MODI ON HIS WAY TO ACCOMPLISHING 'MISSION IMPOSSIBLE'

Men are often put through fire by the Gods. Ordinary men are consumed or burnt by it; a chosen few emerge from it cleansed, purified and strengthened, and rise to meet the great demands that Destiny has penned for them.

The life-chart of Narendra Modi seems to have been scripted elsewhere. Right from childhood, this brahmachari leader who has been most inspired by Swami Vivekananda, has tread a path uncommon among and with the common masses. At 17, Modi left his home, penniless, and went to the Himalayas in search of the Supreme Truth. For two years he was incommunicado, and when he returned, he joined the RSS which subsequently made his services available to the BJP.

On October 7, 2001, Modi was unexpectedly made Chief Minister of Gujarat, less than 10 months after a devastating earthquake had killed 20,000 people and destroyed 400,000 homes, and when the economy of the state was sinking and growth was stagnant. This was his first ever assignment in any government, and at a difficult time. Little did he know then that in less than five months, Gujarat would be engulfed in horrific communal violence, one that would be exploited relentlessly, remorselessly, endlessly to target, tarnish and terminate him politically, even physically.

A greenhorn administrator who was still on the first steps of the ladder of learning the ropes of his job – he did not have the benefit of imbibing knowledge from his family --Modi did, in my view, based on records available, a better job in controlling the riots and taking on the rioters than any other Chief Minister or Prime Minister had ever done before him. This is not the place to labour on what he did or did not do or what he could or should have done and did not; that will only deflect from the main thrust of my argument.

I am not being cynical or disrespectful of those who died or suffered in Godhra and the riots that followed. But I do believe that along an extremely significant dimension – the kind that destiny show its hand in – 2002 was actually a blessing for Narendra Modi.

When pushed into the pit of calumny, hounded day in and out, condemned for everything and praised for nothing, most men crack. They lose control of themselves and interest in their jobs, and soon become forgotten or hated chapters of history or corners of memory. Men of destiny – and they appear only ever so rarely – on the other hand, take the daunting, seemingly impossible challenge head on, activate and energise their full potential to rise and go on to achieve what they would never have been able to in the placid but enervating routine and red tape that dulls even the sharpest minds.

That is precisely what Narendra Modi has done. While India has languished and regressed and lost hope, he has worked tirelessly and furiously to take Gujarat to unscaled heights with an integrity and at a pace that, as per the accepted logic of the few who have benefitted obscenely disproportionately from graft and drift, is simply not possible in a democracy. Even more significantly – and this is where his irreplaceable ground-level experience with and empathy for the people has proved to be invaluable – he has, in the process, discovered that there is much wrong in the manner in which India has been governed, and that there is an entirely different model of politics and governance that needs to be put in place so that every Indian, irrespective of caste and religion, can reap the benefits of India’s growth and rise which can and should be much higher than has been achieved till now.

Those who ask Modi the politician to unambiguously apologise for 2002 – so that they can then say ‘gotcha’ -- obviously are either not connected or educated enough to see the silent and rigorous penance that has gone into what Modi the man has achieved in Gujarat during the last 10 years. Caught in their narrow prisms of politics, power, pelf and perfidy, they cannot fathom that a fakir-like leader – no family to propagate, no lavish life-style to sustain, no desire to make and hoard/hide money – is doing things differently because he thinks differently and is energised by different values that are nobler and higher than theirs.

Modi has a dream. For India. And that dream is big. It is a dream we should have dreamt before 1947 and started working to achieve on 15 August of that year. On that day, Nehru did speak of India’s tryst with destiny. But, in hindsight it is evident that he was not equipped to fulfill that tryst; the words meant for the world were big, the dream meant for India was not. That set the "happy-to-be-second-best" tone for India, one that can still be heard through the static of the rot that has grown around it.

It has taken 64 years for a leader to realise that the root cause of many of India’s problems is that it does not dream big, ask: “Why can’t we dream like China, Europe or America?” and hit: “Sapne nahin hain toh sankalp kaise hoga, aur sankalp nahin to jodne ki iccha kaise hogi.” (Not translatable by me without unacceptable loss of energy)

Almost exactly two years back, when fresh assaults had been launched against Modi by an embedded media masquerading as free, I was not sure whether he would be able to survive the remorseless and fanatic attacks, and lead his party in the 2014 elections to victory. At that time even to me it seemed to be “Mission Impossible.”

Then I was not sure whether destiny was playing the pivotal role; now I have no doubt it is. The Supreme Court judgement sending back all cases against Modi to the trial court and discontinuation of their monitoring by it has opened the magic door that the entire might of the Indian state had tried to keep closed and hang him on, knowing very well what its opening meant.

Suddenly, what seemed impossible till a few days back, now seems to be the only real possibility. Bar the never-ending shouting, Modi has passed Destiny's fire test. His 'Mission Impossible' is on its way to becoming 'Mission Accomplished.'
---------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. The almost prescient post that I wrote two years back, when I knew much less than I do now, is reproduced below.

WILL MODI ACCOMPLISH HIS 'MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?'

The stature of a leader can often be accurately determined not by observing the effusive praise showered on him by his die-hard supporters but by carefully examining the vicious attacks launched against him by his die-harder detractors. By that measure, there can be no two opinions that Narendra Modi is the BJP's tallest leader by many miles, and has been so for some time now.

