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It was bitterly cold and on 26 January 2001 most people in Gujarat were indoors, watching the republic day parade on their TV sets.
At 8.40 am, 25,000 of them were dead. A massive earthquake measured 7.9 on the Richter scale had hit Kutch. The towns of Bhuj and Bachau were flattened and severe damage was inflicted on the town of Anjar. 7900 villages were affected and over 400 villages were completely destroyed. Five million children were directly affected through the loss of family, home, or school. Authorities estimated fifteen thousand schools had been damaged or destroyed along with three hundred hospitals. Massive damage was inflicted on the water and sanitation systems and more than twenty thousand cattle were killed.
Obviously, the Gujarat government led by Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel was unable to cope. How could any government have got a grip in the face of such a massive tragedy? Initially the Union government, was sympathetic, but gradually it was clear that while Patel wanted to do his best, he was just not physically capable of handling the stress: he had a plethora of health problems and was unable to take the strain.
You could argue that the Chief Minister is not required to himself shift boulders or masonary and only has to direct relief operations. But this was part of the problem. There was huge resentment against Patel in his government and allegations of corruption had been leveled against his family and many of his ministers by their colleagues. MLAs and MPs alike were demanding that he be replaced. This was inevitably affecting relief operations. It didn’t help that in the wake of the earthquake as a flood of money for relief poured in, a crowd of builders was seen at the CM’s official residence every day.
Initially, the BJP refused to countenance the demand of the rebels for a new CM. Elected to the Lok Sabha from Gujarat, Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani ticked off a set of rebels for fuelling a power struggle at a time when Kutch needed every available hand for reconstruction. But the groundswell could not be ignored. One proposal was: Keshubhai could be brought to Delhi in the Union Council of Ministers and someone else appointed CM. This was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s proposal, backed by Principal Advisor, Brajesh Mishra. They even had a candidate: Narendra Modi, recently come to the BJP from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh where he had served as pracharak for several decades.
But Advani hesitated. Was it appropriate to dislodge a leader of the statue of Keshubhai when elections were a year away? What of the Leuva Patel community which seemed so solidly behind him? And was Narendra Modi, who had never even been a minister, let alone Chief Minister, the right man for the job ?
A compromise was struck: why not break Modi into the job by appointing him Deputy Chief Minister, while Keshubhai could stay in his post? With such an able deputy, the CM could rest his oars but the job would be done.
But Modi had to agree to this. And he was nowhere to be found.
This was classical Modi, reporters said smiling knowingly. When a decision was to be taken involving him, he would just vanish for days, secure that if he was needed sufficiently, those who needed him would be forced to find him.
Eventually, he surfaced and rejected the power-sharing formula politely. “You keep him, I am either going to be fully responsible for Gujarat, or not at all” he told Vajpayee and Advani.
After much discussion, he was made Chief Minister of Gujarat on 7 October, 2001.
His first task was to prepare the party and government for the assembly elections to follow in December 2002. He had many ideas. Contrary to the RSS’s anti-privatisation, anti-globalisation position, Modi was and continues to be an ardent advocate of privatisation. He was the first BJP Chief Minister to privatise ports and when he was attacked for this, his argument was that the ‘people of Gujarat are very enterprising and they want minimum government’. He also allowed industrial estates in Gujarat to have captive power plants without applying for permission from the state. It was during this period that Gujarat became one of the few states to demand a nuclear power plant of its own. It also became the first state government in India to have a ministry of bio-technology
But then Godhra happened.
A train carriage full of Hindu Kar-Sevaks, returning from Ayodhya was set on fire at the Godhra railway station on 27 February, 2002. 58 people were charred to death, including many women and children. The charge was that irate Muslims started the fire provoked by slogans raised by Kar-sewaks at the station. As Godhra has a large Muslim population, it became the epicentre of the anti-Muslim communal carnage that engulfed the entire state of Gujarat.
Differing conclusions have been reached by various enquiry commission on who was responsible for the burning of the compartment and whether Modi was complicit in the killings of Muslims that followed. Justice Nanawati in his report said there was a conspiracy to set fire to the train; Justice UC Bannerjee said the fire was an accident. But Hindu outrage boiled over and a hapless Muslim population became the target for mob attacks.
Later, much later, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was to remind Modi that as chief minister, he had a duty to rule (raj dharma). But there can be no argument that for a while Hindu anger was allowed to kill, rape and pillage Muslims. The police watched. Whether they had orders to do so cannot be legally established. What was in progress was something reporters from all over the country have witnessed at one or other time in their career: a “controlled” riot.
