For all his supposedly formidable PR powers, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is also BJP’s 2014 election campaign chief, finds himself trapped in the quagmire of his own polarising image.
Even as he sweats over his carefully crafted outreach programmes to widen his electoral appeal with an eye on the country’s top job, he seems incapable of pulling himself out of the limiting confines of the swamp of his narrow ideological groove.
Modi, who was brought up in schools of thought that preach hatred towards the minorities in theory and in practice, continues to make headlines that have to do with his ideology of Hindutva.
His verbal volleys are heavy with past baggage. He has deployed similar vocabulary in the past in an ostensible bid to rouse his Hindutva base.
He has a way with words but words have a way of spinning out of control.
Samples of such remarks are in his recent public speeches and media interviews where Modi describes himself as a “Hindu nationalist”, a “born Hindu” and “a patriot”.
Through his virulent remarks, his action or his inaction, he constantly reinforces the message of his ideology.
With the open Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backing and his promoting of Amit Shah, a former Gujarat minister chargesheeted in a fake encounter case, who raises the issue of rebuilding the Ayodhya temple, it is not hard to guess what section of society is addressed in not-so-subtle ways.
Modi has repeatedly dodged responsibility as the head of the state for his failure to prevent the 2002 bloody turn of events which often have been described as a pogrom executed by Hindu right wing groups, with the administration passively watching on.
He has also doggedly resisted pressures to apologise or express regret for the killings of thousands of Muslims, including women and children. Against this consistent posturing comes Modi’s latest interview to an international news agency where he drew an insensitive parallel between his feelings about the loss of life in the 2002 violence and the regret felt by someone in a car that runs over a puppy.
With the inappropriate analogy, he once again reaffirmed his prejudicial views.
The analogy is inappropriate for another reason too. There was nothing accidental about the carnage.
Incontrovertible evidence is now available in the voluminous records of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to show the culpability of the state.
It is this SIT set up by the Supreme Court, and headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan, that gave Modi the ‘clean chit’ he now flaunts.
A court in Gujarat is currently hearing a protest petition against the SIT report is another matter.
As Modi crafts his rise on the national stage, the wounds of 2002 bleeding afresh and forcing the nation once again to remember the horror in the face of the avoidable analogy may not augur well for the ambitious leader. Nor does it help his cause to assert - as he did in the interview - that he is a Hindu nationalist.
It doesn’t cohere with his definition of secularism as putting India first.
Modi’s remarks have caused disquiet even within the BJP, as evident in its senior leader Yashwant Sinha’s barbed comment that the party should focus on real issues.
The BJP may have all but named Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, but the message does not seem to have reached the Madhya Pradesh stronghold of another saffron satrap, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Modi is conspicuous by his absence in Chouhan’s propaganda posters that adorn pictures of all other central leaders. The BJP’s hunt for allies is also becoming tougher with Modi at the helm of affairs.
So far only the AIADMK has sent signals to the saffron brigade. As the party campaign chief, Modi’s biggest challenge will be to appeal to a wider section of the electorate outside his core Hindutva constituency. He can’t replicate his Gujarat experience at the national level.
India is not Gujarat. The BJP-RSS leadership seems to have decided that by presenting Modi as its face for the 2014 election, it can write off almost all Muslim votes.
What the party is hoping for is the diversion of a greater share of Hindu votes to its candidates, particularly in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh. But the Uttar Pradesh leaders are upset at the interference in state politics by Modi’s trusted man, Amit Shah.
With the CBI sword hanging over Shah, a section in the BJP has already begun a tacit exercise to dislodge him from the state. What the saffron party leadership seems to be hoping is that Modi will make all the difference to the extent of bringing home victory for the party at the hustings.
The RSS too has made the ultimate sacrifice of suborning the organisation to an individual who has given ample evidence of both his electoral success in Gujarat and his scorn for his parent organisation by doing exactly what he wants in governing his state. They seem to be putting all the eggs in the “Modi magic” basket.
The controversial analogy, his self-description as a Hindu nationalist and his accusing the Congress of hiding behind a “burqa (veil) of secularism” have, however, been seized upon by BJP’s rivals.
Facing growing ire over corruption, governance deficit, inflation, unemployment, gross abuse of institutions, particularly the CBI, the one straw the Congress can clutch is secularism. The party has already hit back saying that the ‘burqa’ is much better than naked communalism.
The issue of secularism versus communalism looks set to take the centre-stage ahead of the 2014 general elections.
For the other parties opposed to the BJP, the task is how to counter this tendency of the main opposition party and an aspirant to power of taking the political discourse in an unhealthy direction.
India is a diverse country in ethnicity and religion, and despite suggestions from some of the BJP’s own leaders that the national debate should not be reduced to secularism against communalism, the country’s electoral arithmetic is such that pandering to the majority will not lead to victory.
The irony is that much as Muslims as other minorities might wish to vote out the Congress for its sins of omission and commission, the BJP playing the Hindutva card would leave them with little choice but to veer back to the party of Indian Independence.
Unless the BJP in its Modi avatar gets overwhelming Hindu votes, which seems unlikely, the spread of the minorities will prove inimical to lofting the party to power. Here lies the dilemma for the BJP and its mentor the RSS.