Speaking in ‘the language of the gods’: Sanskrit and political mythmaking in Narendra Modi’s speeches

This article analyses how Sanskrit functions politically in the public speeches of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, with particular attention to the radio programme Mann ki Baat. A distinctive feature of Modi’s communication is the weaving of contemporary political narratives with Hindu textual and mythic repertoires. In this article, I argue that Sanskrit operates as a language myth in Modi’s speeches by invoking an idealised Sanskritic past to legitimate contemporary political projects in Hindu civilisational terms. Sanskrit is not just presented a symbol of civilisational depth, but also as a shared national capacity and a marker of contemporary cultural virtue and identity. The analysis, moreover, shows how Sanskrit helps consolidate a chronopolitical narrative in which the future of India is imagined as the reactivation of a suppressed yet enduring civilisational inheritance that Sanskrit both is and is made to stand for. Sanskrit, in other words, is not merely decorative or devotional in Modi’s speeches, but functions as a compact semiotic resource through which Hindu nationalist visions of past greatness, present national commitment, and future rebirth becomes mutually reinforcing.