Pretences apart, no one knows this better than the Congress party. Even more importantly, that party also knows that it has no weapon to counter him, and that if he ever gets to that chair in Delhi, governance will take centre-stage in a manner that will most likely marginalise the Congress nationally in almost the same manner as it has in Gujarat.

Let us tackle the ghost of 2002 straightaway. Those riots in Gujarat were not the first in India, nor are they going to be the last. If one goes by statistics, many more Sikhs and Muslims have been killed in Congress-ruled states and in Delhi, and plenty of its Neros have played more than the fiddle, often deliberately. But, not a single one of them, Rajiv Gandhi included, has been subject to the kind of calumny that Modi has faced and will continue to face.

Let us get one more thing straight: this onslaught has little to do with 2002; it has everything to do with the fear that the Congress has no answer to Modi along any other dimension. He is scrupulously honest; he does not fake austerity - he lives it; he has shown that a clear-headed leader can deliver good governance even with the existing system; he has put Gujarat on an unprecedented path of explosive and inclusive economic growth; he has no family to promote and is manifestly devoted selflessly to his state and its people; he cannot be corrupted and does not tolerate those who can be.

The culture of governance that Modi has put in place in Gujarat is almost the exact opposite of the culture of unbridled corruption and sycophancy that the Congress party has spawned during its long years of reign at the Centre and the states. Things have reached a stage where corruption at the highest political and bureaucratic levels has become institutionalised as an entitlement. The whole nation knows that these guys are becoming rich by foul means alone. Such systems and laws have been put in place that it is almost impossible to catch anyone, and even if caught, little can be done. Terrorists and corrupt leaders cannot find a better environment where they can so fearlessly go about their business of destroying a nation from within.

In such a scenario, if leader emerges who is honest as well as intolerant of the nonsense that has been passing off as sense for decades, the people of this country will have before them, for the first time ever, the real alternative that they have been looking for but have been unable to find. The BJP's decline at the national level has, in no small measure, to do with its embracing of the corrupt and hollow value system that India associates with the Congress. That is why in states where its Chief Ministers are focused on governance and probity, the party remains strong.

The results of the recent Assembly by-polls bear this out. Within months of its morale-sapping defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has done surprisingly well, unlike the communists whose downhill ride has only accelerated after the Lok Sabha debacle. In MP, the BJP has wrested on seat from the Congress which has retained one. In Uttarakhand, it has wrested the lone seat from the Congress.

But it is in Gujarat that the results have dramatically defined once again what the Congress and its "Bhaare ke tattoos" (hired ponies) in the "intelligentsia", media and other powerful organs, who have benefitted disproportionately due to Congress rule, are mortally afraid of. Of the seven seats that went to the polls, six were held by the Congress. Now it has just two while the BJP's tally has gone from one to five. This result has come in despite Modi not campaigning in any constituency personally.

No matter what anyone might say, it is difficult to believe that magistrate Tamang accidentally released his report on the Ishrat Jahan killing just before the polls. It is also difficult to believe that the media coincidentally went into hyper-excited overdrive to claim Modi's head because of a fake encounter killing by Gujarat police. But what must shock every Indian's conscience is the fact that sections of the media and the Congress were willing to go to the extent of sleeping with the LeT only to discredit Modi. It needs to be mentioned that the LeT is a Pakistani terror outfit that is waging war against India with the full patronage of the Pakistani establishment, and has already killed thousands of innocent Indians. It also executed Mumbai 26/11. Sleeping with this enemy of India is only one small step short of giving it a "supari" for Modi.

Does this shock you? It must. But remember, this has happened in India's history even earlier. The British, for example, would have found the going very difficult had India's selfish and myopic kings not sided with them only to defeat other Indian kings. Now too, do you not similarly hear Indians who find Pakistan and Pakistanis more friendly and "Just Like Us" than they do their political opponents? Do you not hear them talk about giving disastrous concessions to Pakistan on Kashmir, possibly in the fond hope that it will prevent future loss of votes due to terrorism? Did they even react to the exposure by the SIT of Teesta Setalvad, their award-winning loud voice, for cooking up tales of macabre and wanton killings, and tutoring and threatening witnesses to fraudulently portray Modi and Hindus at large as cold-blooded rapists and murderers?

Personally, like everyone else, I do not know how guilty Narendra Modi is or Rajiv Gandhi was for the killings in Gujarat and Delhi respectively. Unlike some sponsored fellow Indians, I am not going to pass judgment on Modi like they have and tell the whole world that he is a mass murderer. They have a lot to lose personally if Modi comes to power in Delhi; I have nothing to gain or lose, except as an Indian citizen. Like them, I also know that Modi will most likely prove to be the best Prime Minister India has ever had, not for Hindus but all Indians. Like them, I also believe that Modi as PM will bring about a paradigm shift in the manner that this country is governed. Like them, I also know that it will be the death knell for many of them. That is why they have to do everything they can to destroy him before he gets to Delhi.

Since they cannot find any chink in his armour at all, they have to keep 2002 alive, no matter what, till he is brought down.

The next Lok Sabha elections, barring unforeseen developments, will be held in 2014. Four and a half years is a very long time. The misfired cacophony over Ishrat Jahan is a clear indicator that there is no limit that Modi's political opponents and their henchmen will not cross to ensure that he is not the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate in that election. The stakes are so high that there will, without an iota of doubt, be very serious attempts to physically eliminate him if nothing sticks in the manner that his opponents want.

