From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 48, Dated Dec 15 , 2007
As he comes under pressure in a make-or-break election, Narendra Modi falls back on a tested tactic: virulent divide and rule. DARSHAN DESAI follows him on the campaign trail to get a sense of how he is stirring his constituency
YOU TELL ME what should have been done to Sohrabuddin? What should be done with a man who stored arms and ammunition?” asked Chief Minister Narendra Modi to a crowd in South Gujarat’s Mangrol town. “Kill him, kill him,” the throng shouted back. Modi said, “Barabar chhe; do I have to take Sonia Gandhi’s permission for it?” The mask is out, the development plank is on the backburner; Modi once again wears a deep saffron face.
It may be ironical that at another level he asks the Centre to send Taslima Nasreen to Gujarat, saying she will be best-protected here, but ironies haven’t mattered to Modi, who removes the mask of development at his convenience and wears it on will. You may have often seen him on TV either walking away at the reference of Godhra or brushing it aside: “Main vikas ki baat kar raha hoon, aap Godhra ki baat kar rahe hain.”
Modi’s message is loud and clear. He will set the agenda: for what he speaks, for what he does, for what others in his party and outside should say and do, and when. Simultaneously, he says neither the media nor the Opposition but the “people of Gujarat will set the agenda.” And who are the people of Gujarat? His supporters, wearing specially-made masks of Modi’s face, leave little to imagination about who he means are the people of Gujarat. So, he chose to pick up the campaign with his development claims but simultaneously referred to Taslima, and made it strident with Sohrabuddin, realising the difficulties that could arise out of the fissures in the BJP and the Sangh Parivar — though even they were of his own making — and the unrest in the rural and tribal areas of Saurashtra and Central Gu-jarat, besides the caste divide. In Wadhwan in Surendranagar district in Saurashtra, which is riddled with rebellion and caste assertion from the Koli community, he minced no words to say, “Nobody had dared to touch Sohrabuddin. I did, it was necessary.”
THAT HIS campaign theme will swirl around Moditva — his homegrown potion of Hindutva, development and Gujarat- Glory — and not the BJP, whose every leader with even a semblance of state-level stature has been cut to size, has been clear from day one. His larger-than-life — and larger than Vajpayee, Advani and Rajnath’s — pictures in the BJP adverts, the Modi masks, the inability of all the three national leaders to garner crowds more than 5,000, and the Jeetega Gujarat slogan have one common message: He is BJP, He is Gujarat, He is Hindutva, He is Development.
And he is rubbing it in. If at a public meeting in Morbi in Saurashtra, he told the audience, “Forget (who is) the (BJP) candidate, get me the Lotus”, at almost every other rally he says, “The people of Gujarat will decide the agenda.” To his political detractors, he asks at public rallies, “Has any chief minister done such development?” This obviously hurts Keshubhai Patel directly, who, through the Sardar Patel Utkarsh Samiti, released half-page adverts in all Gujarati newspapers, saying “Throw out the autocrats”. Patel goes on to retort, “Gujarat’s development has been made by all the chief ministers in the past. Some people don’t even know what effort has gone into making the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project a reality.” He is clearly hinting at Modi, for the dam had been cleared by the Supreme Court much before Modi took charge.
THOUGH AT the ideological level Modi had always been trusted to come good with his symbolism of development being synonymous with Hindutva, it also seems to have become inevitable for him to resort to the 2002 language at a more immediate level. Explains former chief minister Suresh Mehta, who has now quit the BJP, “It has always been Modi’s perception that there should be immediate emotive issues in an election and LK Advani himself told me this. So, it was obvious that he will deviate from his development talk at some point. It’s his increasing fear psyche which is leading him to touch upon sentimental issues to pull off a victory.” Modi has fashioned himself so larger than the Sangh Parivar that, ironically, he has little else but himself to fight this battle. “His crass brand of Hindutva is also a reflection of his self-centred politics. Since the BJP national leadership has given its own obsolescence certificate to him, nothing else matters to him but his image. This is why his politics has been about dwarfing everyone worth his salt in the party,” says Sudarshan Iyenger, social scientist and Vice-Chancellor of the Gujarat Vidyapeeth.
