Charisma: The Good and the Bad Sides

Will the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) disintegrate following the acrimonious differences within the party after J Jayalalithaa’s demise? Will the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress be a magnet for the disgruntled leaders of the AIADMK? Will VK Sasikala continue to sustain her hold over the party, now that she has been lodged in a prison in Karnataka? Will there be an early election to the Tamil Nadu State Assembly in view of the political uncertainty? These are issues of political immediacy and the answers to them will spring out of the very system that has been disrupted in the State. But it’s the fountainhead that we need to identify for a better understanding of the crisis that has gripped Tamil Nadu. A fountainhead that goes by the name of Charisma. Since the dominating influence of charisma is not limited to Tamil Nadu, or even to India, it cannot be easily brushed aside.

But first Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK has its roots in charisma. It was formed 44 years ago as a breakaway faction of the DMK which was the dominant regional party of the State. The new group would have, in the normal course, struggled to gain a foothold even, let along come to rule, but for one factor: It was headed by the charismatic film star, MG Ramachandran (MGR). He was not just the heart-throb of millions but also a sort of cultural icon. From the late forties to the seventies, he dominated Tamil cinema like no actor had ever done, or has done to date. Ironically, his rise had also to do with the film scripts that friend M Karunanidhi, who was to later become his bitter political rival, wrote for the films. For a brief while, the two worked together in the unified DMK under CN Annadurai’s leadership. MGR used his enormous reel-life popularity to rise rapidly in the party rank. Three years after Annadurai’s death, MGR had become a politician in his own right, even more charismatic than before, and he split the DMK to form the AIADMK in 1972. From mid-June 1977 right until his death in 1987 — except for a brief interval of some six months — he remained the Chief Minister.

If charisma had founded the AIADMK, charisma alone could have sustained it. During his tenure, MGR had groomed J Jayalalithaa, a popular film star who had paired opposite him in many films. In the process, Jayalalithaa too had acquired a charismatic image, part of which was her own doing and part of it coming from her close association with MGR. It was this charisma which helped her outsmart efforts by MGR’s family members and take control of MGR’s political legacy. The trials she went through during that period are well recorded to bear elaboration. She had been humiliated by MGR’s family members, thrown out from the cortege carrying his remains, abused in the foulest language. But once in the saddle, Jayalalithaa took charge of the party in a way that would have made MGR proud. For the next three decades thereafter, it was her charisma that kept the party together and led it to victories.

Her death left a void, just as MGR’s had. The difference was that this time around there was no charismatic figure to fill the space. Unlike MGR, Jayalalithaa had groomed no successor. O Panneerselvan had been the man of the moment whenever she had to vacate office, filling in for her, but he was never seen as her automatic successor. Still, he might have perhaps managed, even though minus the charisma, but for the Sasikala factor. Sasikala is anything but charismatic herself. Her only claim to fame is that she had been a friend and confidante of Jayalalithaa. But she had used that proximity to build a circle of loyalists around her, and this proved handy for her to stake claim over Jayalalithaa’s legacy. But leaders cannot go far in reflected glory. Sasikala has already been challenged, and it’s unlikely that she will prove to be the undisputed leader that Jayalalithaa or MGR was. With the charisma gone, the AIADMK is floundering.

Charisma has kept the rival DMK chugging along too. Its supremo Karunanidhi has a halo unmatched by any other within the party. Although old and virtually bed-ridden, his word remains final. He has been able to ward off a stiff challenge by his elder son MK Alagiri who hoped to succeed him as the chief. Instead, Karunanidhi has successfully installed younger son MK Stalin. Stalin is not charismatic, but he is pragmatic. He is clever too, knowing the value of his father’s charisma and the need to soak in it as much as he can till time permits. After then, he will be on his own and may face challenges. Yet, he can always invoke his father’s charisma and the fact that he was the chosen one, to tide over any crisis.

Stalin’s case demonstrates that when one charisma cannot be replaced by another charisma, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. But for this to happen, the new leader must be able to show that he is a fit contender to a departed charismatic leader’s legacy. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is an interesting example. Naidu joined the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), founded by Telugu mega-star NT Rama Rao, in 1983. Months before that, he had contested on a Congress ticket against the TDP and lost. The TDP had swept the State Assembly election. As a newly minted TDP leader, Naidu (also NTR’s son-in-law) played a leading role in the re-instatement of NTR’s regime after it was dislodged in a political coup by N Bhaskara Rao. Naidu engaged in aggressive political manoeuvring to win over a majority of the MLAs; a month after the coup, NTR was back in office. NTR thereafter took him under his wings. The two later fell out and Naidu virtually came to control the party, ousting NTR from the party’s presidentship in 1995. Naidu had then claimed that NTR was seeking to hand over the party’s reins to his second wife. But in doing so, the son-in-law took care not to challenge NTR’s charisma. Instead, he placed the blame on the iconic leader’s human failing. Like Stalin, Naidu is not charismatic, but he has shrewdly made up for that with his progressive governance mantra.
Therefore, charisma both succeeds and fails. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, hugely charismatic, also frittered away credibility and public standing during their later terms. Rajiv Gandhi’s charisma was short-lived and succeeded by an equally stunted charisma of VP Singh. PV Narasimha had “the charisma of a dead fish”, in the words of a senior Congress leader, and yet he not just completed a full term as Prime Minister but also presided over tectonic changes in the country’s economic and foreign policies.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee too had been charismatic in his decades-long political career, but the party led by him lost the 2004 election. An absolutely non-charismatic Manmohan Singh served two successive terms as Prime Minister before charisma made a resounding comeback in the form of Narendra Modi. The latter’s charisma rests on many factors. The first is that he is seen as an ‘outsider’ still in Lutyens’ Delhi — someone who does not and will not hesitate to disrupt the cozy arrangements that have flourished and guided the political system. The second is that he has an uncanny ability to connect with the people through his oratorical skills (something which Vajpayee has had, though the mannerisms of the two leaders are vastly different). The third is that he is seen as decisive and bold (the hard-selling of demonetisation and the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are cases in point). And the fourth is that he has the credibility to make people — at least vast numbers of them — believe in him. Nearly 1,000 days into office, Prime Minister’s Modi’s personal popularity remains high and he continues to be the first choice of the people for another prime ministership tenure.

