‘Selfie-points’ in universities: What purpose do they serve?
The selfie is no longer dismissed by behavioural analysts as symptomatic of self-obsession or narcissism. Experts believe that selfies are also a way to connect and communicate with others.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, was a serious serial selfie-taker with world leaders during his first term. However, taking selfies with celebrities not only brings a brand rub-off but also reinforces the celebrity’s stardom. Celebrities today would have no followers unless they were constantly updating their fans with the places they visit, the people they meet and even the food they eat.
This two-way process makes one wonder exactly what the purpose of the “selfie-experience” is being offered to university students by the University Grants Commission (UGC). On December 1, a UGC directive was sent to all universities and colleges to set up “selfie-points” with life-size cut-outs of Prime Minister Modi. Is this supposed to gratify the students or someone else?
The apparent objective is to “create awareness among youth about India’s achievements in various fields”. The seven thematic designs suggested for the “selfie-points” (which, contrary to media reports, have not been withdrawn by the UGC) include “Ek Bharat, Shreshta Bharat (One India, Pre-eminent India)”, Hackathon, Indian Knowledge Systems, Internationalisation of Education, Multilingualism in Education, QS Ranking (university rankings compiled by a higher education analytics firm) and Research and Innovation. All have a life-sized cut-out of Prime Minister Modi and depict students taking selfies with him.
Only two of the designs include another recognisable personality–Sardar Patel figures in the design for “Ek Bharat, Shreshta Bharat” and Chanakya (unsurprisingly a lookalike of the actor who portrayed Chanakya in the eponymous 1990 TV serial) for “Indian Knowledge Systems”. However, because they are placed at the opposite end, they are unlikely to vie for space in the selfie frame with the Modi cut-out.
This attribution of every educational achievement to the Prime Minister in the UGC’s “awareness” campaign has come under muted criticism. Prime Minister Modi is undoubtedly a popular leader, as demonstrated by his enormous electoral victories. However, a huge cult of sycophancy has also grown around his persona.
Prime Minister Modi is quite a photophile and needs no extra help in image-building. If there are images of him benevolently feeding peacocks, there are also more adventurous ones, such as the episode of Man vs Wild with popular British adventurer and television presenter Bear Grylls. In these, he makes his way safely across a stream in the Jim Corbett National Park without being attacked by a tiger, crocodile, snake or elephant. He has posed for photographers releasing imported cheetahs into the wild, with the remark that “The country has come a long way whereas earlier we used to release doves, now we release cheetahs.” This is not only a telling reference to his bête noir Nehru, whose picture releasing doves is a standard image of him. It also summons the image of another strongman, of Putin tranquillising an Amur tiger, helping to measure its teeth and implant a tracker.
The creation of a leadership profile that is robust, muscular and bold – yet benevolent and visionary – is in keeping with the prime minister’s carefully cultivated image. Recently, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar relegated Mahatma Gandhi to a “Mahapurush (great man)” while elevating Prime Minister Modi to “Yug Purush (Man of the Era)”. An era in a geological time span encompasses hundreds of million years. A “Yuga” in Hindu cosmology is an epoch lasting 4,320,000 years.
However, what the UGC is attempting is far more egregious than the effort to transpose the prime minister into mythical or geological time. It seeks to encourage the identification by selfie-taking students with the vision of an all-powerful leader. In effect, when they ought to be questioning everything and everyone in their pursuit of knowledge, they are being encouraged to accept a certain vision uncritically. This is apart from the way such identification feeds into political campaigning for 2024.
The cult of personality plays different roles in authoritarian and democratic societies. The personality cult around a ‘heroic leader’ helps totalitarian regimes maintain control and is especially useful in times of internal crises. It transports citizens into an emotional realm where they are awed by their leader’s capability and qualities. The cult of the Kim family in North Korea, with wall-to-wall displays of their portraits in the country and assuming endearing and respectful monikers such as “Fatherly leader” (Kim Il Sung), “Dear Leader” (Kim Jong Il) and “Respected Comrade” (Kim Jong Un).
More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image-building exercises demonstrate how to build a personality cult in an authoritarian state. Putin is photographed flying fighter jets, showcasing martial arts skills, riding horses, ice-fishing bare-chested, rafting and bathing in a cold Siberian river, scuba-diving, painting and singing patriotic songs.
In democratic societies, the personality cult of a political leader is often mistaken for a “presidential style” of functioning. The distinction between a presidential and parliamentary system of governance is only about who exercises executive power and through which institutions. Personality cults can be built equally around a prime minister and a president.
The cult of personality damages democracy as it attempts to short-circuit the mind of the rational voter by discouraging intellectual consideration and debate about national issues. Governance becomes secondary to the voters who are encouraged to exercise their franchise without considering who will serve their interests based on a better programme for governance. The aim is to shift the discourse in such a way that it is personalities that are compared rather than arguments and policies, the basic principle on which ideal democratic behaviour is based.
All other candidates are then measured by the stature of the demigod, producing the infamous TINA (there is no alternative) factor, or there is no alternative. Encouraging cult-like devotion to the leader relegates questions and doubts to the background, which is exactly the opposite of the UGC’s motto – “Gyan Vigyan Vimuktaye”- that one is liberated only through knowledge and science.
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