Whether you like Narendra Modi or not, do not underestimate what he is up against. Will he be able to survive this remorseless, fanatic onslaught, as he has till now, and lead his party in the 2014 elections?

If there was ever a 'Mission Impossible' for Modi to accomplish, it is this.
'

IS MODI BJP'S ANSWER TO THE MANMOHAN MAYAWATI CHALLENGE?

The BJP has been surprisingly losing its plot for the last few months. It is in power in more states than any other party and has been successfully routing the Congress in state after state. With LK Advani having been formally appointed its Prime Ministerial candidate, one would have thought that a confident BJP would be fully alive to its responsibility as it readies to form the next government at the Centre after the forthcoming elections.

I have already written in detail earlier about how Mr LK Advani messed up the opportunity presented by the Indo-US Nuclear Deal to show his statesmanship. Not only did he lose that chance to enhance his stature(and perhaps get more votes too), he also got involved in shady deals to topple the government, very personal attacks on the PM, and the plan to show to the world, live, the depths to which our Parliament has sunk. In the aftermath of the serial blasts in Ahmedabad, he was back to the only song on his track – POTA – to discredit the central government, though the attacks were in a state ruled by his own party.

Mr Advani has not yet displayed the ability to see and react to developments around him as a visionary PM of the largest democracy should. This inability – many will disagree – gets heightened because the present PM, in the face of great constraints, has all along displayed remarkable civility and dignity behoving the high office that he occupies. Due to this demonstrated lack of well balanced leadership and the shaky ethics that he has embraced, Advani finds himself rudely pushed aside from the front runner’s position in the race for the Prime Minister’s chair.

From nowhere, Mayawati has erupted with unexpected strength as possibly the strongest candidate with almost the entire opposition, including the Left, rallying behind her. This ‘daughter of a dalit’ may well have become the PM in July itself had the UPA lost the Trust Vote. That did not happen, but Advani’s decision to needlessly crank up and unwittingly help polarise the political atmosphere into three distinct groups has Mayawati smelling unexpected victory after the elections. And she is not the one who lets an opportunity go. On the contrary, she creates one where no one else sees it. She has always surprised everyone by her audacious moves and left them licking their wounds. There is nothing to suggest that she is going to let this ‘Advani-sent’ opportunity slip out of her hands this time.

Manmohan Singh, till recently the lonely fall guy of the Congress with barely a voice, can also thank Advani for getting him into an avoidable fight which has made him ‘king'. From the weak and ineffective PM that the commies had repeatedly made him appear, he has overnight become the decisive and firm PM who is willing to take the big risks to do something he really believes in, an admirable quality rarely seen in this era of coalition politics. More than that, Advani’s blunders have enabled Manmohan to kill two birds in one stroke: the commies and Advani himself. The gentle guy who got the job thanks to Sonia Gandhi suddenly appears to be the best and most credible candidate that the UPA can project as the next PM. There never was a real alternative available; Advani has just made him look like a very good choice, even better than himself.

Ever since Narendra Modi overcame perhaps the most relentless and vicious personal campaign ever launched against a political leader, to achieve an unprecedented victory in elections to the Gujarat Assembly last year, there has been talk that he has it in him to become the Prime Minister of India. Of course his political opponents, sections of the media and certain other organizations will not let the ghost of 2002 riots go away from him.

The fact the he has been indisputably India's best Chief Minister who has put his state on a blazing path of progress, that his personal integrity is exceptonal and that he has rare leadership qualities, is sought to be drowned by them in the fiery pool of 2002. That strategy, disconnected from real Indians, is likely to prove counterproductive and bring Modi and the BJP rich dividends across the country, quite like it has in Gujarat.

The 16 bombs that blasted in Ahmedabad and the 21 that did not in Surat were possibly meant not just to terrorise ordinary citizens. They may also have been deployed as almost the perfect tools to get Modi agitated and either encourage something akin to 2002, or make communally incendiary statements which could be used to keep discrediting him. In the event, Modi surprised all by reacting and speaking very responsibly, appealing to the people of Gujarat to remain calm and maintain peace and the pace of economic growth that they have achieved. Like a national leader, he spoke about the blasts as being part of the proxy war that has been unleashed on India, a war that has to be fought and won by the nation. He also showed rarely seen political bipartisanship and dignity during the visits of the PM and Sonia Gandhi to Gujarat, and avoided falling into the trap of the mindless blame games which achieve little more than vitiating the political atmosphere.

Contrast this to the insane allegation made by BJP leader Sushma Swaraj that the blasts were a Congress party conspiracy. Even Advani did not cover himself in glory by giving the blasts the usual petty political hue that makes any serious effort to tackle this problem almost impossible. In fact, among BJP leaders, it was only Modi who emerged from the blasts with his image enhanced.

The events of the last few months seem to have done the impossible for the BJP. From a position of near certain victory, bolstered hugely by galloping inflation, the party finds itself in a very difficult situation. It has created two formidable opponents: a much taller Manmohan Singh and an almost unstoppable Mayawati. In hindsight, it is unbelievable that a party with so many strategists would shoot itself in not one but both its feet. Greed for power and focus on the petty side of politics often makes otherwise sensible people do many strange things which they would never normally even think of doing.

