Peace on lips, punch in mind
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN
LK Advani lights the inaugural lamp before the start of Narendra Modi’s fast in Ahmedabad on Saturday. (Reuters)
Sept. 17: Narendra Modi today spoke of “peace and communal harmony” but clothed it in his muscular idiom of Gujarati pride and unjust vilification, his gesticulations and demeanour often alternating between the trademark jubilation and defensiveness.
As he kicked off his three-day Sadbhavna fast at the air-conditioned Gujarat University Convention Centre in Ahmedabad, the chief minister expressed no regret or apology for the 2002 pogrom barring a comment that it should not have happened in a “civilised society”.
BJP sources claimed Modi had “achieved” two objectives. One, after months enmeshed in legal tangles, he had “registered” on the national mindscape for the “right” reasons: the perceived apex court “vindication” and a US Congressional report’s “praise”.
Two, despite the stress on governance and development in his address today and the two recent open letters to the people of Gujarat, his subtext had underscored the themes that had endeared him to his state’s voters: “Gujarati asmita (self-respect)” and secular-communal polemics.
Modi celebrated his “success” in pulling his state through natural and manmade crises and even took a swipe at the alleged divisiveness of the “vote-bank politics” his opponents played “in the name of secularism”.
To an audience that included a sprinkling of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, he said: “I had said at that time (2002) that these riots should not have happened in a civilised society. At that time I had felt the pain and now too I am feeling the pain.... I want to ensure Gujarat never slips below the parameters of humanity.”
But he also referred to another pain: “Over the last 10 years we have been vilified. I have faced every attack so that you (Gujarat’s people) do not feel the pain.”
Several Muslim leaders termed the fast a drama and said the riot victims wanted justice and not an apology.
BJP sources said the biggest “gain” of the Modi show was that it had galvanised party cadres in Gujarat and elsewhere.
Modi’s attempts to burnish his political brand image appeared only partially successful. Key BJP ally Janata Dal (United) was distant while his friend Jayalalithaa, who sent two MPs to the fast venue, de-linked the gesture from Modi’s prime ministerial ambitions.
“This is just an expression of goodwill,” she said in Chennai. Asked if she would back Modi for Prime Minister in 2014, she dismissed the “hypothetical question”.
L.K. Advani compounded the confusion by telling a TV channel the BJP hadn’t yet taken a call on its candidate for the top job.
Despite the praise he showered on Modi in his blog yesterday and in his speech today, the yatra-bound veteran said: “Whatever I have to say, I will say in the party. But whatever I said in my blog is also replete with meaning. The party has leaders who can discharge whatever responsibilities are handed out to them.”
Modi tried to stitch the themes of “harmony”, development, defensiveness and Gujarati pride into a political vision of sorts.
He said the state’s recovery after the 2001 earthquake had astonished the world but a year later, the “gruesome” riots had “renewed the discussion that Gujarat has gone back on the path of destruction”.
“But we handled this situation strictly and with strength. Then I had said that such incidents are not good for a society but nobody understood us or our agony. Every citizen of Gujarat was left to his fate. That is when we decided to show the world that the people of Gujarat are of a different genre,” he claimed.
“We gathered all the stones that were thrown at us and we built a ladder of development out of them. Our path is of democracy, Constitution and justice,” he claimed.
Alluding to a period of mainly Congress rule in Gujarat, he said that in the 1980s and 1990s, the state used to be tense and curfew-bound for months on end.
“Small skirmishes over kite-flying and cycling would set off communal riots. But for the last 10 years, there has been no curfew. This was not because of the preaching of an individual but because the people of Gujarat have understood the value of harmony, peace and unity.”
Congress leaders refused to react but BJP sources argued it was “useful” to remind the state’s predominantly entrepreneurial community that if the party was ousted from power, there could be a spell of violence and economic chaos.
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