Also read: Narendra Modi Timeline
But then it went out of control. Modi telephoned Delhi and begged for help, paramilitary forces, the army, anything to reestablish the authority of the state. More than 2000 Muslim men, women and children were hacked, stabbed and burnt to death. Publicly Modi recalled Newton's law of motion. Privately he sought help that took several days coming. The world watched and said they were only repeating what they’d known all along: that India was ungovernable, and not a country to be trusted with the arsenal of power, especially the nuclear weapons that the BJP had tested for India. Post-Godhra events were characterised as ethnic cleansing and genocide and the European Union, Britain and the US, under pressure from liberal, left and Islamic opinion, said Modi was not welcome in their countries.
Modi’s actions did not have unreserved domestic backing either. Later Advani was to call the Godhra riots a black spot in the NDA’s regime because there had been no communal riots during Vajpayee’s prime ministership.when the mood had calmed down a bit, the RSS convened a high level meeting to which Modi was invited, amid a mood of tacit disapproval for his acts of omission. Here, Modi began his defence by describing the way Hindus had been set upon by Muslims, the cries of the kar sewaks in the burning compartment, the figures of Hindus who had died (it is a fact that they outnumbered the Muslims)… and broke down. In a trice the mood of the meeting changed.
At a larger level, what Godhra and its aftermath – an attack on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat by armed Muslim militants - achieved was religious polarization. In December 2002, the BJP increased its strength in the Gujarat assembly from 117 (in 1998) to 125 in the lower house which has 182 seats, while the Congress - the main opposition - got 51 seats, two down from 1998. Of the Keshubhai effect there was no evidence. Gujarati Hindus had got a new hero: Narendra Modi. Thus began Narendra Modi’s second term as Chief Minister.
This time, Modi resolved to do something different: the accent was not on Hindutva or Hinduism. It was on Gujarat. It was during this period that the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies ranked Gujarat among India’s best administered states on an index of economic freedom. Of course it could be argued that given the state’s history of entrepreneurship, this had little to do with Modi’s efforts. But nevertheless, there was sufficient anecdotal evidence that corruption had gone down significantly in the state.
An industrialist said he had to pay a minister in the Gujarat government. Modi came to know of it. He called the investor and said he would get all his clearances, but asked if he’d had to bribe to get his project cleared. The industrialist first demurred and then, greed getting the better of him, admitted, possibly in the hope he would get his money back, that he’d paid Rs 10 lakh. Modi telephoned the minister, informed him that the industrialist was sitting with him and asked when the Rs 10 lakh was being deposited with the party. This was the clearest message to investors – if there was to be any corruption, Modi had to know about it.
Modi established he was unequivocally, totally, passionately devoted to Gujarat. The Narmada dam is crucial for the state. Towards the end of his second term, Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz who was appalled at the way rehabilitation was handled by Madhya Pradesh, tried to stall Gujarat from raising the height of the dam so that he could secure some kind of deal for the oustees. Raising the height meant more electricity for Gujarat: but it also meant a bigger catchment area would be needed leading to more people being forced off the land. Gujarat would be the net beneficiary – but Madhya Pradesh would have to take the responsibility for rehabilitation.
Modi came to Delhi for secret talks with Soz on the issue where Soz virtually begged him to postpone the decision to raise the height of the dam. “I will issue a public statement saying you are India’s greatest statesman” Soz told Modi, possibly hoping that an endorsement from a Kashmiri Muslim would help Modi wash away some of the Godhra black. The only statement I want, Modi told Soz, is from the people of Gujarat. He then returned to Ahmedabad, made public the fact that Delhi wanted him to cut a deal that he refused. In fact he challenged the Gujarat Congress to tell the people of the state where it stood – with the UPA at the centre or with Gujarat ? MPs and political leaders from the state cutting across party lines – Advisor to Sonia Gandhi, Ahmad Patel included – rushed to Delhi to tell the PM not to punish Gujarat for it had committed no fault. It was initiative Modi all the way.
But most of all, it was during his second term that Modi told his party and affiliated organizations who the boss was.In Gujarat, historically, Hindu mass organizations have had a base that has deepened, especially after the decline of Ahmedabad’s textile industry. Among them is the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) the RSS and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), led by Gujarati leader Praveen Togadiya. Having been a pracharak in the RSS, Modi is intimately acquainted with the politics, ambitions and goals of all three. He also sees them all as potential rivals.
