The beards are ruling — from Modi’s govt to Kohli’s World Cup team

In Modi’s second ministry, only 6 out of 57 ministers are women. Of the men, 18 sport facial hair, ranging from a 5 o’clock shadow to full-fledged beards.

(L-R) Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Prakash Javadekar, Virat Kohli. | ThePrint

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s beard is a sign that the world has changed.

In 2016, British journalist Gideon Rachman had accurately identified in The Economist that “Across the world — from Russia to China and from India to Egypt — macho leadership is back in fashion.”

Now, three years later, Modi is back in power for a second term, and in his second ministry, only six out of 57 ministers are women. Eighteen men sport well-groomed facial hair ranging from a five o’clock shadow to full-fledged beards.

From first-time ministers like Amit Shah (home), S. Jaishankar (external affairs), Prahalad Singh Patel (MoS, culture and tourism), G. Kishan Reddy (MoS, home affairs) and Pratap Chandra Sarangi (MoS, animal husbandry and MSMEs) to old-timers like Ram Vilas Paswan, Prakash Javadekar, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Ramdas Athawale, Giriraj Singh and, of course, the PM himself, the comeback of the bearded man appears to be in full swing.

Voting for a ‘man’

This general election, the defeat of the Congress party also signalled a rejection of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘love-and-hug’ strategy. In a sense, the country decided that ‘Khan Market type’ men with clean-shaven faces were unfit to navigate the rugged terrain of Indian politics, and so, they voted for a ‘man’ instead.

“A beard is a sign of two things in India — masculinity and asceticism,” Shiv Visvanathan, anthropologist, author and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), told ThePrint.

“Modi’s masculinity is near folklore — something to worship. His picture will have to be placed next to someone like Bhagat Singh. Modi’s masculinity also comes from his ability to age correctly. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi is, for a want of a better word, ‘chikna’. He’s white and perpetually teenaged — he doesn’t know how to age,” Visvanathan said.

Beards have even taken over that other quintessentially Indian passion — nearly all 15 Indian cricketers in the current World Cup squad sport beards, save for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav’s occasional stubbles.

What’s in a beard?

“One thing is certain,” Christopher Oldstone-Moore wrote in the opening pages of his 2015 book Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair, “changes in facial hair are never simply a matter of fashion”.

Through varying periods in history, ranging from medieval times to the modern day, the beard has marked its entry and exit depending on the cultural norms and requirements of the time.

In the past, beards were reserved for older men, Vikings, sages or ‘free-spirited’ nomads, “while a clean-shaven look showed sophistication, or a white-collared professional who needs to fit in an office”, Arun Janardhan wrote for Livemint in 2016.

“Having facial hair has variously been a sign of manliness, of unkemptness, of being one with nature, of being Left-leaning, of being lazy, disinterested even, or just too miserly to invest in a razor,” he wrote.

But today, Pinterest has an entire page dedicated to pictures of Virat Kohli’s beard, Instagram has 388 million posts that have used ‘#beard’ to garner traction, and the internet community has designated the entire month of November every year to celebrate the act of not shaving — there’s even a website.

In 2014, multinational FMCG behemoth Procter and Gamble even noted a distinct fall in the demand for its Gillette razors and shaving accessories. Obviously just a coincidence: It was the same year that Narendra Modi came to power in India.

Indian politics’ tryst with beards

Previously, India had no particular disposition towards bearded parliamentarians. On the contrary, as Janardhan noted, “of the 14 male prime ministers India has had, only four have had beards. Of them, Chandra Shekhar and I.K. Gujral lasted just one year, while Manmohan Singh is Sikh”.

Similarly, of the 14 Presidents of India, only Dr Zakir Hussain and Giani Zail Singh had beards — they were India’s first Muslim and Sikh President respectively.

Modi stands tall, and broad, as the sole exception. But it’s not only Modi’s beard that India is obsessed with. As Kumar Ketkar, Congress Rajya Sabha MP noted for ThePrint in March: “Television channels and some leading commentators spend a lot of time and space on critical national issues like: Should Rahul be clean-shaved or sport a beard; should that beard, if he chooses to have one, be like Virat Kohli or Ranveer Singh…

“I have not seen or heard anybody advising Narendra Modi to have a clean shave or keep a beard like Guru Golwalkar (Modi will feel macho-less and completely lost without that beard),” he wrote.

A hyper-masculine campaign

For communications consultant and political campaign adviser Dilip Cherian, “hyper-masculinity is virtually embedded in a lot of the DNA in India”.

“This is the understanding that you need a man to protect you, and for the man to be able to protect you, he has to be macho, he has to be visibly male,” he said.

The beard then becomes a visible and socially acceptable marker of this masculinity.

Further, Modi’s 2019 playbook consisted of positioning himself as both the defender and the provider. His campaign, which glorified a never-back-down approach to terrorism, as proven by the Balakot air strikes, and also highlighted BJP’s welfare schemes and national pride, only further reinforced a ‘strongman’ image for the self-proclaimed “chhappan inch ki chhaati (56-inch chest)” politician.

“The patriarch of the house is always seen as a grey-bearded gent. So it works along two lines: I will give you your freebies, gas connection and Aadhaar card, and I will also protect you,” Cherian said.