evidence: Modi, who has been in power since 2014, presides over the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has effectively dislodged the progressive secular Indian National Congress (INC) as the country’s traditional power broker. The INC spearheaded the Indian independence movement and ruled India for most of its history. It has also "effectively functioned as a hereditary dictatorship led by the Gandhi family for more than five decades," author Kapil Komireddi wrote in Foreign Policy in October 2022. To his critics, Modi is a walking controversy and wannabe despot; to his admirers—who are, in India, a much larger group—he is a compassionate leader unwavering in his commitment to governance. According to Morning Consult, Modi has the highest approval rating of any democratically elected leader in the world, at 78 percent, as of late November 2023. While many leaders can claim to be figureheads of political personality cults, Modi’s is perhaps the biggest—and most detrimental to global democracy. The historian Ramachandra Guha argued as much in a landmark November 2022 essay in Foreign Policy entitled "The Cult of Modi." Modi is popular, Guha contended, for six reasons: because he is genuinely "self-made" and hardworking, is a skilled orator, has weak political rivals, has effectively capitalized on Hindu nationalist sentiment, leads a shrewd propaganda and social media campaign, and is emotionally intelligent.