National

Asset Or Liability?

BJP poster boy till now, Narendra Modi is finally feeling the heat from the riot fires

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Asset Or Liability?
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Narendra Modi likes his followers to wear masks and perpetuate a cult of personality. A solitary individual at the best of times, in the past 12 months, since the hype around his electoral prowess evaporated and legal problems mounted, Modi must have (metaphorically speaking) taken to standing and staring at his image in the mirror. Perhaps he has asked himself the question that sections of the BJP are certainly pondering: is the Gujarat CM now an asset or a liability?

Already some of the bluster is gone. Following his nine-hour grilling by the SIT, Modi informed the nation through his blog that he had indeed expressed regrets for the riots in 2002. He also gave a video-link to an appeal he had made for ‘peace’ on February 28, ’02. In it, he holds forth about the Godhra tragedy and says “an example will be set such that in future no one will dream to commit such a heinous act” (between 1.19 minutes and 1.227 minutes of the six-minute speech). He does request people not to disturb the peace or riot but that part sounds lame after the fulminations on Godhra.

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Bright prospects? A file picture from the Gujarat riots of 2002

In the years since, no explanation has been forthcoming on why so many people were brutally killed under his watch, but the traditional Modi view stated at so many public meetings is that “Mian Musharraf” and the “Taliban” brought the troubles on themselves by attacking kar sevaks in Godhra. Now suddenly he is being asked to explain: less than a week after the marathon session with the SIT, the Nanavati Commission informed the Gujarat High Court that its decision not to call the CM for questioning was “not final”.

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What is quite final is that the Gujarat CM is not wanted in Bihar, where the BJP faces the next big electoral test in October this year. A Bihar BJP leader joked to Outlook that a certain recipe for a Laloo Yadav revival was to send the troika of Modi-Advani-Varun Gandhi to the state to campaign! Party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy says there are “divergent views” on Modi. “He may be described as a liability for a ruling coalition led by Nitish Kumar in Bihar, but for the BJP he is always an asset.” Prakash Javadekar argues, “Why go on about the riots and cases? Modi has a great development record. And it is not essential that every CM should campaign everywhere.”

Nitish has scrupulously ensured for years that Bihar remains out of bounds for Modi, propounding a firm belief that his presence would hurt and not help the JD(U)-BJP formation. And the great national expectations from Modi evaporated after the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when it was found that the BJP lost most of the seats where he campaigned. That is why some commentators like historian Jyotirmaya Sharma say that Modi has no national future and “will be stuck in Gujarat for the rest of his life”. He adds that Modi is neither an asset nor a liability as a “liability is something you hope to turn into an asset and I don’t see that happening!”

So, can the BJP actually move beyond the histories of a Ram temple that tainted L.K. Advani and a Gujarat that shadows Modi? Since ideological shrillness is not clicking on the ground, the party has begun to strike sensible poses in Parliament, even reaching out to the larger Opposition. Yet the party is curiously hemmed in and unable to really reinvent itself. The RSS is in charge and as a senior leader says, “Modi may snub the RSS but he is their only hope of a strong Hindu leader. The more he gets attacked by the secular press, the higher his stock goes among the Jai Shri Ram crowd.” And this despite the fact that he has poor inter-personal relations and most national-level leaders dislike him. Yet, party president Nitin Gadkari has said many times that “Modi is PM material”.

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A senior BJP Rajya Sabha MP explains: “There are certain ideological cornerstones on which we cannot deviate. Having said that, I do believe Modi wants to put this behind him, move on with the development pitch as does the BJP.” Right-wing commentator Swapan Dasgupta says there are two extreme discourses on Modi, “He is the perpetrator of all that is rotten and then there is the Modi who is the pride of a resurgent Hindu awakening. In between, there is the Modi whose real strength is that of an administrator.” That is the Modi the BJP says it would like to pitch to the rest of India. Problem is, India has not been too receptive.

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Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president, Centre for Policy Research, however warns against writing off Modi too soon. “Modi may appear to be faltering in a certain context but contexts change,” he says. He sees Modi as an authoritarian figure who has a future if there is a polarisation in society. “The problem for Modi has been that Indian receptivity to divisive politics is now less and less. The politics of anxiety isn’t working for them but we can’t say that things won’t change.”

Besides, as a senior BJP leader says, there is the problem of a shortage of leaders in the post-Vajpayee era. As he puts it, “Regional parties have leaders who operate in their area but have no national image. The Congress has the Gandhi family. The BJP has no one today. Modi still has a national profile, good and bad.”

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So if in the future Project Modi has to work, polarising issues have to click with the electorate. Then Modi can emerge as the great leader who will save the nation from the “Taliban” (he used the phrase again to attack his critics last week). The problem is that this sort of line is not working on the ground now. The BJP, meanwhile, soldiers on, hemmed in between the Ram temple cases of the past, the Gujarat cases of the future and rss control apparently till eternity.

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