Without Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani seems less than half. Without the glow of Vajpayee’s wisdom to light him up, Advani looks a lot smaller and paler than he ever did. He is also well past his prime and is no longer capable of firing the imagination of his own party men, forget the voters. Under his sole leadership, the BJP has started floundering even in a position of strength. The way things are going, chances are that the party may fare even worse than it did in the last elections. If that happens, it may well face the most unpalatable prospect of supporting a Mayawati led government. If it refuses to do so, the damage to it will be demoralising; if it does, the damage to Advani will be devastating.

Contrary to what Sushma Swaraj believes, the BJP may well stand to benefit from the series of terror attacks that have been taking place all over the country over the last few years. The Parliament may have been attacked when the party was in power. There may have been other terror attacks too during that period, but the widespread perception, rightly or wrongly, is that the BJP was serious about tackling terror while the Congress is not. However, under the ageing Advani’s leadership, the BJP is not likely to benefit from the deteriorating security situation, something it easily should be able to do without getting involved in abusive personal and political attacks.

Narendra Modi is already looked upon by many as the next leader of the BJP, even the country, after Advani. There is another top-notch performer, BC Khanduri, Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, who fits the bill equally well. But this retired General is a late entrant into politics and does not have an RSS background. Advani is the declared leader of the BJP for the next elections. As things stand now, Modi will most likely succeed him to fight the elections scheduled for 2014.

The sudden emergence of Mayawati and the ‘new and improved’ Manmohan Singh the King, has made the BJP’s task very difficult indeed. Advani has so far not shown the leadership qualities that should automatically make him the weapon of choice to take on and trounce these two very formidable opponents. If the situation keeps drifting in the manner it has been for the last few months, the party will be nowhere near power after the next elections; it could, in fact, shrink embarrassingly.

Should the BJP stick to its Plan A and continue with Advani as its leader and projected PM? Or is time for Advani to gracefully step aside and let the party project its strongest bet, the leader who has dramatically demonstrated his ability to fight and win against all the odds and some more, as its Prime Ministerial candidate? If the Nehru-Gandhi family can swallow its pride and project Manmohan again, why can Advani not step aside in favour of someone else who can better combat the vastly changed situation?

Is Narendra Modi the right and only answer that the BJP has to thwart the unexpected challenge posed by Mayawati and Manmohan? Does he have it in him to lead the nation? Has his time already come? To many the answers are all in the affirmative. To others, even the thought of Modi becoming PM is unacceptable.

No matter what your take on Modi is, one thing is certain. If he jumps into the fray as the leader of the BJP, the effect will be electrifying. The BJP will be rejuvenated and keyed up to take others on. Its opponents will also know that the fight on their hands is going to be really tough. And, the election results may surprise a lot of us.

You may also like to read this post of April 29, 2009: Desperately seeking Modi: Too Late?

SECULAR INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN

At long last, a few Indian Muslims have openly claimed responsibility for a series of terror attacks and also said that they have nothing to do with the terror outfits of neighbouring countries operating in India.

The responsibility for the serial bomb blasts in various courts in Uttar Pradesh on November 23, 2007, which claimed 15 innocent lives, has been claimed by a little known terror group which calls itself ‘Indian Mujahideen’. These attacks, as per an email received minutes before the blasts by Aaj Tak, were mainly in retaliation to the beating up by lawyers of three men, said to be Pakistanis, arrested by the police for plotting to kill Rahul Gandhi.

Not so long ago, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav had not only given a clean chit to the extremist Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) whose members had been involved in various terrorist and hateful fundamentalist activities, but also had declared it to be a ‘secular’ organization. This is the same set up in whose offices incendiary and seditious posters are openly displayed. ‘Waiting for Ghaznavi’, ‘No democracy, no secularism, only Islam’; these are the brazenly proclaimed objectives of this organization.

Who was Ghaznavi? He was an Afghan raider who ransacked and looted many Hindu temples including the famous Somnath Temple. According to some accounts, he personally hammered the Shiv Ling of the temple to pieces and carried the fragments to Ghazni in Afghanistan, where he buried them on the steps of a mosque so that people could trample over them everyday.

That is the Indian SIMI which was embraced by the Chief Minister of India’s largest state as secular. The same gentleman went on to fraudulently recruit a large number of Muslims and Yadavs to the UP Police, clearly so that he could literally hijack the state to ensure that he could, with wanton shamelessness and utter disregard for the grave aftereffects of his actions, ‘democratically’ perpetuate his rule in UP.

Mulayam Singh is not the only shining secularist who is leading this country towards a bloodbath. Another Yadav, Lalu Prasad, immediately on becoming Railway Minister, appointed a judicial commission headed by a pliant judge to give a clean chit to the fundamentalist Muslims who had burnt Hindu pilgrims in a railway coach at Godhra, following which Gujarat erupted in retaliatory frenzy. What was his objective? Again, it was to maximize his Muslim votes by abusing the hurt of the Hindus of Gujarat so that, coupled with the vote bank of the Yadavs of Bihar, his electoral victory and political weight in a fragmented polity would remain intact.

