Busting the Modi myths

The prospect of Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister of India has galvanised political discourse and whetted the appetite for stories about the man. Meticulously tracing Modi’s evolution from a deprived childhood in tiny Vadnagar distributing badges as a six-year old for the statehood of Gujarat, his ostensibly unconsummated child marriage from which he fled to spend a mysterious interlude of wandering and seeking, to his admission to the RSS as a rare Backward Caste face, his remarkable feats of organisation in the Gujarat BJP, including the rath yatras of Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, to becoming the first RSS pracharak to be a chief minister, the books under review underscore his drive and sense of purpose, leadership and innate political sense, and keen awareness of the importance of image-building. “Every waking moment of his day is spent thinking and strategising power play.” Nag notes that when Modi was appointed Chief Minister “little did the party leaders realise that they were unleashing a chief minister who would, within just a year, become so powerful that he would care for just about nobody in the party.” What transpired during that year was a murderous attack on a train and a retaliatory communal bloodbath — Modi’s defining moment, albeit fortuitous. In Mukhopadhyay’s words: “If the Godhra incident had not occurred and if that had not been followed by the orgy of violence, Narendra Modi would not have been what he subsequently became — and in all probability there would have been no need to write this biography.” Nag observes that “any government that showed such indifference in controlling carnage elsewhere in the country would have been dismissed and the state put under President’s Rule.” Not only did Modi survive, he grew to personify Gujarati asmita. In his words: “I am not religious but I am definitely spiritual.” “Even now I have not completely returned to the material world … I felt that if I have to do something then I have to become part of some system, some structure.” Probed by Mukhopadhyay about his role as a leader, he says: “I think it is probably a god-gifted ability … Even I do not know how God gets me to do these things or how I come to get these ideas.” Modi’s is an assiduously crafted persona that is worryingly at odds with the reality.