Besides the BJP, Modi has successfully split the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, while even the 2002 brigade of sadhus like Swami Avichaldasji and Asaram Bapu have been given short shrift. What can better explain the situation than the fact that even Haresh Bhatt, the firebrand Bajrang Dal leader, has been denied a ticket from Godhra. “And this is what unsettled him when Uma Bharti attempted to queer the pitch by pooling in these sadhus, even though Uma can’t much ice electorally in Gujarat,” points out political scientist Achyut Yagnik (see interview). Another offshoot of Modi’s game is the increased prominence of caste politics to such an extent that even Brahmins and Prajapatis (OBC community) have started holding caste sammelans in response to the Patels, who again have been split into Kadwas and Leuvas. Significantly, the raids and the hundreds of criminal cases lodged by the Gujarat Electricity Board against farmers in Saurashtra on charges of power theft were mostly aimed at Leuva Patels, to which Keshubhai Patel belongs. And to which VHP international general secretary Pravin Togadia and BJP rebel Gordhan Zadaphia also belong.
“The way they conducted indiscriminate raids, roughed up and handcuffed farmers was a huge public humiliation, especially when we saw big industrial houses let off the hook,” says Bavku Ughad, former minister and BJP rebel contesting from Saurashtra on a Congress ticket. “There is little doubt that this treatment was selective,” says another former minister and BJP rebel fighting on a Congress ticket, Becharbhai Bhadani. Both Ughad and Bhadani are Leuva Patels.
This is the first time the Patels have been challenged thus in a BJP set-up, while they have always held the conviction that the party came into electoral significance because of them. Since 1985, when they pooled together behind the BJP to defeat the Congress’ lethal combination of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims (KHAM), this landed community has been calling the shots in the party. It is only now that their hegemony has been dared. But it has been done strategically, by exploiting the age-old divide between the Kadwa Patels and the Leuva Patels.
One instance of Modi’s gameplan is the manner he appointed state BJP president Purshottam Rupala, a Kadwa Patel. Modi made him the president at the cost of the aspirations of Rajkot MP Vallabh Kathiria, a close Keshubhai confidante and a Leuva Patel. Rupala was anointed to this coveted position despite his having lost his seat to a 22-year-old first-time MLA from the Congress, whereas Kathiria had been winning from Rajkot. There are several similar instances.
FOR THOSE who know Modi, his politics of pitting one against another to make way for himself is not new. Only that you can’t make out his next move. When Shankersinh Vaghela revolted against the Keshubhai Patel government in 1995 — against the BJP’s first government with a twothirds majority — the rebellion was essentially against Narendra Modi, ironically the braintrust of Keshubhai at the time. Vaghela then advised Patel from a public platform to be cautious of this man and went on to say that the high command would remove him one day. On October 7, 2001, Modi ousted Keshubhai. Among those together in fighting the Vaghela revolt in 1995 were, besides Modi, Keshubhai, Togadia, Zadaphia and Haren Pandya. All of them became Modi’s staunch adversaries.
To demonstrate that he could not only survive but also succeed with his “politics of isolation”, and that he enjoyed such public support, he ensured that he dropped all the sitting corporators in the municipal corporation elections, many of whom were also the supporters of his detractors in the party. He tried to apply the same technique to the Assembly elections but had to give in to party pressure, though not without dropping as many as 50 sitting MLAs. The party high command was told in clear terms that he would have the final casting vote. So, is he trying to create his own cadre? “No, he doesn’t seem to want a cadre, he only wants followers,” asserts Iyenger.
Modi, who portrays himself as a virtual messiah of Gujarat, and believes so himself, has ruffled many feathers at the same time. But the party high command is willing to take the risk in the analysis that a Gujarat victory has to be achieved at any cost. “And the cost will be high. The BJP has committed suicide by surrendering to an individual,” shrugs Suresh Mehta. But for the people of Gujarat, a suicide bomber may do. Over to Modi.
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