Table Of ContentNarcissus or Machiavelli?
This book is about leadership and its strategies. Drawing on Indian prime
ministers since Independence, it traces the personality traits and leadership
skills that have shaped many futures. It examines a range of leadership profiles
to study dominant traits in one of the most demanding leadership roles in
the world. The volume focuses on Machiavellianism and narcissism as a
framework for policy-personality connections and demagogic tendencies in
leaders in politics and in everyday life.
A ccessible, engaging, and provocative, this book will be essential reading
for professionals across industries and corporations. The general reader
interested in leadership studies and Indian politics will also find this book
useful.
N ishant Uppal is on the faculty of Organization Behavior in the Human
Resources Management Group, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.
His recent publications include Duryodhanization: Are the Villains Born,
Developed, or Made up? (2018), L eadership in Organization (2020),
Understanding the Theory and Design of Organizations (2020), and HR
Analytics (2021). He has published in a number of international journals,
such as Personality and Individual Differences, Studies in Higher Education,
I nternational Journal of Manpower, Team Performance Management, and
E uropean Business Review , among others. More recently, his research
focus area has been in understanding the effects of negative personality
traits on work, family, and societal outcomes. Dr. Uppal specializes in the
fields of analytics, leadership, change management, knowledge management,
organizational adaptation, job design, organizational structure, and personality.
Narcissus or Machiavelli?
Learning Leadership from Indian
Prime Ministers
Nishant Uppal
F irst published 2022
b y Routledge
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© 2022 Nishant Uppal
T he right of Nishant Uppal to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-0-367-46951-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04420-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03226-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
In Honor of
Shri Sukhdeep Uppal (Papa)
Dedicated to
Vihaan and Kabir
Contents
Preface viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Jawaharlal Nehru: a mindful headmaster
(15 August 1947–27 May 1964) 21
3 Indira Gandhi: a lone ranger (14 January 1980–31
October 1984 and 24 January 1966–24 March 1977) 53
4 Rajiv Gandhi: an episodic lion (31 October 1984–2
December 1989) 75
5 P.V. Narasimha Rao: an ardent disciple
(21 June 1991–16 May 1996) 97
6 Atal Bihari Vajpayee: a silent assertive
(19 March 1998–22 May 2004) 117
7 Manmohan Singh: a reluctant administrator
(22 May 2004–26 May 2014) 141
8 Narendra Modi: the Modi (26 May 2014–incumbent) 158
9 Shastri and Desai: the movers and shakers (9 June
1964–11 January 1966 and 24 March 1977–
28 July 1979) 182
1 0 Conclusion, comparison, and consequences 194
I ndex 212
Preface
Nehru’s jacket and mass appeal, Indira Gandhi’s sari and stoutness, Vajpay-
ee’s poetry and philosophical pauses, Manmohan’s reticence, and Modi’s
charismatic rhetoric: do these personality characteristics have any implica-
tions for their leadership behaviors and decisional attitudes? It is an extraor-
dinary and overwhelming enquiry.
While we find umpteen investigations in the American context where
researchers and scientists have successfully established personality-behavior
linkages for U.S. presidents, scarcely do we find such systematic accounts for
prime ministers of India, the world’s largest and most complex democracy.
The unavailability of such an account is baffling yet expected. Finding a
theoretically valid framework that may be used as a lens to examine political
behavior is challenging. Whereas the forced fitting of a framework may pro-
duce unreliable results and thus controversies, loose applicability may cause
a lack of representativeness and comparability. Even extreme care in the
selection of a framework may result in catastrophic controversies, as it may
irk a certain set of individuals or institutions that have a contrarian ideology.
Another challenge emerges from availability of information and its pre-
sentation. While in certain occasions it appears in abundance, in other cases
there is an absolute absence or (even more dangerously) inaccessibility. The
propaganda works in a subtle and complex manner in democracies, such
that the available information may carry elements which are consciously
and deliberately embedded in public ideology through populist media vehi-
cles. Filtering (and digging) them out is tedious and debatable. Even the
absence or inaccessibility of information may be due to conscious efforts of
certain individuals or institutions who could infer, utilize, and popularize the
results of the study in a scandalous and provocative manner.
Thus, apolitical representation and interpretation of facts and theories
become critical and challenging. Nevertheless, the attempt has been made
to address these issues in a most delicate and sophisticated manner. A theo-
retical framework has been applied that has been found to be ubiquitously
representative of political leadership behaviors and decisional attitudes.
Instead of information, facts have been put through the framework to avoid
possible controversies. Sources of facts (given in the book) used to establish
Preface ix
a personality-political behavior relationship for Indian prime ministers are
usually available (yet not utilized) in the public domain, and thus are easily
verifiable. Undeniably, some sources required deeper and greater research
than did others. All sources are provided in references and footnotes for
readers to extract more information.
A pparently, readers may easily find (and possibly criticize) the style in
this preface so far to be defensive. I must admit that this view is not entirely
unfounded. After several rounds of rigorous editorial reviews and corre-
sponding revisions, the outcome needs to be protected from possible and
unintended controversies. Readers will appreciate the content more if they
know the procedural efforts used and their associated limitations.
S o, what is this book about?
I present in the introduction the utmost requirement for understanding
the psychographic profiles of Indian prime ministers. I offer the readers simi-
lar research done in other countries as examples. The contents in this chap-
ter vivify the benefit and usefulness of research that establishes the linkage
between political leaders’ personalities and their behaviors and decisional
attitudes.
I apply narcissism and Machiavellianism as two personality traits that
are found ubiquitously in all political leaders in history and present times.
Some scholarly accounts even claim that these two traits are quintessential
for leadership escalations. While I am not wholly ignorant of other person-
ality typologies and casually acknowledge their presence and implications,
parsimoniousness is a natural limitation in any such investigation. Besides,
interestingly, these two traits turned out to be greatly representative of our
constituents’ behaviors. Also, readers will find when they progress in the
book, the two traits as an extraordinarily fascinating comparative yardstick.
I facilitate this comparison in the last chapter.
In between, I present in various chapters the behaviors and decisional atti-
tudes of prominent Indian prime ministers that indicate the presence of nar-
cissism and Machiavellianism in different degrees. I must admit here again
that I do not catalogue all of the prime ministers. I excluded the ministers who
were in office for an insignificant period. For example, Gulzari Lal Nanda
was only an interim prime minister until the parliament chose the next lead-
ers after Nehru’s death. Additionally, several prime ministers came to office
during the 1990s, some of whom served for less than a year. While the criteria
for exclusion may appear to be time duration, these prime ministers practi-
cally and perceptibly did not possess any influential authority in office. This
exclusion may inculcate dissatisfaction in some readers, yet it is critical for
this book to avoid redundancies. I apologize in advance for the omissions.
Examination of political leaders’ personality-behavior linkages has sev-
eral advantages. It helps ordinary citizens decipher the dispositional source
of their political leaders’ behaviors and decisional attitudes. The knowledge
of connection between political leaders’ personalities and their behaviors
aids in predicting future behaviors and can greatly influence the logic behind
