2014: The Election That Changed India Read Online Free PDF Page B

for Modi, the
country and even for me as a journalist was about to take a dramatic twist.

    Less than four weeks after appearing on
The Big
Fight
show on the 9/11 terror attack, Narendra Modi was sworn in as Gujarat’s chief
minister. It was a remarkable change in fortune for a leader who had found himself on the margins of
national politics till then. The change in leadership in Gujarat had been in the offing for some
time. Keshubhai Patel’s second term as chief minister had been disastrous. The BJP had lost a
series of municipal elections and assembly by-elections in the state in the 2000–01 period. On
26 January 2001, as the country was celebrating Republic Day, Kutch and Ahmedabad had been shaken by
a devastating earthquake. Instead of seeing this as a wake-up call, Patel’s government became
even more somnolent. The relief and rehabilitation measures were widely criticized. Modi himself
once told me in March that year, ‘Yes, we need to do more, else people will not forgive
us.’ Nature had delivered its verdict—the political leadership of the BJP was left with
no choice but to heed the message. It wasn’t easy—a strong section of the state
leadership remained opposed to Modi. In the end, it was the Advani–Vajpayee duo who pushed the
decision with the support of the RSS.
    On 7 October 2001, Modi became the first full-time
RSS pracharak to be made a state chief minister. It hadn’t been an easy ride. Born in a lower
middle-class family in Vadnagar in north Gujarat’s Mehsana district, Modi came from the
relatively small Ghanchi community, an OBC caste involved in oil extraction. This was a state whose
politics was dominated by the powerful landowning Patels. In early conversations, I never heard Modi
speak of his caste background or his years in Vadnagar. He did speak, though, of his RSS mentors
with great fondness. ‘Lakshman Inamdar, or Vakilsaab, is a Maharashtrian like you, he guided
mealways,’ Modi told me. ‘You should then speak better
Marathi!’ I teased him.
    A few days after he became chief minister I
interviewed Modi on the challenges that were now before him. ‘We have to rebuild Gujarat and
restore confidence in the people in our leadership,’ he said, sounding almost sage-like. I
sensed that he had been waiting for this moment for years. Some of his critics have suggested that
Modi ‘conspired’ to become chief minister. Veteran editor Vinod Mehta has claimed that
Modi had met him with files against Keshubhai which he wanted him to publish. Clearly, this was one
pracharak who was adept at the power game.
    A pracharak, or ‘preacher’, is the
backbone of the RSS-led Sangh Parivar. Mostly bachelors, they are expected to live a life of
austerity and self-discipline. Modi wasn’t a typical pracharak—he was intensely
political and ambitious. I had met several Gujarat BJP leaders who insisted Modi was constantly
plotting to ‘fix’ them. Modi was also a loner—when I met him in the BJP central
office in his wilderness years in the late 1990s, he was often alone. His contemporary,
Govindacharya, would be surrounded by admirers; Modi preferred to be in the company of
newspapers.
    Which is why becoming chief minister was a major
transition point in his life. As an organizational man, Modi had proved himself as hard-working,
diligent and passionate about his party and its ethos. Now, he needed to show that he could actually
be a politician who could lead from the front, not just be a back-room operator who had never even
contested a municipal election.
    Modi’s big chance came on 27 February 2002. I
was showering that morning when a call came from an old journalist friend from Gujarat, Deepak
Rajani. Rajani managed a small evening paper in Rajkot and had excellent contacts in the police.
‘Rajdeep, bahut badi ghatna hui hai Godhra mein. Sabarmati Express mein aag lagi hai. Kaie
VHP kar sevak us train mein thhe. Terror attack bhi ho sakta hai’
(There’s been a
big incident at