In regal show, event manager Modi dwarfs BJP top guns

The big Narendra Modi show has now ended but, the man himself has promised, would be taken to every district across Gujarat. The idea, he says, is to foster amity, knit people together to ensure progress, change the paradigm of governance which hitherto was dictated by the hunger to get re-elected. People did not matter. Now, at the end of it, it is reasonable to assume that Narendra Modi was himself the event manager of his three calendar days’ fast for everything was thought through. Everything, every move, every word was patently planned to milk the event to the maximum. Of course, since the Sadbhavana Mission was a government programme, the minions paid by the state ran it as orchestrated.[caption id=“attachment_87574” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Image courtesy PIB”]  [/caption] It was meticulously planned. As J Jayalalithaa, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, has confessed she got a call from Modi seeking delegations to the fast. There were 100 TV cameras and even facilities to run camp-site studios, there was catering for those who came to support him in his fast. All this was done soon after the word broke that a US Congressional committee saw him to be a prime ministerial material for the next polls, to be held, if on time, in 2014. He worked like a short-order cook but served out a gourmet meal. Of course, couple of things went wrong. He declined to don a prayer cap offered by an Imam and those who wanted to complain that there could be no amity without justice to the minorities were detained. He treated the latter as opposition and trained his guns on his critics outside Gujarat. He mused just after ending the fast: who thought his fast would ‘agitate’ the entire country. He decided to work quickly after the US report and the Wikileaks disclosures about what the US, a country which denies him a visa, thought of him. He seized the moment, putting himself on the centre stage, even above BJP’s top guns. He had them hearing in rapt attention when he said politics should focus on development instead of partisanship dictated by election demands. “It is about knitting people together to forge ahead”. Every BJP leader played second fiddle. Lal Krishna Advani, not averse to being a prime minister if he got a shot at it again, had to follow Modi up the dais, walk behind him when greeting the assembly of religious leaders, and at the launch of the fast, Modi let him speak since Advani’s name had “already been announced. This we heard from Advani himself. Every BJP leader worth his salt had to come, sit in silence on the dais until the turn arrived for them to extol Modi. Good manners and the event dictated that they only lauded him, each one adding a bit to the glorification of the state’s chief minister. Modi’s ascendancy at least in the party was on full show, amplified by a hundred television cameras at the venue. That in mind, Modi chose to speak in Hindi, a language he prefers at a press conference in Gandhinagar or a meeting in a remote corner of the state when he knows he is onto a national issue. For a man averse to news media ever since he walked out of an interview taped by Karan Thapar years ago, facilitating them at the site was a gesture expecting returns. Returns which he got. Except that, the Himalayan earthquake forced him to share the television time with it. That was an act of God, but an error or two messed up an otherwise impeccable show. They were detention of those who cried hoarse that without justice, there cannot be reconciliation and the refusal to don a cap offered by an Imam. The media he so depended on to multiply his event, spread it to far corners of the country, had its critical eye peeled for such follies. But brazenly, using text messages, he denied them the chance. “Wearing a cap does not make a man secular,’’ the SMS said. But what prompted this sudden desire to forge amity in his strife-torn state and extrapolate it to national purpose – the purpose presumably being his own elevation to the reckoning for the country’s top job? It was the American congressional report citing him for good governance, speedy progress achieved. Had those words of approbation from the congressional think tank had not been made public, had not Wikileaks revealed the nice things said about Modi, this would have been yet another uncelebrated birthday. He would have quietly fasted as he did every year, switched off his cell phone, taken the landline off the hook and remained aloof from the world outside. He naturally had to be at the centre of it all. He had to be. With the white turban, one end flaring up on his right side into a fan-like plume, the other trailing as much as starched cotton would allow, on day one. Often changing headgears, each depending on the identity of the person who offered it, be it a region, a caste. His was a well-organised event in a massive auditorium, against which the Congress’ fast led by Shankarsinh Waghela paled – a regal Modi show versus a paupers’ on a sidewalk. Those who came to support him in his fast had food items doled out. The symbolism sought by Congress by choosing the venue outside Gandhi’s ashram did not draw real-time television coverage. His own chest thumping apart—‘commitment is my strength’ etc.—there were other revealing sights: the religious leader in attendance had to satisfy themselves by waiting for their turn to appear there to lend tone to the atmosphere and then, on the third day, offer him the juice. One could see the gleam in his eyes. The dharm gurus of all denominations were elated to shake hands with him as he rapidly walked past, smiling. Normally, the bowing is in the reverse order. The monks from the Swaminarayan sect, the Parsi priests, the mullahs, the Christian priests were beaming with smiles. Mark again that the backdrop did not carry Mahatma Gandhi’s image but the Sardar’s. Gujarat, after being berated for nine years for the violence—its sheer scale and intensity is overwhelming—in 2002 apparently would be happier with other emblematic representations. Without explicitly apologising for those ghastly days, a fast with Gandhi looking over his shoulders would have been odd.