Narendra Modi’s most arduous battle begins now

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

In the middle of last year, I asked Narendra Modi — in the course of one of the interviews he granted when I was writing his biography — whether he wanted to throw his hat in the ring to be his party’s PM candidate.

Sitting on his imposing chair across the table in the office, Modi tapped his fingernails on the table, took a breath and said: “This is a very loaded question.” We were speaking in Hindi but he used the word ‘loaded’ in English. He continued: “If someone says that I will do whatever the party tells me, he gets trapped. And if someone says he has no interest, then also he gets caught. It is for writers to assess — will the party benefit by such a decision?” Some days ago, he told a public gathering that he wanted to serve Gujarat until 2017 — the year till when his party has the mandate in the state. His words confused adversaries, supporters and analysts. Was Modi giving up in the face of stiff resistance?

Despite such public assertions there was never any doubt in Modi’s mind about his goal. For the past two and a half years, Modi has relentlessly pursued his ambition of becoming his party’s electoral mascot and the leader of the rump that it would lead into the polls. ‘Rump’ because Modi knew his march on the anti-Nehruvian plank that he consciously walks on, would make existing partners uneasy and new ones difficult to find.

Prior to Friday’s triumph, Modi was victorious in four vital recent battles. In the first one in May last year, he eased out old bête noire, Sanjay Joshi, and revived an estranged relationship with the dominant section of the RSS. In December 2012, Modi won his third successive mandate. In March this year, Modi got his second target, Nitin Gadkari, by allying with his guru-turned-chief adversary — LK Advani. Finally, in June, he got Rajnath Singh to appoint him chief of the campaign committee.

Through all battles Modi did not change tack and made token gestures to dilute his Hindutva stance. He got people in the audience — in Jaipur recently — to don skull caps, but personally did not make any gesture or statement to seek atonement for 2002. It is a great risk he has taken and coerced majority sections within the party to accept, but for the moment, this — in their reasoning — is the party’s best hope to change its image of being a ‘B’ Team of Congress.