The most rabidly anti-Hindu secular group is, of course, the Left Front of West Bengal. This is the same ‘always talking freedom’ outfit governing that state that had banned a book written by the fugitive Bangladeshi Muslim writer Tasleema Nasreen because of protests by some Muslim groups. The crowning glory is that in the wake of the recent riots by Muslims in Kolkata over the massacres in Muslim majority Nandigram by CPI(M) cadres, which somehow were hyphenated with a fundamentalist demand to deport Nasreen, the government promptly threw her out of Bengal, sending her, yes, to BJP ruled Rajasthan! Why? Because panchayat polls are due in the state in few months and the Left cannot ignore the Muslim vote bank. So, all that liberal crap is shed with alacrity. Power alone matters, whether it comes through the barrel of Mao’s gun or communal politics.

The Congress seems to have completely forgotten the lessons of Punjab. Not many people remember that Indira Gandhi had adopted the classic divide and rule policy of the British Empire by promoting an obscure Sikh religious leader for dividing Sikh votes to defeat the Akalis. When the same Bhindranwale became her Frankenstein monster and Punjab was gripped by religious terrorism, there was a total paralysis in developing an effective response. Even then the Congress practiced the politics of pandering, fearing that the tough response which supreme national interest demanded would prove electorally expensive. The situation was thus helplessly allowed to go so completely out of control that in the end, Indira Gandhi was left with no alternative but to launch a military assault on the sacred Golden Temple, the price of which she paid for with her own life.

A brief re-look at the Gujarat riots. In the railway coach that was burnt in Godhra on February 27, 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive, allegedly by fundamentalist Muslims. In the mayhem that followed, 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed.

Ever since those riots, all secular parties of the country, without exception, and the mainstream media, have savagely torn apart Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the Sangh Parivar for that ‘genocide’ of Muslims in the state. Rolls and rolls of film and reams and reams of paper have been filled with the violent and ugly Hindu face and the persecuted and socially isolated Muslim one. Politicians, media personalities and social do-gooders have vied with each other to be seen on the side of the Muslim. Not one of them has gone to visit the relatives of those who were burnt in the coach. For them, the riots were totally unjustified-it was not a big tree which had fallen after all to justify the reaction-and the dead were only Muslims.

This love for the Muslim being shown by political parties has nothing to do with secularism at all. It has only to do with getting petty political power. That is the only bottom line that determines political strategy and response, the nation be damned.

This compulsion for getting the Muslim pie, without which achieving political power is getting increasingly difficult, has become the determinator of political behavior. The electoral arena in which the majority ‘Hindu’ vote has been splintered into numerous lines of cast, class and region, this political positioning is leading the country towards a communal disaster of unimaginable proportions.

Muslim voices are becoming more and more intolerant, exclusivist and fundamentalist, as they are becoming aware of their emerging electoral power as a block. This was bound to happen in the mess that petty politicians have created quite shamelessly, forgetting that there is a nation for whose governance this system of democracy was chosen by our founding fathers.

I may be sounding alarmist but the scenario is beginning to look a bit like a re-run of what was witnessed before Independence, when educated Muslims led by Jinnah were not willing to live in India in any other way except the Muslim way that they demanded. The country was then divided on communal lines and the Muslims who shared Jinnah’s ideology went over to Pakistan. Thanks to the persistent efforts of Pakistan to bleed India through a thousand cuts, and the inability of our political class and bureaucracy to develop an effective response to that threat, sections of Indian Muslims and some Muslim leaders have again started speaking the language of Jinnah ‘on behalf of the 14 crore Muslims of India’.

The skull-capped and bearded religious fanatics who appear to be leading this fundamentalist upsurge are actually just the visible instruments, the infantry of the network of terror that has been created and is being spread by well educated and wealthy leaders for whom religion is the tool for achieving their political objective. The epicenter of this ideology, as the whole world knows by now, is Pakistan.

In Punjab, the politics of pandering showed graphically what it could lead to. Though it was just a trailer limited to a small part of the country, it was more than enough to drive home a lesson which should never have been forgotten. That the lesson has not even been learnt shows either an unacceptable intelligence deficit or the fact that Indian politics has degenerated to such a level of immorality and narrow selfishness that it threatens the very foundation of India as an independent secular state.

If this state of affairs continues, don’t be surprised to hear politicians referring to those who got Nasreen thrown out of Bengal and the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ who claim to have carried out a number of terror attacks, as secular Indians, just as Mulayam Singh Yadav had called the SIMI. After all, you will hear them say for a few votes more, they were only voicing their unhappiness at unfair treatment and injustice; it is their fundamental right. So what if they killed a few people. Didn’t Modi kill many more in Gujarat?

Tragically, the country is headed towards proving that Pareto’s Principle applies to India's multi-party democracy too. 20 percent of the population will, if our politicians continue doing what they are, soon dictate 80 percent of the decisions that India takes or the measures that the country wants to put in place to keep its ‘tryst with destiny’.

The conditions will then be ripe for another internal combustion of horrendous proportions.

Surely that was not what Jawahar Lal Nehru had in mind on the stroke of midnight on August 14/15, 1947.

DR ALL-OF-US & MR HYDE

Gujarat was one ‘Tehelka’ too many.

In March 2001, a Tehelka sting operation had shown a few top BJP and NDA leaders accepting bribes from journalists posing to be defence suppliers. As a result, though everyone knows how congenitally corrupt most of our politicians are, the BJP’s claim of being ‘a party with a difference’ took a deadly body blow. The media went virtually berserk in hounding the ruling combine for being corrupt and pulled out all stops to successfully ensure its defeat in the next elections.

