‘Dry-cleaning’ Narendra Modi

Modi had survived with this ‘dirt’ as a chief minister but when the BJP nominated him as its prime ministerial candidate, a need was felt to dry-clean this ‘dirt’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents over one billion Indians, who claim to be citizens of the world’s largest democracy. Before becoming premier, he ruled the state of Gujarat as chief minister for well over a decade. This is a substantial period for any politician to develop a reputation about his self through words and deeds.

Incidentally, Modi developed a very bad reputation. He was known as a ‘ruthless self-serving’ politician. He was charged of ‘authoritarianism’ for resorting to intrusive surveillance of citizens and for governing Gujarat as a police state. The political rivals within his own party, the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP), denounced him as a ‘dictator’ and an ‘upstart tyrant.’ Even his parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), with which he remained associated since the age of eight as a young cadet, criticised him as ‘nobody’s man’ because he broke the unwritten rule of the RSS (once you are in, you never leave) by becoming a BJP chief minister. Due to the authoritarian streak, he was called ‘a one man army’ who could never build consensus. He was often referred to as a divisive figure because the ‘Right’ celebrated him as its poster boy while the ‘Left’ dubbed him as a ‘figure of hate.’ For the insensitive and inhuman treatment that was meted to the Muslim minority of Gujarat under his watch, he was tagged by human rights activists as ‘Gujarat Hitler,’ by journalists as ‘mass murderer’ and by politicians such as Sonia Gandhi as ‘maut ka saudagar’ (merchant of death). So bad had his reputation become that the American government turned down his request for visa in 2005.

Modi had survived with this ‘dirt’ as a chief minister but when the BJP nominated him as its prime ministerial candidate, a need was felt to dry-clean this ‘dirt.’ Internally, the Indians could live with a ‘dirty’ chief minister but not externally as after becoming the prime minister, he was to serve as the face of the whole of India that boasted of a tolerant pluralistic civilisation with a rich history of over five millennia. ‘Makeup’ attempts by the Indian writers to unstick the ‘dirt’ and present Modi as a humane and tolerant ruler met with failure. Thus, entered a British academic Andy Marino with a doctorate in English literature and no expertise in politics and historyto take up the challenge to become the ‘devil’s advocate.’ Not only that Modi made himself fully available to this author ‘without complaint or demur for weeks’ (I doubt if any Indian writer has been so lucky) for many long sessions of recorded interviews but was ‘gracious enough’ to take him along to his campaign rallies and sundry travels. This smells of an ‘embedded biographer,’ although I have only heard of ‘embedded journalists,’ who are provided free lodging, boarding, travelling, etc, by their handlers to write favourable accounts of what they are shown. In over three hundred pages that Marino has written for Modi’s political biography, he has cleverly hidden whether this work was commissioned by Modi himself or the BJP or the RSS or whether the author just ‘fell in love’ with the ‘dirty Modi’ and travelled all the way from the west to the east for a ‘dry-cleaning’ job that he completed in a spurt of twelve months which historians otherwise take years to complete, not because they are lazy or slow but because the rigours of research are usually painstaking to write inside out accounts. See for yourself, how the ‘devil’s advocate’ ‘dry-cleaned’ Modi before the latter became the premier of India.

The biggest blot on the face of Modi has been his controversial handling of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat for which among other ‘honourifics’, he was called the ‘Gauleiter of Gujarat.’ Well! Why blame Modi for the riots because historically this state has been the most riot-prone state of India. Moreover, before Modi became the chief minister, the state apparatus was already psychopathic being infected by communal hatred between the Hindus and the Muslims that date back to the destruction of the temple of Somnath in Gujarat by the Muslim adventurer Mahmud Ghaznavi. Furthermore, Modi tried everything to stop the violence and if he was unsuccessful, it was because of the obstructions caused by his own party, the BJP, the Congress, the media and the communally infected state administration. Besides, wasn’t the genocide of Sikhs in Delhi in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 worse than the killings of Muslims in Gujarat? In his enthusiasm to defend Modi, Marino probably forgot that two wrongs don’t make a right. Modi offered to resign at the Goa session of the BJP but it was the party that insisted he continue. Many thought that he should have at least apologised for the carnage under his watch but he has refused to do so on the plea that ‘People told us Modi never says sorry. I said, what does sorry mean? We have a criminal justice system in this country which does not accept sorry. What will Narendra Modi’s sorry mean to us?’ In addition, despite the passage of so many years since those bloody riots, neither any FIR nor any charge sheet has been filed against Modi, who insists that ‘If I am found guilty of anything I should be hanged.’

After ‘dry-cleaning’ Modi of any wrongdoing in Gujarat, the ‘devil’s advocate’ next ‘dry-cleans’ his bloody relationship with the Muslims

After ‘dry-cleaning’ Modi of any wrongdoing in Gujarat, the ‘devil’s advocate’ next ‘dry-cleans’ his bloody relationship with the Muslims. It is said that he is not anti-Muslim and before he assumed the chief ministership, the boundaries between the Hindus and the Muslims in Gujarat were referred to as ‘border’ and the neighbourhoods in which the Muslims lived were called ‘Pakistan.’ In fact, Modi desires ‘harmony’ and ‘unanimity’ between the two communities. To prove this point, it is stated that in his childhood, most of his friends were Muslims including his best friend Jasood Khan Pathan and it was usual for Modi to observe the religious festivals of both the Muslims and the Hindus. Moreover, unlike other Hindu nationalist leaders, Modi played no part in the Hindu madness that culminated in the demolition of the Babri mosque. It is also argued that under his rule, the economic conditions of the Gujarati Muslims improved immensely. A Gujarati Muslim notable named Zafar Sareshwala, who is believed to have sold his soul to Modi, attests that the wealth of the Muslims during the decade of Modi’s CMship increased substantially because you will find that 50 percent of the zakat of madrassas across the country comes from Gujarat and 50 percent from the rest of India. If Modi had destroyed Muslims, their share of zakat should have fallen.’ It is because of these ‘good’ reasons that around 25 percent of the Gujarati Muslims voted for Modi in the 2012 assembly election. Those who likened Modi to Mahmud Ghaznavi for demolishing an illegal sufi shrine were told to shut up because not only did he restore several Islamic monuments in Ahmedabad such as Seedhe Syed kiJaali, the JhooltaMinara, etc but also organises festivals of sufi music.

The picture that emerges after this dry-cleaning job is that Modi is an ‘innocent angel’ whose rule has been benevolent to the Muslims of Gujarat and after becoming the prime minister it will be a ‘boon’ to the Muslims of the rest of India as well, however, the situation is still quite the opposite because despite this dry-cleaning, the negative perception about Modi persists. And perceptions can be stronger than realities.