In politics, sometimes normalcy looks abnormal. That the Bharatiya
Janata Party should be with its back to the wall in the Delhi battle is
abnormal for those who have not yet recovered from the awesomeness of
Narendra Modi’s victory in May 2014.
That was a tsunami. Tsunamis
subside. Modi has risen phenomenally, riding that and another wave. A
third is due, maybe after the Delhi elections.
The first wave he
crested when he became chief minister of Gujarat without ever having
contested an election. This was 26 days after the two planes brought
down the twin towers in New York on Sep 11, 2001 - 9/11, in brief.
The
US air strikes against Afghanistan began on Oct 7, exactly the day Modi
became chief minister. Of course there is no connection between the
two. And yet, there is. The saturation TV coverage pummelling Muslim
societies created for the BJP a favourable atmosphere. The BJP hoped to
win the crucial election to the Uttar Pradesh assembly due in February
2002. Rajnath Singh was the chief minister in Lucknow. To his and his
party’s dismay, BJP lost the election which had been fought on a hard
platform, Ram Mandir included.
The 'kar sewaks' assembled at
Ayodhya for victory and Ram Mandir celebrations were stunned by the
election reversal announced on Feb 24/25, 2002. Imagine the black mood
in which the kar sewaks boarded Sabarmati Express which reached Godhra
on the morning of Feb 27. Gujarat BJP was waking upto two defeats in bye
elections. Modi won Rajkot narrowly. Then the Godhra train carnage took
place and the Gujarat pogrom.
The lesson from the electorate’s
rejection of the hardline in UP should have been a sober and softer line
in the future. But, no, the 96-year-old head of the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad, Keshvaram Kashiram Shastri thought otherwise. The global war
on terror was a boon. In an atmosphere so conducive for Hindu
consolidation a harder, not softer, line was required.
I met
Jayanti Ravi, collector of Godhra when Gujarat was still smouldering.
The investigations, she said bitterly, had instantly been handed over to
Vijay Vipul, DIG anti-terror squad. Terror was the flavor of the
season. So, terror it was for Godhra and Gujarat too.
Then Modi rode the second crest with even greater aplomb. This one was to deliver unto him the prime ministership of India.
A timid Manmohan Singh carrying on his forehead labels of scams he may not have committed, made for a soft target.
Worse
was the Nehru-Gandhi family. Yes he will; no he won’t, but he might -
this exasperating indecision of Rahul Gandhi made for a silly side show
in the middle of what should have been a do or die campaign. He made a
fool of himself with FICCI, CII, in the Arnab Goswami interview, the
high point of his life being a night of great simplicity he spent with
David Miliband in a Dalit hut.
The mother would disappear to far
off hospitals and reappear without the nation being any the wiser as to
what the ailment was and whether a transition was round the corner.
Election
after election was being lost but the mother and son duet would neither
disappear nor connect. A private social group remained more important
than the more public, but supine political group. It was appalling for
the country’s oldest party to be neither in nor out of reckoning.
Meanwhile corruption charges, beginning with Bofors, would just not go
away.
It was this universal anger with Congress leadership that
Modi’s campaign managers brilliantly harvested. Add to this the greatest
media campaign ever mounted.
The helpful Sonia-Rahul negative
image is, alas for Modi, now out of the way. A Muzaffarnagar-like
polarization cannot be repeated in quick succession. This is too gentle a
country. Even Kali and Durga have their seasons.
The open season
given to Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj and a Sadhvi adept at abusive
diction will never be tolerated by the world’s oldest civilization.
The
writing has been clear on the wall since the bye-elections in UP. A
reversal in Delhi will not be such a bad thing for the BJP. It will
enable the party to off load those interests who by their vulgarity
neutralize gains like the Obama visit and who have all too frequently
made the BJP look embarrassingly inelegant.
(30.1.2015 - A senior
commentator on diplomatic and political affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be
reached on [email protected]. The views expressed are personal.)
