Is Narendra Modi India's Reagan? Or Nixon? Or Thatcher? Our need to classify Modi is turning into a pundits' version of a Buzzfeed quiz.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

The rise of Narendra Modi in India is rapidly turning into a Which World Leader is NaMo quiz?

It’s just that it’s happening in the more rarefied columns of the likes of the Financial Times and Foreign Policy and The Hindu instead of popping as a Buzzfeed quiz on our social media timelines.

But the concept is the same. It’s as if Modi is answering some world history version of a Buzzfeed quiz.

Are you a master of personal anecdote, effortlessly tying individual stories to larger principles? (Ronald Reagan)

Are you an autocrat who kicks away the democratic ladder which has led you to power? ( Adolf Hitler)

Did you marginalize your party’s ‘old guard’? (Margaret Thatcher)

Do you demonize your opponents? (Hugo Chavez)

Are you prone to concealment, paranoia, sulking, denial, vindictiveness, and outsized sense of entitlement? (Richard Nixon)

Have you made your party irrelevant? Are people on the ground excited by you and not by your party? (Indira Gandhi)

Congress has added a few more luminaries to the Modi act-alike rogues gallery – Mussolini, Idi Amin, Zia ul Haq.

Narendra Modi seems to be on a whirlwind tour of world history even though he’s still just a candidate for Prime Minister. The problem with all these comparisons is that like many other self-made leaders Narendra Modi is very much his own man who has charted his own course. He hasn't cited any of these people as inspirations or role models. He just talks about Vivekananda and Sardar Patel. But because we are in the business of classifying people we cannot let Modi be Modi. We have this kneejerk need to peg him into an already existing archetype.

And with each of them, there are enough parallels to merit an article. But there are equally enough dissonances to merit a counter article and I must admit, articles like this one as well.

David Cohen, a self-confessed Reagan fan gushes “India may have found its Reagan”. Modi and Reagan were both leaders of prosperous states who then wanted a national role. Modi’s stand against Pakistan reminds him of Reagan’s resolve against the USSR. The Indian cultural elite despises Modi just as their counterparts in America looked down on Reagan. And Cohen fervently believes Modinomics like Reaganomics is the “perfect antidote to kleptocratic crony socialism”. “When will we find our Modi?” asks Cohen wistfully, to the delight of Modi fans.

But Reagan’s whole USP was a projection of a sort of sunny blasé optimism, an amiable geniality even if it was at complete odds with his policies. Narendra Modi is not the kind of leader who wants to be known for his sweet tooth for jelly beans.

No wonder close on the heels Is India About to Elect its Reagan comes, no surprise, Narendra Modi is no Reagan.

Chandrahas Choudhury argues Reagan was hardly a workaholic like Modi, he had “no great head for policy” unlike Modi and Modi’s pro-business economic policy is many degrees removed from Reagan’s unabashed embrace of free-market economics. But most pertinently, Reagan’s great appeal as described by Garry Wills was the “blithe illusion” of “original sinlessness”. He sold America “innocence, idealism and derring-do.” Modi, on the other hand writes Choudhury is “dragged down by something like the original sin” – the riots of 2002 which continue to dog him and probably always will, fairly or unfairly.

If Modi can be compared to an American president (and I have no idea why he must be compared to one) then it should be Richard Nixon writes Rob Jenkins in Foreign Policy. He is prone to bouts of self-pity and has a penchant for denial. He is secretive with a “coterie of private sector associates, some less savoury than others”. He talks about his chaiwallah roots just as Nixon harped on his humble Quaker upbringing. Nixon hated the East Coast Ivy League intellectuals and Modi sneers at the Delhi liberal intelligentsia. And for both 'sorry' seems to be the hardest word. If there’s one positive, perhaps a Modi, with his well-established hawkish credentials, can do a Nixon-goes-to-China equivalent with Pakistan.

In fact, if we can get away from the Boys Club fixation Narendra Modi is perhaps best compared to the two Iron Ladies of recent history – Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. “If India deifies the leadership of Indira today, it is less on account of her tangible achievements and more on the strength of what she symbolized – a ruthless and defiant exercise of power” wrote Swapan Dasgupta in India Today long before Modi was a PM hopeful. That sounds eerily familiar today.

And far more than Reagan’s cowboy hero roots or even Nixon’s Quaker humble oats, it’s Maggie Thatcher’s dogged climb from greengrocer’s daughter to steel-cut Prime Minister that echoes the trajectory of Narendra Modi’s journey in India, a society that’s fiercely class-conscious like its erstwhile colonial master. Reagan and Thatcher were great admirers of each other but Reagan exuded warmth and Thatcher radiated chill. Thatcher didn’t stay powerful by being “nice”. She stayed powerful by being formidable. And no prizes for guessing which character trait suits “yeh desh nahin mitney doonga” Narendrabhai more.

Perhaps it’s the mind-blowing complexity of Indian politics, with its various highstrung regional satraps, as well as the bafflingly interminable length of its elections that makes international (read American here) media ‘s eyes glaze over when it comes to our elections. (John Oliver bitingly skewers that, and Arnab Goswami, in this segment of his show on Comedy Central.) So it’s tempting to reach for the comfort of a Reagan or a Nixon and try and shoehorn a Modi into their shoes. And for us in India, hyper-sensitive as we are every year to whether our leaders are on the cover of Time or not, these comparisons are a peculiar kind of ego boost. But the comparisons, while fun intellectual exercises, have little practical value because the politics are so different. The comparisons cannot really predict what kind of prime minister a Narendra Modi might make if he gets that far.

In the end their value is not much more than a Buzzfeed quiz. Entertaining. Timepass. And probably not that much more insightful or useful than knowing what kind of Jane Austen character you are.