The recent Tehelka sting operation on the Gujarat riots was even more dramatic and damning, so thought the bright team which had conceived it. When it was aired, the expected media cacophony began in right earnest. They all thought that, finally, they had got Narendra Modi, who was described in words that made great listening and reading.

The creators of the latest ‘soap’ completely forgot that the ordinary man had not forgotten the 1984 anti Sikh carnage which was led and encouraged by the Prime Minister himself. He already knew what the tapes had shown. This was not a simple, moral case of politicians taking money under the table for personal gain. The effect of the sting was, therefore, exactly the opposite of what had been anticipated by a hyper-creative think tank living in its own world.

On November 01, 2007, CNN-IBN for the first time connected the Gujarat and Delhi riots, and asked whether the Congress was as guilty over the 1984 riots as the BJP in Gujarat. In the SMS poll conducted by the channel, an astounding 93 percent said ‘Yes’. By a strange coincidence, a new book on the riots, ‘When a Tree Shook Delhi’, has also been published. This book exposes the role of top leadership of the Congress party and “indicts the guilty in chilling detail”, as Sagarika Ghose put it in the program ‘Face the Nation’ on CNN-IBN. and

The fallout of the public opinion revealed in the SMS poll has been dramatic. Many media luminaries and analysts, who were all ready to tear Modi and the BJP apart for the Guajrat riots in the name of their pet term ‘secularism’, seem to have lost their pens and their voices. They cannot hide the Congress party this time. The Tehelka of Gujarat has suddenly become a major liability, even an embarrassment, which now needs to be discarded and completely ignored, lest the BJP benefits from it even more.

What is even more disturbing than the dumping of Tehelka by the media is the manner in which it has chosen to ignore the shocking revelations made in the new book on the 1984 riots. Does it need any intelligence to know as to what they would have done by now had Congress leaders not been involved?

Rajdeep Sardesai is perhaps the only leading media personality who has questioned the difference in ‘our’ (media’s?) sense of outrage with respect to the 1984 and 1992 riots, even when the culpability of Rajiv Gandhi is a recorded fact while that of Modi is yet to be proved.

Writing in the Hindustan Times of November 9, 2007, Sardesai believes that the Congress escaped public censure while Modi has not, because the television media was virtually non-existent in 1984. Sardesai, like others within and in proximity to the media, tends to mix the real ‘public’ with these few.

The stark fact is that the real public never blamed Rajiv Gandhi for the reactive mania that overtook sanity in 1984. It was quite to the contrary. The same goes for Modi. The more the statement attributed to Modi, “Hum badla lengey”, is telecast, the more he will strike a deep-rooted historical chord somewhere, much like Rajiv Gandhi did in 1984. It is this much delayed realization that has led to the discarding of Tehelka as a weapon to beat Modi with.

That is why no one is talking of the 1984 riots. They have become hyphenated with those of Gujarat.

Deep, centuries old faultlines and prejudices haunt Hindus and Muslims, as Sardesai has mentioned. These need to be tackled and healed with understanding and a sense of responsibility. Unfortunately, our politicians think of little beyond vote banks. Mainstream English media does not seem to understand societal dynamics beyond the metros, a weakness which is mainly due to the cultural and educational background of those who gravitate towards it.

That is why there is almost an obsession with a weird type of ‘secularism’ which, paradoxically, instead of acting as a unifying social agent is creating newer faultines while deepening and widening old ones. Tragically, those who are propagating this are not even aware of the damage they are causing, comfortably ensconced as they are far, far away from the society they are harming with their influence.

Dr Modi is not the only one who is a Mr. Hyde, as Sardesai suggests. Mr. Hyde lurks in all of us, to surface when circumstances so demand. It is worth recalling that there was a certain Mr. Jinnah who led the bloodiest division of a country in the history of mankind. What did this very Jinnah, who had said that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, have to say after he got his Pakistan?

This is what he told Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, even as mass slaughters were going on outside “…in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community, because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish. Indeed if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free people long, long ago. No power can hold another nation and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued his hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this.”

Is it not strange that in the ‘secular’ India that Jinnah left, but envisioned in Pakistan, we have not learnt the lesson Jinnah spoke of, and are collectively reinforcing the very angularities that led to our subjugation? Who is responsible for this? Multi-party democracy copied unthinkingly? Petty politicians blinded by lust for power? Rootless Indians dividing the society even more in the name of un-understood ‘secularism’?

In Pakistan, Dr Jinnah lost and Mr. Hyde prevailed. In India too, the same will continue to happen periodically, like it did in 1984 and 1992, unless we look to build an India like the Pakistan of Dr Jinnah’s dreams.

For that to happen, we have to first learn to rise above our petty, and often destructive “tu-tu, maen-maens”, and begin to unite rather divide Indians. Only then can we hope that the good Dr All-of-Us in us all will continuously prevail over Mr. Hyde.

My previous posts on the riots can be found here.

1984 ANTI SIKH RIOTS: THE REAL TEHELKA

It was on October 29 that I had written about the Tehelka expose on the riots in Gujarat, which showed a number of people on hidden cameras boasting and saying many horrific things about what they had done during the riots which had engulfed Gujarat in 2002. These riots had taken place in reaction to a railway coach full of Hindu pilgrims being burnt, allegedly by Muslim fundamentalists, at Godhra, killing all of them.

