Modi meets his match in secularism

Narendra Modi of Gujarat, chief minister, orator extraordinaire, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, Hindutva exponent and business comrade, take your pick, he's the flavour of the season everywhere he goes.

At the annual Confederation of Indian Industry jamboree in New Delhi recently, where head honchos of business rub both elbows and shoulders with each other, Modi was the hot happening. When he cracked a joke, the audience, each of them worth at least a few thousand million rupees, cackled and laughed loudly, as if they hadn't heard a joke in years.

Some tried to ask him about his politics, remembering somewhat guiltily that he oversaw the Gujarat riots five years ago in which at least 3,000 Muslims were killed, but the gentleman quickly reassured them. Your business will never be in trouble, he said. I will give you enough electricity and water to run your projects and if you have any trouble with labour, just call and tell me.

I can tell you they believed him.

Only Anu Aga, the lady who singlehandedly built the Thermax brand as well as the only person who spoke out against Modi during and after the riots of 2002, spoke uneasily again. I want to ask him how he can say that Gujarat sleeps safely at night when the whole state is divided up into a big ghetto, she told a friend. But it was no use. There was too much clapping and the sound of hearty laughter to drown out solitary consciences that evening last week.

Now it seems as if Modi, along with Sushma Swaraj, both BJP leaders, are major crowd-pullers in election rallies in Karnataka, which goes to the polls tomorrow (the second and third stages will be held on May 16 and May 22). Swaraj, incidentally, speaks a smattering of Kannada, right from the time she campaigned against Indira Gandhi at Chikmagalur and more recently, gave Sonia Gandhi a fright in Bellary in 1999. Swaraj is also one of BJP's truly smart leaders, and never gives up without a fight.

Few rallies

Now it turns out that Modi and Swaraj are BJP favourites to campaign in Karnataka. Modi flies in from nearby Ahmedabad after 4pm in his chief minister's chopper - or perhaps the party has hired something for him - conducts a few rallies much in the manner Zubin Mehta holds a crowd spell-bound and returns home to be at work the next morning.

There's no way you can't but admire the tenacity and perseverance of the man. He spits in the face of liberals with a gusto only matched by the hot, May winds currently sweeping through north India. Fact is, Gujarat has returned Modi to the state for the third time with clear margins of victory, notwithstanding citizens like Anu Aga whose hearts ache at Gujarat's deep, dark communal divide.

Modi's formula of success is not unique, it's been tried before, most notably by Hitler, who used the economic recipe to catapult himself to the top. Modi's taken a leaf out of that book, certainly, but also, you don't need to be rocket scientist to see that what Modi has done for Gujarat, other more secular leaders could have easily done if they had remembered that they had been elected by the people precisely to improve their tough conditions of living.

So as I travelled through parts of Gujarat in the week before the December election, I asked the question, again and again: How could Mahatma Gandhi's Gujarat vote Narendra Modi to power again?

Simple. Under Modi's chief ministership in the past five years, farmers, even in the driest districts, got running electricity and water for at least 11-12 hours a day, something they had never heard of before. Village headmen suddenly reappeared and village disputes were actually being heard and perhaps, even resolved.

Roads all over the state looked so good, you could actually drive a Mercedes Benz on them comfortably (its another matter that other car drivers drove at 40 kmph on the fast lane).

And in Ahmedabad, the state capital, the banks of the ancient Sabarmati river - on the banks of which Mahatma Gandhi built his famous ashram, from where he ran the non-violent movement against the British Raj - were being cleaned so as to convert it into an esplanade where city-dwellers could have some fun.

Who wouldn't vote for Modi under the circumstances? A Gandhi ashram volunteer told me that he certainly would, and so would his parents back home in the village.

Same feeling

Businessmen at the CII summit held in a swanky Delhi hotel last week had much the same feeling. He ensures that our factories and our plants can work all day, without power shortages and without strikes.

And in Karnataka, BJP leaders are amazed at the power of Modi's rhetoric to draw the crowds even in another language (Modi speaks Hindi, and most of Karnataka speaks Kannada and only some Hindi).

So here's the catch : In Karnataka, BJP leaders have warned Modi that he can speak of all his pro-people experiences in Gujarat, but that he must leave Hindutva alone. Meaning, Modi must shelve all his rhetoric against Muslims, must censor himself when he dreams about the Godhra train carnage five years, and finally, must adopt at least one of the mannerisms of Mahatma Gandhi's three monkeys : Speak no evil.

At last, that other Gujarati, Mahatma Gandhi, has won his first victory from his grave. In this multi-religious spirit of Karnataka, India lives.

Jyoti Malhotra is a political analyst based in India.