Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India is a new book by Christophe Jaffrelot, published by Hurst & Company. It is reviewed by Kenneth Bo Nielsen of the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway.
Nielsen is enthusiastic, stating:
Gujarat under Modi is a superb account of the making of Narendra Modi as a politician and the origins of his brand of authoritarian populism that more than anything else defines India today. Although the book is published after Jaffrelot’s (2021) equally superb Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, this new book is in fact a prequel to Modi’s India.
This is the story of how Modi used Gujarat as a kind of laboratory “for developing a specific political repertoire and set of techniques that enabled him to rule Gujarat as chief minister for nearly 13 years, and which he could later successfully transpose to the all-India level to become arguably post-colonial India’s most powerful prime minister.”
JCA 