By Ashish Mehta, IANS
Ahmedabad : With his resounding win in Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has pitch-forked Moditva – his brand of aggressive Hindu nationalism mixed with practice of free-market economy – to the centrestage of Indian politics.
Many of his admirers are now sure to see him as a future prime minister of India. The 57-year-old himself has never hidden his ambition for the top post.
Addressing an election rally here this month, he nearly asked the crowd if they would elect him as prime minister — before he corrected himself and said “chief minister”.
L.K. Advani, once his mentor, got himself anointed as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) next prime ministerial candidate just in time this month. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taunted him saying he had done so fearing a Modi victory, Advani feigned surprise and called Manmohan Singh political novice.
Given the Gujarat result, Manmohan Singh does not seem to be so naïve, after all.
Look at Modi’s bio-data: He is the first Gujarat chief minister since Madhavsinh Solanki (1980-85) to complete a five-year term and the first to win a second term.
This when anti-incumbency has stopped most chief ministers (and prime ministers) from getting another term.
This record, however, came after a long career in Hindu nationalist politics.
Born on Sep 17, 1950 in Vadnagar town of Mehsana district in north Gujarat, Modi studied political science for his post-graduation from Gujarat University here.
He actively worked for the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – the student wing of the Sangh Parivar led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
He soon graduated to the RSS, which deputed him to the BJP in 1987. His organisational skills saw him rise in the hierarchy. His big moment was managing Advani’s cross-country Rath Yatra (chariot campaign) of 1990 that marked the arrival of Hindutva politics in India.
When the BJP won the Gujarat elections for the first time in 1995, he as the state unit’s general secretary played the role of the kingmaker, preferring Keshubhai Patel over Shankarsinh Vaghela.
Ironically, he himself was to replace an ageing Patel in October 2001 while a hurt Vaghela engineered the first split in the party, only to later join the Congress.
Taken out of Gujarat following the split, he rose to become the general secretary in 1998 – a key position charged with the responsibility of interacting between the BJP and the RSS. Modi also served as a party spokesman in New Delhi.
Few politicians and journalists meeting him in the late 1990s could have foreseen the future of this essentially lonely man, living in his Spartan quarters in the BJP office or roaming the parliament complex all alone.
Facing increasing popularity in Gujarat ahead of the 2002 polls, the party fielded Modi, in his words, to play a one-day cricket match.
A few uneventful months later, arson in a train carrying Hindu activists from Ayodhya and ensuing communal violence catapulted him to the top of the national agenda.
Even as opposition parties, rights activists, sections of the media and international organisations pointed an accusing finger at Modi for not checking the violence, many in Gujarat and outside saw in him the personification of their fight against what they called “minority appeasement”, an euphemism for pandering to Muslim sentiments.
An unapologetic Modi roamed across Gujarat with ‘Gaurav Yatras’ (Pride Marches), spreading the Hindutva message with fiery speeches.
This, even after then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee advised him to follow his ‘Raj Dharma’, the ruler’s duty, and deputy prime minister Advani described the events a black spot for his government.
It was not surprising that he delivered a record 127 seats for the BJP in the 182-member house after the December 2002 elections even if the Supreme Court was to later describe him as a “modern-day Nero”.
However, in the 2004 parliamentary election, the BJP under his leadership saw its biggest fall in Gujarat, with many blaming Modi for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s national loss.
Modi’s policy of divide-and-rule, mixed with his aloofness – or arrogance – saw a large section of BJP functionaries and legislators revolt against him – led by his predecessors Patel and Suresh Mehta.
One legislator, Purushottam Solanki, went on to call him Hitler.
They urged the central leadership time and again to remove Modi, who, however, completed five years and has won a fresh term too.
Modi’s admirers point to his apparent achievements in putting Gujarat ahead of other Indian states in the race for foreign investments and his policies to make the state the petro-capital of India.
They also say that Modi, a veritable CEO of Gujarat, has a record of leading a non-corrupt and efficient administration, something grudgingly admitted by many including late Congress veteran Amarsinh Chaudhuri.
They also see in him a rare persona – tech-savvy, great orator, strategist par excellence. Few know that he also published his collection of Gujarati poems, “Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe” (Blessed Are These Eyes) last year.
His critics, however, say that the Hindu-Muslim divide has only grown during his regime as little was done to rehabilitate the violence-affected people and deliver justice to them. They also say that his achievements for Gujarat economy are more in the nature of sophistry than hard reality.
Either way, his victory is a major milestone in India’s tempestuous political history.