Modi’s alternative facts rely on invented experts

Narendra Modi was reelected as India’s prime minister in June for a historic third term. Yet his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not have the privilege of an absolute majority for the first time in a decade. It will head a coalition government that is already rife with disagreement.

The result has called into doubt what many perceived to be an unwavering level of support for the BJP’s core ethos of Hindu nationalism, as well as its claims of national self-reliance and economic growth.

As I discussed in my recently published book, an important part of the BJP’s strategy over the past 15 years has been to discredit established intellectuals as irrelevant, elite and detached, while at the same time building alternative forms of “credible” knowledge and expertise.

In the run-up to the 2009 national elections, for example, the BJP created two entirely new think tanks: the India Foundation and Vivekananda International Foundation. This was, in my opinion, a way to make inroads into New Delhi’s elite, exclusive and primarily left-liberal policy ecosystem.

The BJP lost the elections that year. But it won by a landslide in 2014, and these two think tanks provided personnel for many positions within the central government.

Under Modi’s leadership, experts have also been systematically replaced with appointed loyalists by dismantling or co-opting advisory committees, universities and established research institutions.

This strategy has, in practice, served to normalize ideas that may otherwise have appeared to be ideologically biased. This was clearly seen during the recent election cycle.

In April, Modi made a speech at an election rally in Banswara, Rajasthan, where he claimed the opposition Congress party wanted to distribute