Charisma can be destructive too. Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini were also charismatic, but they led their nations and humanity to destruction. They were charismatic because they had the ability to impress and convince people. Of course, they were helped by prevailing circumstances such as deep distrust of and discontent among the masses over the state of affairs in their respective nations and by the abject failure of the moderate opposition leaders to offer a credible alternative. But these moderate leaders were also non-charismatic, and that worsened the situation for them.

Given the positives and the negatives, charisma (among the political class at least), has become a subject of deep contemporary study and discussion. Jochen Menges, who lectures on organisational behaviour at the University of Cambridge, has spoken on the phenomenon in the popular online TED Talk. He says that charisma is “a relationship between the person who possesses it and the person who responds to it”. Meneges adds that people are so awed that they refuse to see anything wrong in the person and that “we tend to hold back our emotions in an almost instinctive way to show our deference”. This may be so, but only in the short run. As we have seen in the Indian context, charismatic leaders have fallen by the wayside when they failed to live up to the people’s expectations, or were perceived to have failed.
Author David Aberbach of London School of Economics notes the phenomenon pithily in his book, Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media, that charismatic leaders “represent something essential in the capacity to deal with the crisis”. This observation fits into the Indian context rather well. The run-up to the 2015 Lok Sabha election is encapsulated in Aberback’s remark. The last few years of the Manmohan Singh regime had seen a complete breakdown in governance. The Government was neck-deep in scams. There was no policy direction worth the name, either in foreign affairs or in domestic economy. Worse, the Prime Minister’s position had been compromised with open allegations of extra-constitutional authorities managing the Government. Something was wrong, and the crisis had to be fixed. Modi represented that ‘capacity to deal’ with the issue, and the people entrusted him with the task.

In the February 16 issue of Nautilus, Adam Piore, who has authored The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human, advises a cautious approach to charismatic leaders. The article’s headline expresses this intention unambiguously: ‘The Anatomy of Charisma — What makes a person magnetic and why we should be wary’. He does give compelling reasons on why the public must be on its guard when faced with charismatic leaders. It’s because such leaders have the power to both charm and deceive. But then those who don’t have charisma too can do deceive. The article is basically a scientific approach to charisma: Why it exists, how it works, and where it fails. It factors in comments from various experts, and one of these admits, “You cannot stamp out charisma. The way to protect people from demagogues is not to kill all the demagogues but rather to teach people how charisma works so they can recognise whether it’s being wielded responsibly or abused.” This makes sense.

In a scientific twist, the Nautilus writer quotes from Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who postulates in his book, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow: “The brain’s intuitive system is far faster than the rational system. The intuitive system, though, is prone to unconscious factors, based on limited personal experience and tendencies that result in irrational biases. But the slower, more rational system, centered in our prefrontal cortex, can serve as a potent check on unconscious tendencies — when we take the time to analyse them.”

This is heavy academic stuff but it misses out on one reality: The intuitive system takes charge when the rational system fails to deliver results. People go with intuition when they have seen reason fail. When the public stops believing in whom they reposed trust, they turn inwards and believe in themselves (their intuition). Of course, intuition can also betray — which then leads us back to the rational. It’s a shift that has kept happening, and will keep happening.

However, it would be wrong to approach the issue of charisma from a purely critical point of view. It’s true that a charismatic leader has the power (some would say hypnotic power) to take his people astray more easily than the less-endowed ones. And yet, such a leader can also use the power for the national good. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are excellent examples. Charisma may be like the huge banyan under which nothing grows, but the few saplings that sprout do get their nourishment from a charisma they don’t have and yet benefit from. It’s for such a beneficiary to make good use of the occasion.

Politics would be humdrum without charismatic leaders. Not just politics, but also films, sports, religion and the rest. Imagine cricket without Gary Sobers, tennis without Jimmy Conners, football without Maradona, hockey without Dhyanchand, Hindi films without Shammi Kapoor. Imagine Iran without Ayatollah Khomeini, England without Winston Churchill, Russia without Vladimir Lenin. These were all charismatic figures who powered and rewrote rules of the game. No legacy in the world is entirely untainted; even Gandhi and Mandela have had answering to do, with later-day historians and academics critiquing them. This doesn’t loosen the hold of charisma or made it a bad word. Yes, a charismatic leader, if he or she fails, will fail more spectacularly than the non-charismatic one. On the flip side, such a leader’s success would be equally monumental.

(The writer is Opinion Editor, The Pioneer, senior political commentator and public affairs analyst)