On the penultimate day of a 15-day stay in Ahmedabad in December 2007, I noticed a nondescript and somewhat disoriented man in his 40s talking to my friend Kakubhai in the central BJP office at Khanpur in Ahmedabad. Kakubhai heard him out, looked him up and down, called one of his helpers and whispered something in his ear. A few minutes later, the helper returned with a shoe box inside a plastic bag. Kakubhai called the nervous visitor, handed over the bag, patted him on the back and showed him out.

What was all that about? I inquired from Kakubhai. “The man has come all the way from Gandhinagar. He is not a BJP worker”, he informed me. “His four-year-old son has made life miserable for him. The child insists on possessing a Narendra Modi mask. I gave him one.”

For the average Indian influenced by the media for both information and perception, the power of the Modi cult in Gujarat is astonishing. Routinely berated for being a “mass murderer”, undertaking a “Holocaust”, accused of spreading communal hate, pursuing a dictatorial style and equated with Hitler and Milosevic, Modi’s popularity seems to have been unaffected by the torrent of abuse showered on him. On the contrary, the popularity of the man has risen in direct proportion to the shrillness of his detractors.

In 2002, Modi was a controversial politician for his alleged complicity in the riots that broke out all over Gujarat after the arson attack on Hindu karsevaks returning from Ayodhya in February. He was believed to have swept the election on the strength of the resulting communal polarisation. In December 2007, the riots were at a best a sub-text of the election and five years of peace had undermined the communal polarisation. Yet, the overriding theme of the Assembly election was Modi.

The agenda was set by the question Modi asked at countless rallies throughout the state: do you want me as Chief Minister for another five years? With opinion polls showing that he enjoyed a staggering 60 per cent approval rating, Modi made the Assembly election a referendum on himself.

It takes a lot of daring to attempt converting an election for a legislature into a presidential contest. In 2004, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance attempted to cash in on Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s personal popularity to secure re-election. Unfortunately for it, the general election became a series of local contests and led to the NDA being voted out and no one in particular being voted in.

In Gujarat, a beleaguered Congress quite rightly gauged that its only hope of ousting Modi and the BJP was to convert the Assembly into a fragmented election. With Modi’s personal popularity at dizzying heights and no focussed anti-incumbency, the Congress sought to conduct a low-key campaign based on an aggregate of local grievances. At one level, it hoped to bolster its traditional support among Kshatriyas, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims — the KHAM combination forged by Madhavsinh Solanki in the 1980s — with accretion of votes from the Leva Patels and Kolis. It sought to prey on the caste-based dissidence in the BJP led by former chief minister Keshubhai Patel.

Finally, the Congress was aware of the anger of a section of hard-line Hindu nationalists at Modi’s reluctance to concede political space to them. There was an obvious mismatch between this “Hindu” opposition to Modi and the Congress’ own avowed secularism. It sought to paper over the obvious contradictions by trying to ensure that the alliance remained covert and putting a lid on overtly sectarian issues, particularly those relating to the riots of 2002.

To my mind, the state Congress approach was clever but its success depended on the entire secular establishment abandoning its criticism of Modi as a Hindu ogre. It was fine to depict Modi as dictatorial, imperious and insensitive to inner-party sensitivities but the Congress was equally conscious of the need to keep Hindu-Muslim issues out of the campaign. In the Congress’ calculation, Modi could not be defeated by playing the secular card; he could only be thwarted by guile.

Sonia Gandhi’s “maut ke saudagar” speech on December 1 at Navsari upset the state Congress’ calculations. The BJP, which was looking for opportunities to raise the level of the campaign, naturally seized upon this remark. Modi expediently interpreted the remark as an insult to Gujarat’s pride and dignity. His subsequent references to Afzal Guru and Sohrabuddin Sheikh were aimed at re-kindling the “Hindu” Modi. An indignant media played into Modi’s hands by making him the centre piece of the election. Modi portrayed himself as the doughty crusader willing to take on a namby-pamby liberal establishment which is afraid of taking on the “enemy”.

Yet, it is unduly simplistic to perceive Modi as another crass practitioner of Islamophobia. If Modi’s reputation depended solely on his perceived ability to keep Muslims “in their place”, he would have lost his appeal once the scars of the 2002 riots started healing and disappearing. In December 2002, Modi definitely preyed on aroused Hindu passions and the sense of grievance at having been targeted by cosmopolitan India. The mandate which he secured five years ago was an articulation of the Hindu rage he epitomised. It was less a vote for him than what the electorate believed he symbolised.

It was different this election. Modi was always at pains to point out that in 2002 he was an unknown commodity — a former RSS pracharak who had just fought one by-election after he was parachuted into the Chief Minister’s chair in 2001. This election he was a known factor in Gujarat. For five years the electorate had the opportunity of seeing him at work, gauging his strengths and weaknesses and assessing him on their own terms.

It speaks volumes for Modi’s innate self-confidence (his detractors call it megalomania) that he was unmoved by the intensity of the assaults and the carefully aimed snubs directed at him. He deliberately chose to make himself the centre of the election campaign. A more cautious politician would have taken shelter behind the party or retreated into a shell. Not Modi. He revelled in controversy and wanted more. He put himself directly in the line of fire.

The results were there for everyone, except the wilfully blind, to see. As he criss-crossed his way through all the constituencies, Modi was greeted with the type of response politicians can at best dream of. His election meetings, particularly the late-afternoon and evening rallies, resembled the atmosphere of rock concerts with screaming fans —mainly youth and women — looking on him adoringly. There was very little organisational effort to attract crowds; his mere presence proved a magnetic draw. If the voting figures are anything to go by, a large percentage of them turned up on polling and voted for him. As many of them told me, they were not voting for the BJP; they were reposing their faith in Modi, the new icon of Gujarat.

courtesy : ahmedabadline.com