police firing on car sevaks, in which many were killed, deeply wounded the collective unconscious of Hindus. The idea of “India: A Wounded Civilization” had sunk deep into the collective unconscious. Hindus deserve full praise and honour for their magnanimous and accommodating attitude in the face of adversaries and the ignominy caused to them due to appeasement policies. Addressing collective agony began when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, and his unceasing meditation on historical ironies (for example, Article 370), in any field, has singularly contributed to not only dismantling what went wrong earlier but also timely correction of many such wrongs.
Restoring cultural heritage to the country has been one of the most important contributions of Prime Minister Modi. The construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya after five centuries of struggle and suffering, along with the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the Ram Temple, is a moment of catharsis not only for Hindus but also for all right-thinking individuals. Catharsis has served as a cure, relieving people of the psychological burden of accumulated agony and anguish. India is now a psychologically much more mature country, as people have unwavering confidence in their leader Narendra Modi; they feel they are in safe hands, and thus they are psychologically much more secure and evolved.
The best way to conclude this article is to reproduce some lines from Narendra Modi’s poem “Dawn of Wonder” from his book of poems “A Journey”:
Now there is no story of sorrow or grief,
No mourning, no more to torment.
The storm has gone far away,
And amid the sky’s huge spread,
Thorny crises forever banished,
As dazzling hopes are born and set free.
A brave dawn, time for glee.
We keep the faith of ‘Ram’ in our hearts,
There is no occasion for melancholy.
A brave dawn, a time to be free.
These lyrical musings constitute a sure guarantee from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for more prosperous and brighter times ahead, not only for India but also for the world. It is not just India; even the globe requires Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister after the 2024 national elections.
(The writer is former Additional Deputy Comptroller & Auditor General. He is a poet, writer and columnist. He writes for The Pioneer, The Daily Guardian and Brazilian Literary Magazine SIBILA. Views expressed here are his personal views)
