Narendra Modi: Silence of the wolf
By Amulya Ganguli
Amid the rise and fall of politicians in the recent elections, what was noticeable was the strange silence of a redoubtable figure. Although he has apparently begun to harbour prime ministerial ambitions and is eager to play a major role on the national stage, he not only kept out of the election campaign for his party, but maintained a deafening silence even after the results were announced.
Yet, if Narendra Modi wanted to enter the all-India scene in a big way, the elections across the nation from Manipur to Goa via Punjab, UP and Uttarakhand provided an ideal opportunity to showcase his talent. But, by absenting himself, he has only lent substance to the belief that he is too controversial a character because of his suspected role in the Gujarat riots to be a useful campaigner for the BJP. In addition, his uncharacteristic maun vrat shows that he is too much of a loner to be the leader of a national team. He remains essentially a state-level personality.
The BJP itself did not seem too eager to project Modi in the run-up to the elections although there are not a few in the party who believe that the Hindu hriday samrat is the only person who can galvanize the grassroots saffronites. If this is the case, then the recent elections gave the BJP a chance, especially in U.P. where it was fighting only for the third or fourth place, to test Modi’s popularity among the cadres since, where the elections were concerned, the party couldn’t really hope to wean away Muslims from the Samajwadi Party, the BSP and the Congress.
Arguably, Modi could have been kept away from Goa since the BJP fielded Christian candidates there. They might have remembered that, before the 2002 riots, the Hindutva storm troopers had targeted the Christians in the Gonds area under Assemananda, who is now in jail. But, if the BJP cadres needed a revitalizing shot anywhere, it was in U.P. and Modi could have administered it.
It is generally known, of course, why Modi avoided UP. The reason was that his bête noire Sanjay Joshi was in charge of the campaign in the state. But, whatever the reason, Modi’s absence and silence have shown that the uneasiness about him outside the BJP has now seeped into the party, making him an outsider in his own home. What this means is that the halo which he acquired after two successive assembly election victories in Gujarat has slipped and that there may be vague doubts about how he will fare in the polls in the state at the end of the year.
Interestingly, Modi has withdrawn into the background soon after the BJP celebrated a decade of a riot-free Gujarat. The celebrations followed Modi’s own sadbhavna fasts in aid of social harmony. Those were his first attempts to play his prime ministerial card. But, his sudden withdrawal into a shell suggests that he may have realized the uphill nature of his task. First, his hunger-strikes haven’t helped to project a benign image of himself. His past as a minority-baiter is too dark a stain for him to erase so soon.
Secondly, he may have realized that his party is not with him in his ambitions. As it is, there are too many aspirants – L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley – for Modi to brush aside even if he did not carry his anti-minority baggage. But, with it, he cannot expect to go far, especially since any such effort will lead to the NDA’s disintegration with Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Co. walking away. What is more, even the RSS is unlikely to back Modi because he is too much of an individualist for the Nagpur patriarchs. The fact that the RSS does not like him is evident from the insouciant manner in which Nitin Gadkari has ignored Modi’s objections to Sanjay Joshi’s induction into the party.
Thirdly, Modi is aware of the legal challenges he is facing. Even though the Nanavati commission has given him a clean chit in its first report and the Special Investigating Team set up by the Supreme Court to probe the riots hasn’t found any direct evidence of his complicity in the outbreak, the Gujarat high court has held the state government guilty of failing to prevent the riots and to provide relief to the displaced persons. These indictments and the cases relating to them, as the government responds to the judicial strictures, will continue to haunt Modi in the foreseeable future.
The riots, which saw “popular participation”, according to a saffron scribe, marked the first phase of Modi’s career when the pracharak established his hold on the party by evicting challengers like Keshubhai Patel and then strengthened his grip on the state by winning in 2002 and 2007. But, he has now seen that a fascistic temperament is a serious handicap in a multicultural country. (IPA Service)