Godson diplomacy: What we learned about PM Modi from Jeet Bahadur

This has indeed been a year of wondrous revelations. First Narendra Modi admitted in his election filing document he had a wife. Now we find out he has a godson as well. A Nepalese one to boot. This is a lost-and-found story that would have moved Manmohan Desai to tears. Except this is real. It’s part of the Magic of Modi.

Other PMs sign bilateral trade deals. Modi reunites a mother and son after 16 years.

“How happy are you now? You should be happy after seeing your lost son after so many years,” the PM told the mother on Sunday. And today the papers are filled with the photo-ops of that tender moment.

Here’s what we know now about Jeet Bahadur. He came to work in India as a boy from Nepal. His elder brother Dasrath was already working as a domestic help. Ten-year-old Jeet followed suit but apparently ran away to Rajasthan, unable to deal with the hard work. From there he tried to board a train that would take him to Gorakhpur on the India-Nepal border but instead he took the wrong train to Ahmedabad. That’s where he met Narendra Modi and what was a sad story of poverty and child labour has been transformed into a story about acchey din.

When Modi went to Kathmandu his official stance was he wanted to HIT Nepal with Highways, Information-ways and Transmission-ways. But if that is a HIT, this mother-son reunion story on the sidelines is the real blockbuster on so many levels. Here’s what we have learned about Narendra Modi from watching this Himalayan reunion:

Modi is way ahead of the media. While the media were chasing after the elusive Jashodaben, there was a far more fascinating story unfolding right under their noses. Let’s face it, a forsaken wife is rather commonplace. But a Nepalese dharmputra is quite something else.

Our media has been reporting it with gushing excitement but without real astonishment. It’s as if there’s nothing that unusual for a Prime Minister to be reuniting mothers and sons in different countries. “The family of Jeet Bahadur in Nepal, whose godfather is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is excited about the premier’s upcoming visit to the Himalayan country,” said India Today calmly days before the big Nepal visit. This nonchalance is obviously a way to mask their chagrin for having completely missed out on the epic scoop.

Modi is Good. It establishes the softer side of Modi brilliantly. A woman brings a helpless child to Modi and he takes care of him. “I started showing my concern for Jeet Bahadur. Gradually he took interest in academics, sports and even learnt Gujarati,” tweeted Modi. This was hands on mentorship, not sending an annual check for an orphan in Africa. The Hindustan Times  reports that since Modi “shifted to New Delhi, Jeet has been staying in a hostel. Modi is paying for his BBA."

What makes it even more heart-warming is this story was not trotted out during the campaign to establish Modi-the-Good, the soft heart of the man of steel. Jeet Bahadur was not hologrammed around the country as living proof of the Gujarat model. I gave birth to Jeet says his mother but Narendra Modi brought him up. And to think some naysayers tried to use the Jashodaben story to show Modi as heartless.

Modi is a Man of Action. On his website narendramodi.in, Modi’s mantra is emblazoned for all the world to see – Actions Not Acts: Fulfilling Promises from Day 1. The Case of the Nepalese Godson proves that’s not idle talk. The Telegraph reports that two years ago Modi met Nepalese industrialist Binod Choudhary at a Ficci meeting in Gujarat. India Today says Choudhary invited Modi to Nepal and Modi put out a condition. He said Choudhary should first locate Jeet’s family. Apparently the businessman did so within 30 hours. Jeet has six toes on one foot and that rare identification mark helped track down the family. But let’s give it up for Modi. Without him Jeet Bahadur would have been flat outta luck.

Modi is not anti-immigrant. A canard was spread during the election campaign that Narendra Modi did not like immigrants. He said immigrants who had come to India illegally from Bangladesh should have their “bags packed” if he came to power. “You are concerned about infiltrators and not your own people – they must go back,” Modi told a rally in West Bengal targeting Mamata Banerjee for being too soft on the issue. In a rally in Assam, Modi alleged those in government were killing endangered rhinos to make room for Bangladeshi settlers. “People sitting in the government… to save Bangladeshis… they are doing this conspiracy to kill rhinos so that the area becomes empty and Bangladeshis can be settled there.” Now Modi has his own feel-good “some of my nearest and dearest ones are immigrants” story. Media reports are unclear about Jeet’s visa status and how that got sorted out. Surely a ten-year-old did not come to India on a work visa. But we do know one thing for sure – he is not from Bangladesh.

Modi is a master of timing. For a man who claims he has no time to watch Bollywood films, Modi understands the theatrics of timing better than most film directors. He can spring a surprise like no one else. And he knows the perfect moment. Jeet it turns out had visited Nepal last in 2011/12 for Diwali according to the Hindustan Times. But there’s no mention that he met his family at that time or it had even been located by then. If he had met them then how was this the grand reunion after 16 years? If this was indeed the big reunion the question is if Binod Choudhary was so prompt with his detective work for Modi why did the meeting take this long? “It was not clear though why the reunion had to wait for Modi’s visit to Nepal as Prime Minister although the family had been traced some time ago,” says The Telegraph . Why indeed? As any director will tell you it’s all about timing, timing, timing.

Modi gets his geography. Mind you, this could have been an unmitigated disaster. Given Narendra Modi’s penchant for confusing Bhutan with Nepal and Ladakh, he could have easily tried to deliver poor Jeet Bahadur to some baffled family near Thimpu. But instead he scored a bulls-eye and everyone is a winner.

Well, almost everyone. In every Jeet story there must be some losers.

Eat your heart out, Sushma Swaraj. Sushma Swaraj’s first visit to Dhaka got a lot of press coverage especially for the sari diplomacy. Sushma-ji took a hand-picked cream-coloured South Indian silk sari for Sheikh Hasina who gifted her with Bangladesh’s famous jamdani sari in return. Begum Khaleda Zia gave her a couple as well. All of it made for a good story about that special feminine connection which “laced hard diplomacy with a feminine touch, a domain where men cannot enter”. But Modi has blown that sari diplomacy out of the water with his Bahaduri.

Saroo Brierley had better watch out A while back the media was abuzz with the story of Saroo Brierley, the Indian boy who boarded the wrong train, ended up in Kolkata and could not find his way back to his family. Years later, growing up as an adoptee in Australia, he managed to use Google Earth, Facebook and hazy fragments of his memory to find his family once again. He wrote about a book about it – A Long Way Home. It is an amazing story. But now take that story and add an Indian prime minister to it. How much more amazing is that? Brierley might find his producers suddenly abandoning him if they get wind of this new story. Paresh Rawal could star as Modi in the film version.

But now the question becomes how can Modi top this? His much-anticipated visit to the United States is coming up soon. What will he do there? Is there an American godson who can be reunited with his long-lost mother in front of tens of thousands of delirious fans? Is that the real reason for thinking about booking Madison Square Gardens? We just cannot wait.