The greatest among them is Togadiya, for the style of his oratory matches Modi’s. If Modi attacks Muslims, speaks of Pervez Musharraf mockingly and rabble-rouses Hindus, Togadiya knows he can do it better. So the communally polarized populace of Gujarat has a choice. That’s where the threat to Modi lies.
In 2002, when the riots were in full swing and the VHP was “out in the field” Togadiya used be cagey when asked about his political ambitions. Only after a lot of prompting would the VHP leader say: "Narendrabhai is riding the horse, but the reins are in my hand". But during Modi’s second term, there was nothing private about Togadiya's ambitions. "I was offered the chief ministership of Gujarat twice by the sangh parivar", he declared once, revealing that plans were afoot to create a political formation to take care of the interest of the Hindus. This because the BJP had become a "B-team of the Congress".
This when Modi thought he had done a pretty good job of defending the interests of the Hindus. So he set about subtly deconstructing and demolishing the parallel Hindu establishment. The VHP tried to launch a movement around the trishul – encouraging Hindus to carry a miniature like a Sikh kripan. It found no resonance in Gujarat and Togadiya had to go to Rajasthan to popularize it.
VHP supporters who used to flaunt their connections with the state government and used to offer their services to investors in Gujarat for a small fee, found themselves cut out of all government deals.
As Modi’s second term wound down and 2007 assembly elections approached, Togadiya said at a press conference that the VHP would not support the BJP in the assembly elections. He also said: “No one should consider himself the most powerful person and ruling over the hearts of the people.” Modi had disturbed a significant interest group. Corruption went down visibly but the VHP became a firm, implacable enemy.
He did not spare the RSS either. Relief work in the Gujarat floods in 2006 was not entrusted to RSS cadres. Instead a new organization, the Swadhyay Parivar was created and these activists given the relief materials.
During a rath yatra in Bhavnagar in 2006, the district administration did not allow a procession to proceed with the weapons of Ram and Hanuman. Among those who sat in protest against the government move were well-known RSS supporters Haribhai Kordaliya, former BJP OBC cell chairman, and former state BJP chief Rajendrasinh Rana. The yatra could proceed only after they had sat on dharna for four hours. RSS did not issue a personal invitation to Modi for its 2006 meeting in Gujarat. He did not attend.
Rebellion and dissidence against Modi’s management style was inevitable. In 2006-07, a revolt by BJP supporters in and around Surat, once its bastion, was mainly a result of Keshubhai Patel’s sympathizers wanting their place in the sun. Surat is dominated by diamond merchants, who because of their enormous resources and clout, have been an influential force in Gujarat.
Modi let them know they didn’t bother him. In July 200, FIRs for stealing power were filed by the Gujrat Electricity Board against 10 persons in Surat and 4 in Mehsana, most of them industrialists. The Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) unearthed 578 cases of power theft worth Rs 2.40 crore in July, 2007. It went on filing cases. Modi publicized this widely. Diamond merchants could afford to pay for power. If they didn’t, they would be treated as common criminals.
Kashubhai Patel’s supporters found they were under siege. They went over the Congress, a move that was a kiss of death for that party – for they refused to deny their RSS past.
The results of the 2007 assembly elections were little different from before. Where in 2002 he had 125 seats, this time Modi got 117 out of 182, assembly seats, becoming Chief Minister for the third time. As the counting was going on predicting the BJP victory, Modi sent an SMS to political rivals. It said: “I was CM, I am the CM and I will be the CM of Gujarat”. Veerappa Moily, chairman of the Congress Media Committee, said, “had Narendra Modi not played the communal card in his campaign, Congress would have won the elections”. Reacting to that, Modi said: “I will concede defeat if I have made a single communal speech”.
The fact is, the issue of development got a lot of traction in Gujarat. In the 2002-2007 period, when the economy was booming, beginning with Kutch that was leveled in the earthquake and is now a remarkable story of reconstruction, beating Latur in neighbouring Maharashtra (also struck by earthquake) hollow. During this period, the chief minister laid the foundations of a finance city, a technology park and an integrated township in Gandhinagar. IL&FS signed several memoranda with investors like Kotak Mahindra (committed to developing 300 acres of land), Chest Core (to design 2 million square feet space), Punj Llyod (set to design 1 million square feet built-up space), and Fairwood Associates (to deal with 1 million square foot area). Investments worth 6.6 lakh crore flowed in at the January 2007 Vibrant Gujarat Investors’ summit and subsequent real estate investments. 639 Memoranda of Understanding were inked. All hype, claim rebels. Some of it, possibly, but surely not all of it ?
