2014: The Election That Changed India Read Online Free PDF

concerned, we had our BJP guest and our show was saved.
    In July 2001, when General Musharraf came visiting
for the Agra Summit, Modi came to our rescue again. We were on round-the-clock coverage of the
event, and needed a BJP guest who would be available for an extended period. Modi readily agreed to
come to our OB van at Vijay Chowk, the designated site for political panellists outside Parliament.
But when he arrived, it began to rain and the satellite signal stopped working. Without creating any
fuss whatsoever, Modi sat patiently through the rain with an umbrella for company and waited for
almost two hours in the muddy downpour before he was finally put on air.
    At one level, the determined desire to be on
television perhaps smacked of a certain desperation on Modi’s part to stay in the news and in
the limelight. This was a period when he had lost out to other leaders of his generation. Mahajan,
for example, had become prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s right-hand man and a leading
minister in the government. Sushma Swaraj was a great favourite with the party’s supporters
for her oratorical skills, and her decision to take on Sonia Gandhi in Bellary had given her a
special place as a fearless political fighter. Arun Jaitley was also slowly emerging as one of the
party’s all-rounders—a crisis manager, a highly articulate legal eagle and a credible
spokesperson on TV.
    Modi, by contrast, was struggling to carve a
distinct identity. He had been virtually barred from Gujarat, a state where a theatre of the absurd
was being played out with four chief ministers in four years between 1995 and 1998. In Delhi, Modi
was being accusedof playing favourites in Himachal Pradesh and mishandling
the political situation in Haryana. Moreover, as a pracharak, he was expected to remain content as a
faceless organizer and a backroom player. I would meet Modi often in this period, and sometimes over
a meal of
kadhi chawal
(he ate well but liked to keep his food simple), I got the sense of
a politician struggling to come to terms with his seeming political isolation. For an otherwise
remarkably self-confident man, he often gave way to a creeping self-doubt over his immediate
political future. I remember we once did a poll in 1999 on who were the BJP leaders to watch out for
in the future. Mahajan, Swaraj, even another pracharak-turned-politician Govindacharya, were
mentioned; Modi didn’t even figure in the list.
‘Lagta hai aap punditon ne desh mein
bhavishya mein kya hoga yeh tay kar liya hai!’
(Looks like you political pundits have
decided the country’s future), was Modi’s sharp response.
    Which is why news television became an ally, almost
a political weapon, for Modi in this period. It gave him a national profile in a crowded political
space. It also ensured that he remained in public memory, both in Gujarat and in Delhi. He was a
good party spokesperson—clear, direct, aggressive, often provocative. He did not pussyfoot
around the party’s commitment to Hindutva and never shied away from a joust.
    When the Twin Towers were attacked in New York in
September 2001, I was looking for a guest for my weekly
Big Fight
show to discuss the new
buzzword—Islamic terror. The BJP leaders in the Vajpayee government were for some reason
reluctant to appear on the programme. Modi had no such compunctions as he came and spoke out
strongly against what he said was one of the biggest threats to the country. ‘It has taken an
attack like 9/11 for India’s pseudo-secular media to finally use a word like Islamic terrorism
and wake up to the reality of how some groups are misusing religion to promote terror,’
thundered Modi in the programme.
    Little did I know then that Modi’s position on
Islam and terror would subsequently come to define his political identity. I also could not have
foreseen that the man who was one of my ‘go to’ BJP netasfor a
political debate would never again appear on a television show of this kind. Life