(The Quint brings to you 'Khairiyat', a column by award-winning author Tabish Khair, where he talks about the politics of race, the experiences of diasporas, Europe-India dynamics and the interplay of culture, history and society, among other issues of global significance.)
This letter to the editor is reported to have appeared in The Guardian recently: “On Saturday, you published a photo of the UK prime minister above the headline ‘A dangerous cult now runs Britain’ (Journal, 29 May). I was pleased to see that, despite the constant turmoil of the modern world, some things, such as the Guardian’s famed penchant for typos, never change. – Tony Mabbott, Rotherham, South Yorkshire.”
If one looks away from Mabbott’s British humour and the implicit sexism of the ‘typo’, one is struck by the fact that personality cults, instead of political parties, seem to run many countries today. This was the case in the US, too, when Donald Trump was ruling the roost. If the 'BoJo' cult runs Britain today, then there are also personality cults running countries like the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, etc, and, in different ways, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Until recently, Israel was being run by the cult of Benjamin Netanyahu. Vladimir Putin, despite plunging Russia into a devastating war, remains a personality cult in that country. There are examples closer to home as well, and even Imran Khan is trying, with limited success, to turn himself into a personality cult.