I had then asked the question which had been begging to be asked but had been ignored by the politicians and the media: Were the Gujarat riots of 2002 any different from the anti Sikh riots that had engulfed Delhi in 1984 after Indira Gandhi was assassinated, when thousands of Sikhs were lynched, burnt and mercilessly butchered?

Everyone seemed to have conveniently forgotten the shame of 1984, particularly the Congress party, which with the help of its sponsored media friends, was gleefully all set to politically destroy Narendra Modi for his involvement in the riots of Gujarat. The party had also thought that through Tehelka it had got a golden opportunity to prove its ‘secular’ credentials to the minorities by exposing the ugly face of Hindu communalists.

I had expressed my reservations about the success of this strategy and had even gone to the extent of saying that the flame lit by Tehelka, instead of burning Modi, had made him almost invincible in Gujarat, something which was clear to all except perhaps those cocooned in Delhi. I had also felt that Tehelka, ironically, also had possibly provided the BJP with an almost unbeatable Prime Ministerial candidate for the forthcoming general elections.

The full post may be read here.

I had no way of knowing then that within a couple of days, 1984 riots would be back on centre stage with a bang to haunt the Congress and turn the Tehelka table on them decisively.

On November 1, 2007, the 23^rd anniversary of the anti Sikh carnage in Delhi, CNN-IBN disclosed to the world that a new book, When a Tree Shook Delhi, which leveled serious charges against top Congress leaders for their involvement and participation in the riots, was going to be released later this week.

In their program ‘Face the Nation’, the host, Sagarika Ghose had this to say:”November 1, 1984, a massacre began. Over 3,000 Sikhs were hacked to death. But the police and the Government looked the other way. Commission after Commission whitewashes the guilt of the accused. Now 23 years later a new book nails the guilty in chilling detail.”

Then she asked almost the same question that I had in my post:” Is the Congress as guilty over the 1984 riots as the BJP in Gujarat?”

Ghose spoke to the authors, journalist Manoj Mitta and lawyer HS Phoolka, and the Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi and raised very disturbing questions which had Singhvi virtually groping for answers, which were clearly not there.

The lively, disturbing and revealing debate can be viewed and read here.

The mass reaction in Gujarat to the killing of innocent pilgrims was, as I had stated in my earlier post, no different from the mass madness that had gripped Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Tehelka had also unwittingly established beyond any doubt that the Hindus of Gujarat truly believed that the railway coach full of Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze by Muslim fundamentalists, killing all those who were inside. There was no pre planned Hindutva conspiracy behind the riots.

The disconnected leaders and their SWOT analysts who had planned the Tehelka sting had, not surprisingly, not factored in the ordinary man on the street, while planning and executing the expose, which they thought would bring to them great political advantages.

I had said then itself that to the ordinary Indian, you can’t say, “Genocide is fine if my mom is killed; it is heinous if faceless Indians are!”

That answer was given just as I had sensed by citizens to CNN-IBN. In the SMS poll conducted by the channel to the question,” Is the Congress as guilty over the 1984 riots as the BJP in Gujarat?”, 93 percent said ‘Yes’ while only 7 percent said ‘No’.

It may now be the turn of Narendra Modi to laugh at the Congress for a victory it has handed over to him so foolishly. For the ordinary citizen, however, there is no reason to celebrate. No matter who wins, the disturbing fact which has emerged yet again is that our leaders will stop at almost nothing in their desperation to win the next election.

The common man is only an expendable pawn.

TEHELKA UNEARTHS A PRIME MINISTER

In olden days, when kings and emperors ruled India, varying and intricate structures and channels were used to receive regular feedback about the health of the subjects, officials and enemies of the state. Yet, the one method which was invariably employed by all kings was that of direct feedback. Frequently, kings would travel incognito to various parts of their kingdom to get the real, authentic, unfiltered and unfettered pulse of the people in the course of their normal lives. Needless to add that these visits were often critical in ensuring the well being, even survival of their kingdoms.

In the India of today, most of our rulers and leaders have almost forgotten the value of such direct contact with ordinary people. Some have even lost the ability to communicate and mingle with the masses and touch their hearts and minds. The focus seems to be on often a grotesquely vulgar display of ‘leadership’ through pompous motorcades and heavy posses of gun totting guards, designed to generate ‘shock and awe’, rather than fond respect and love among ordinary citizens.

Because of this disconnect with the people, our leaders have become critically dependent on even more disconnected advisors and pliant organs of state, to decide on political strategies to win the next election at any cost. After the opening up of the media, some media moghuls have also become an inseparable part of this phenomenon, adding their bit of motivated advice and analysis from the comfort of their homes, which are even farther away from the dust and dirt of the real India which votes.

Can anyone recall the last time a national leader traveled by train to a distant corner of India or lived among ordinary people?

In this battleground of increasingly and often destructively competitive politics, people seem to have been forgotten. The focus is now almost completely on attracting votes by trying to expose political opponents in the hope that a small but critically decisive number of voters will be compelled to vote for you out of the timely disenchantment that has been created against the opponents.

The recent Tehelka expose on the riots in Gujarat in 2002, just before the impending elections there, has all the elements of a politically initiated program of winning the next elections by using such a disruptive strategy. Many believe that the timing and content of the expose, and its foreknowledge by many Congress leaders, suggests that this sting was a party job to defeat the BJP, perceived as the principal political threat.

