Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians, at the helm of parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that.

Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is a professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on the politics of democracy and development in the global South. He is the author, most recently, of Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India’s Bhil Heartland (Cambridge University Press, 2018).