Rajiv Dogra’s latest book, “Autocrats: Charisma, Power, and their Lives” defies categorisation. It is a marvellous and insightful stream-of-consciousness treatise on leadership and systems of governance. It is also a fascinating foray into the human psyche, the eccentricities, egoistic urges, and grand designs of autocrats across world history. It makes you rethink your political and historical premises and interrogate narratives about leaders and governance and who an autocrat—or worse, a dictator—is and who is not, as well as the cost-benefits of an autocratic against a democratic system.
Surveys like that from the Pew Research Centre in 2017 show that people in 70% of countries prefer strong leaders. In bona fide democracies, separating the chaff of dictatorial tendencies from the kernel of strong, effective, and visionary leadership is a must—this book helps us do that. Where an autocrat may manipulate elections, a strong leader is popularly elected in free and fair elections, is subject to the checks and balances of legislature and judiciary; where an autocrat rules by fiat, a strong leader governs by consent, delegating decision-making, listening to people, and willing to take back unpopular legislation.
Where an autocrat may cruelly crush dissent and political opposition, a strong leader patiently allows peaceful protests—however long-running, unjustified, and disruptive—and accepts criticism. Strong leaders are competent and seek discipline in public life but abide by democratic processes; for them, power is a means to serve public good. Rather than personal aggrandizement or enrichment, the sole dictum of their governance is inclusive and participatory development of all, by all, and for all, leaving no one behind. They rise from the people, know their pulse and mix with them freely.
Encompassing tremendous philosophical range, this book seeks answers to questions that have haunted humanity forever: Where do autocrats come from? Why do countries and people bear with them? What sets them apart? What forms of control and coercion do they employ? Why don’t we learn our lessons as humankind? At a time when the world is teetering on the precipice of WW III, an unthinkable nuclear Armageddon in an era of “virtual empires”, the “hybrid dictator-AI”, and environmental, humanitarian, and socio-economic polycrisis; and when the world needs sagacious leadership, Dogra provides clear-eyed perspectives.
From across history and civilisations, Dogra has created compelling character studies of autocrats whose psychological traits include unpredictability and a desire to be feared. They employ the modus operandi of “politics without a conscience that tends towards criminality”. As former Ambassador to Romania, Dogra begins to substantiate his theory through harrowing stories of abuse and violence perpetrated by Romanian dictator Ceausescu, and then further details atrocities by the likes of Caligula, Gengis Khan, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, Hoxha, Duvalier, Gaddafi, Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Khomeini, and tyrannical institutions such as the Taliban, ISI, and the British East India Company—the last he labels as the worst of all, responsible for the death of more than 10 million Indians. This invokes the irony that the self-proclaimed mother of all democracies, the United Kingdom, ran a most dictatorial, racist, and anti-democratic government in India.
Dogra asserts that there is “no one size fits all” character profile of autocrats, many of whose decisions and motivations are shaped by previous generations’ actions and legacies. The old dictum of Karl Marx that men make their own history but not under circumstances of their own choosing certainly applies to the behaviour and trajectory of dictators. His recounting of independent India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru’s dalliance with autocracy and Indira Gandhi’s stopping at nothing to keep herself in power by imposing Emergency—which officially put India into a dictatorship clinker—is riveting.
Methodically outlining the etymology and evolution of the various forms of autocracy, Dogra insists that it is impossible to predict which way a dictator’s reign will go. Charisma soon turns into narcissism, paranoia, control, isolation from the public, and access limited to a close circle of sycophants. They suffer from cognitive dissonance, described by American historian Barbara Tuchman as afflicting leaders, from Troy to Vietnam, who shut off inconvenient truths and refused sage, informed advice. Revelations about the fashion quirks, food habits, and bizarre idiosyncrasies of these dictators make for some real moments of levity.
Catastrophic to society and freedoms, autocracy as a system, such as in China and Russia, feverishly simulates democracy by relying on one-party rule, controlling everything, including thought and narratives, especially on the ubiquitous social media in a polarized, post-truth world. Democracies across the globe, Dogra admits, display some degree of majoritarianism and populism, but also warns against these becoming a mainstay of authoritarianism that “by its very nature has a smoke-and-mirrors quality”.
Dogra says the heart of the matter is “not about the gradual eclipsing of democracy by authoritarianism, or the creeping resentment against authoritarian regimes. It is about the helplessness of people and their frustration at the political systems tried so far.” Indians have endlessly debated the relative merits, effectiveness, and speed of transformation of the autocratic political economy model of China versus the Indian democratic model, and the trade-offs involved. Nevertheless, India has an unbroken record of keeping faith with democracy apart from the Emergency interregnum.
The West, as Dogra quotes Biden saying, recognises that “the world is at an inflection point in the battle between democracy and autocracy.” They, however, fail to recognise and leverage India’s sterling democratic credentials and its stature as the world’s oldest, largest, most pluralistic, liberal, federal, electoral democracy. India, particularly in the last decade, has managed the miracle of accelerating economic progress and social re-engineering, overcoming some of democracy’s systemic inefficiencies and challenges of size, scale, diversity, and poverty, while achieving technological leapfrogging.
Instead of lauding and holding up India as a role model for the Global South as against autocratic models, there is a regrettable attempt by the “new imperialism” of the West to do an undemocratic benchmarking of democracies. They use ideologically fossilised institutions and disinformation spread by the media to judge India unfairly and hypocritically. This book will show a mirror to them.
Steinbeck’s quote in the book, “All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins—it never will—but that it doesn’t die” is evocative. Countries like India must keep goodness and heroisms rising always in favour of equity and democracy within and in the world, against autocracy and new imperialisms.
“Autocrats” is a laudable deep dive into the paradoxes of human nature in some vainglorious, power-obsessed leaders and systems that have held sway on the national and world stage. It is a triumph of effective and engaging writing where literary flair intertwines with the subtleties of philosophy, political science, and psychology. Though well-researched, this book is not a burdensome academic tome. Readers will find themselves immersed and regaled by a highly erudite writer as he thinks aloud about the necessity and urgency of cogitating on the essence of leadership in a world which direly needs recipes for the perfectibility of humanity.
Lakshmi Puri is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women; and a former Ambassador of India.