Some great SWOT analysis has gone into preparing this strategy in the rarified comfort of Delhi. Where this SWOT analysis has gone horribly wrong is that the real target of this analysis, the Indian on the street has been kept firmly out of the loop. The main reason, as has been stated above, is that our leaders are just ordinary politicians who want to rule but have forgotten to be leaders, or are not capable of becoming real leaders.

The Tehelka tapes have shown some disturbing footage of people boasting and saying many horrific things, not knowing that they were speaking to a hidden camera. This is causing a great deal of outrage in the media, and in some NGOs always on the lookout for an issue to remain in the limelight. A number of columns are being written by famously sponsored writers, asking for Narendra Modi’s head, by calling him a criminal, a butcher of Muslims etc. The Congress leadership in Delhi is also perhaps gloating that finally they have ‘got him’.

What do the people on the street think? Is what has been shown on Tehelka any less horrifying than what happened during the anti Sikh riots, particularly in Delhi, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, when thousands of Sikhs were, burnt, lynched and mercilessly butchered by ordinary citizens, right in the capital of India? Weren’t then many Congress leaders, instigated by the top leadership of the party, at the forefront of the mass massacres?

The then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, whose mother had fallen to bullets, had even publicly defended what had happened saying,” When a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake”.

What he would have felt, expected and said privately at the death of his mother in the heat of those tragic moments would perhaps have been even more inflammatory than what Modi has been quoted as saying by some people after the Godhra incident. Does it require anything except dishonesty to also know that had those involved in the 1984 riots been caught on hidden cameras, they would have sounded equally, if not more, belligerent, boastful and unrepentant of what they had done during those few days of mass frenzy?

The nation as a whole, including the Sikhs, over time has shown great wisdom by realizing that what had turned sane, ordinary men into killers then were circumstances, and an irrational and emotive mass response, beyond which the nation had to move on. Of course, every one knows that Congress leaders who led the massacres have been shielded and rewarded till now, to the extent that Dr Manmohan Singh even inducted one of the publicly known prime accused as a minister in his cabinet. Of course, he was symbolically asked to resign subsequently because an inquiry finally blamed him after more than two decades.

Assuming that Godhra was orchestrated by fundamentalists, what is it that they would have been saying to each other while planning and executing that horrific mass burning, which sparked off the equally condemnable reaction? What do you think terrorists are being told by their tutors, or what their supporters and sympathizers, including unexposed mainstream politicians, are saying privately among themselves?

The public knows all this better than politicians, who sometimes, even when they know, pretend not to. People, like in 1984, also always knew what the tapes have shown. They are not outraged, as the laptop analysts had thought they would be.

On the contrary, the expose has effectively nailed a couple of theories which were being propagated by some dim wits pretending to be clever. The Hindutva brigade of Gujarat had clearly not pre-planned any riots before the Godhra incident took place. Godhra was not orchestrated by Hindus to incite riots.

Tehelka has unwittingly established beyond any doubt that the Hindus of Gujarat truly believed that the railway coach full of Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze by Muslim fundamentalists, killing all those who were inside.

The mass reaction in Gujarat to the killing of innocent pilgrims was, thus, no different from the mass reaction that gripped Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. To the ordinary Indian, you can’t say, “Genocide is fine if my mom is killed; it is heinous if faceless Indians are!”

Tehelka has, tragically for those who conceived and executed the sting, achieved the exact opposite of what it wanted to. It has effectively killed the strong rebellion that was building up against Modi within the BJP in Gujarat, and taken the wind out of the sails of the Congress party there, now more afraid than ever to criticize him for fear of facing a disastrous electoral defeat.

How did the SWOT analysts of the Congress and their media friends completely forget that Rajiv Gandhi had won a mammoth majority in Parliament immediately after the riots in Delhi? Did not almost the whole of India feel then that the insanity, encouraged by the Prime Minister, which led to the killing of more than a thousand Sikhs, was to them an expression of a fair instant mass justice demanded by circumstance?

Rajiv Gandhi, despite that massive mandate, lost in the next elections, primarily because he could not provide the kind of governance that people expected from him. Similarly, the BJP, after the high of the Ram Janambhoomi Babri Masjid issue, was not able to make further headway, because its claim of being a party with a difference took a knock with a poor record of governance, which enabled regional parties to emerge stronger than ever before.

Narendra Modi, on the other hand, has not been shaken from power simply because he is personally honest and has ceaselessly worked for the economic development of Gujarat and its people. It is in fact one of the wonders of the political landscape of India that not even his worst detractors, minutely dissecting his every twitch, have been able to lay a finger on his performance, when almost everywhere else, all sorts of muck is surfacing with disturbing regularity.

By raking up the riots in Gujarat now, all that the think tank behind Tehelka has achieved is refreshing the memories of the hurt, the anger, the divide, the fear and the insanity which had gripped Gujarat in 2002.

The need of the hour, a national responsibility, is the repair and healing of communal relations, not reopening of old wounds. Will, for example, any useful purpose be served by doing a similar sting operation on the 1984 riots? But, to some of our politicians, no cost seems to be too great for the satiation of their lust for power. The ordinary, forgotten Indian understands these sordid games.

That the flame lit by Tehelka, instead of burning Modi, has made him almost invincible in Gujarat is clear to all except perhaps those cocooned in Delhi. What it may well have done nationally for the BJP has perhaps not yet been fully comprehended.

Tehelka, ironically, may also have provided the party with an almost unbeatable Prime Ministerial candidate for the forthcoming general elections.