Hear him roar! Modi’s critics are fighting a lost battle

Today’s proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court in Ahmedabad, which is hearing one significant strand of the investigations into the 2002 Gujarat riots, proved a damp squib for those who expected a dramatic denouement. From leaked (but unconfirmed) accounts of the Special Investigation Team report, we had been led to believe that the SIT had given a ‘clean chit’ to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi by acknowledging that there was no “prosecutable evidence” against him to establish that he was part of a governmental conspiracy to allow Hindu rioters a free hand in securing ‘vigilante justice’ during the hellish days that followed the Godhra train fire (in which Hindu pilgrims were massacred). Even though such an outcome wouldn’t have meant a formal closure to the legal proceedings – that must await another round of final hearings – it would have, as Firstpost had argued here , effectively meant that the ghost of the 2002 riots, which had haunted Modi for a decade now, would have been exorcised. Instead, the legal skirmish in the court today revolved around who had the locus standi to receive the copy of the report, and a ruling on that will be delivered on Wednesday. Yet, the seeming placidity in today’s proceedings only masks the undercurrents of the significance of the legal and political battles that are being waged around the 2002 Gujarat riots. And the interplay of those two battles only establishes that those who are looking desperately to pin Modi to the 2002 riots, perhaps out of a genuine sense of wanting to see justice done (or perhaps with their agenda), are effectively helping him politically, even if that is not their intention. [caption id=“attachment_211810” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“There are many strands to the discussion around the 2002 Gujarat riots. AFP”] [/caption]There are many strands to the discussion around the 2002 Gujarat riots. There are, first and foremost, the personal tragedies of the victims and their relatives; their collective grief is embodied in the haggard form of Zakhia Jafri, the widow knocking on the doors of justice on behalf of her husband and former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, who was burnt to death by mobs at the Gulbarg Society massacre. It was at Zakia Jafri’s instance that the Supreme Court directed the SIT to investigate not just the Gulbarg Society massacre but pretty much all the incidences of riots in nine districts of Gujarat in late February and early March of 2002. Which is why there was so much riding on this case, and the various litigants and petitioners are looking to force the Modi government on the defensive. But in equal measure, the Gujarat riots also provided a backdrop for the politics that unfolded in the state in the elections that were held in their wake. On this terrain, Modi has been the consummate winner, and even the most shrill election campaigns seeking to implicate him – most memorably Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s denunciation of Modi as “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death) – have failed miserably. That happened because Modi benefited from the consolidation of Hindu votes in the 2002 Assembly elections and the 2004 general elections. Even in the 2007 Assembly election, he campaigned as the defender of the Hindu faith against the “pseudo-secular” politics of the Congress – and his message found resonance with the Gujarat electorate. In other words, in the years following the 2002 riots, Modi was not forced on the defensive by the taint of the riots: instead, he directly confronted the charge that he was a “merchant of death” and roared to power by riding on the notion of Gujarati and Hindu pride. In the political arena, even the most vitriolic campaigns pegging him to the 2002 riots have been dismissed not once but twice by the State’s voters. Having consolidated the Hindu vote, and having dramatically changed the political idiom in the State by doing away with “vote bank politics”, Modi then sought to reinvent himself by pitching the development of Gujarat and good governance as his primary plank. Where once he roared like a lion, he has since modulated his voice – and tempered his language – to emphasise sadbhavana rather than Hindu pride. Perhaps he has an eye on central leadership of his party, and of prime ministership, and is therefore for looking for wider acceptance at the national level. Perhaps he calculates that his political roadmap will be charted if he wins the Gujarat Assembly election due later this year emphatically. His political opponents’ best chance of pre-empting his ascendance at the national level lies in storming his Gujarat fortress. But by raking up the Gujarat riots at the political level even a decade later, his opponents are virtually gifting Modi an opportunity to reinforce his hold on his home turf, which if anything will enhance his leverage to project himself nationally. By harping on the 2002 riots, they have given him a chance to project himself  – as he did yesterday at the conclusion of the sadbhavana mission at Ambaji – as the defender of Gujarati pride against “fresh attacks” and defamation campaigns. They have allowed him to find his roar again. In the decade gone by, the failure of Modi’s political opponents to pin him to the riots has dramatically altered the perception of even unbiased commentators about the nature of the campaign against him. Analyst B Raman, who is no “uncritical admirer of Modi,” argues that the “demonisation” of Modi must stop . “It is no longer a case of the law taking its own course, but one of malicious witch-hunt against a political leader by his political opponents and by sections of the media and lawyers and others who are not well disposed towards him. Even after having failed to prove the charges before the SIT, they are determined to keep their vicious campaign alive for political reasons and not for reasons of natural justice. Clearly, the tide of public opinion, and even that of informed commentators, is effectively turning against the very shrill political campaign against Modi, which has proved fruitless in its objective. It only reflects the lack of political imagination of his opponents if they persist with it. They will effectively be gifting the game to Modi – and facilitating his elevation to the national stage - unless they too find some way to exorcise the ghost of the 2002 riots that they continue to be haunted by.