In his current term, another Vibrant Gujarat summit in 2009 saw industry swooning over Modi. The biggest feather in Gujarat’s cap is that it enticed the Tatas into relocating their Nano car project from West Bengal to Saanand in Gujarat. The controversy about how much revenue the state signed away by subsiding the land that the Tatas got, is another matter. But it is undeniable that Gujarat got the project amid stiff competition from states all over India. And this, in the season of an economic downturn….
As the western world mulls over the complex issue of continuing to treat Modi as a perpetrator of genocide, thus denying him a visa, it is conscious that it is losing the game to the south east Asian nations which are homing in on Gujarat enthusiastically as an investment destination. Modi had a highly triumphant visit to Israel during his second term; It was Japan which was the partner country in the 2009 Vibrant Gujarat summit. A plethora of countries from the Gulf joined the meeting.
The next challenge was to win the 2013 assembly elections as convincingly as the ones in 2007. The night before election results were declared, Narendra Modi used the rare respite to hold his last cabinet meeting and bid goodbye to the secretariat staff.
Then he did something few chief ministers would do. He held a 90-minute meeting to review schemes to provide drinking water in Gujarat.
The context was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech during the election campaign in Gujarat. Singh charged that incomplete works of Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam Canal had contributed to the water scarcity in the state. “We were dumbstruck. I don’t know who advised the Prime Minister, but if there is anything the Gujarat government has done, it is taking drinking water to places which have been parched for several decades. What Gujarat has been able to do in this field, few other states have managed. The CM was puzzled and confused by this charge of the PM so he took a 360 degree review meeting of all the drinking water schemes the Gujarat government has undertaken. Officials did concede that there had been small problems in some areas, but by and large, water is something the people in Gujarat laud the CM for” an official said, adding that after this statement, it is the PM’s credibility that may have slipped a bit.
Narendra Modi is a details man and this was very much in evidence as he wound up his second tenure and got ready for a third – but now possibly truncated – term. A huge agri-business summit has already been held in Gujarat and has been reported as a big success.
If Modi has been making a political point: judge me by my work, not by my politics, it has been made. But is that the way a leader should be judged? The happenings in Goa earlier this year shook up a lot of people in the BJP. The issue was that Modi should be made chairman of the campaign committee. LK Advani – the distance between him and Modi has been growing of late – felt that the campaign committee should be headed by someone else because Modi had fixed the deck by lobbying with the Sangh and using every trick in the book to trick the BJP into depriving Advani of the job. The chairman of the campaign committee morphs into the Prime Minister. The spectacle in Goa had to be seen to be believed. Mass hysteria ruled and anyone who questioned Modi’s elevation was shouted down. Ultimately, realising that it would be left behind the curve if it did not heed the mas chanting for Modi, the Sangh too fell in with public sentiment.
Within months the campaign started that Narendra Modi should be made the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. The logical end to this is what is on view now. Modi had only turfed Pravin togadia and his merry band of men from Gujrat till now. Now a whole lot of people were running scared because they had no access to him, they did not know his mind and did not know if their position in the organisation was safe while Modi was at the helm of affairs.
The twist was added by once one of Modi’s trusted lieutenants, BG Vanzara. An IPS officer Vanzara had stood by Modi through thick and thin, helping kill, eliminate and lock up ‘terrorists’ and ultimately getting locked up himself for encounter killings. But in a long letter, Vanzara told the government of India as he resigned from the IPS that the man who had been ‘God’ to him had done nothing to save him. There was the added concern that Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi, who had taken part in eliminating Muslims in the Godhra riots had been convicted for life and Modi had not been able to get them off. Was this the sign of a true leader ?
“Mujhe gam budhiya ki maut ka nahin hai. Gham is baat ka hai ki maut ne ghar ka rasta dekh liya” (I’m not mourning the death of the old woman.I’m mourning the fact that death now knows the way to my home) said a BJP leader repeating an adage late Pramod Mahajan was fond of citing.
Narendra Modi has proved in Gujarat that he’s all business, he’s ruthless and he will never be no 2. But how will he treat his number 2s? This is what BJP leaders are now asking themselves.
But one thing is clear. Pravin Togadiya and colleagues would do well to embrace another state. They continue to be unwelcome in Gujarat.
(This is an updated version of a profile first published in Of Cabals and Kings by Aditi Phadnis, published by BS Books, 2009)
