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Is Modi the new Hindutva mascot?

M ABDUL HAFIZ
PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, badly bruised from the BJP's electoral reverses and a concerted attack on the party over Gujarat's communal violence has survived a censure motion in the Lok Sabha. The test of strength in the house is essentially a number game and can be won or lost depending on the manoeuvrability of the party in power.
The Gujarat tragedy has however delivered a grievous blow to the BJP while its government at the centre remained a passive spectator to the crime. But at the end, it is all the more a tragedy for Indian polity that one of its worst-known demons, Narendra Modi, the hero of hatred who organised and executed in connivance with they Hindu fanatics the country's first-ever programme of the Muslim minority, continues to stay at the helm.
More calamitous news emanated however from Goa where last month the BJP held its national executive amidst Modi wave of a sort. The timing of the Goa conclave could not be worse. Not since the time the BJP bagged only two seats in Lok Sabha in 1984 has it faced an eclipse of this magnitude.
Nothing seems to be going right for the party. The misery following the devastating defeats in three northern states has been compounded by the humiliation that the voters in Delhi once thought to be a BJP bastion heaped on the party in the recent municipal election where it won just 17 out 134 seats. Since the BJP led the NDA to power at the centre in 1998, the BJP has contested elections in 19 state assemblies, lost 14 and won 5, two of them as junior partner of other NDA allies.
It was against this setting that the members of the BJP's national executive assembled in the beach front of idyllic Goa. And the man in the middle here was none other than Narendra
Modi who captured the headlines for last four weeks for his complicity in the massacre in Gujarat. Modi was already the epitome of everything evil and loathsome. He was called the 'mass murderer', fascist and compared to Hitler and Nathuram Godse, Laloo Prasad Yadav the Rastriya Janata Dal leader petitioned the president for Modi's arrest. But the man himself was unfazed. When the mood of the entire BJP leadership was funereal in Goa it was Modi who called the shots the effect of which proved electrifying.
He had virtually seized the initiative by opening up a debate on Gujarat and expressing his wish to place his resignation before the august body for what he called 'free and frank' discourse. He earlier galvanised his supporters who came in his rescue and did the rest. In no time an infectious Modi effect was set in motion as inevitable catalyst of the future course of events.
Even if the Prime Minister may have thought Modi's offer of resignations as a welcome development for the sake of both his image and the unity of the coalition there was absolutely no way that he could go against the prevailing mood which was clearly not in favour of accepting the resignation of Modi who already transformed into a new Avatar.
Worse still was the metamorphosis in the Prime Minister himself. In the public meeting on 12 April last after the national executive meeting was over the mask fell off the face of Vajpayee who had so far been a 'moderate' a 'bleeding heart' liberal and a humane face of Hindutva only days before, in one of the refugee camps in Ahmadabad, the worst scene of communal carnage he visited at long last after six weeks. Vajpayee said that what happened was a 'national shame' and the carnage tarnished India's international image. But in Goa he visibly came under the spell of Modi effect and joined the 'Pariwar' to whitewash Modi's unpardonable crimes. Judging by the magnitude of Modi's complicity in Gujarat massacre and the outrage against it he
should have been reduced to the status of say, fugitive Mullah Omar running for his life. Yet, Modi persists defiantly thanks to the endorsement of his position with gusto by Prime Minister himself.
In his desperation to be accepted back in the good book of the Sangh Pariwar in Goa the castigated the Muslims almost out of context when he said in the public meeting that "wherever there are Muslims, they are unwilling to leave in peace" then to justify the violence in Gujarat he went to the extent of asking "Godhran mei aag Kisney Lagayi?" although it should be best known to him but according India's own print media as well as international news reports the vandalism of the karsevaks travelling in Sbarmati Express was no less responsible for the tragedy of Godhran. But unfortunately, Vajpayee asked the question more like an RSS Samaj Sewak. Although no credible probe has yet been carried out for Godhran mystery what Harsh Mander a Madhya Pradesh Cadre IAS officer circulated over e-mail about the origin of Godhran incident, of course, after his resignation has so far been the most authentic account of the horror. Mander was driven by his conscience to do it.
Misreading their political reverses which according to most observers, are due to the BJP's inability to deliver good governance the party hierarchy identifies it to be its going soft on their Hindutva agenda. In Goa there was almost a consensus to again take a hard Hindu line. The cry was for bringing back Hindutva with no compromise. After the apparent failure of BJP's stalwarts the choices are likely to fall on younger and insufficiently used party talents to carry the torch. In BJP's prevailing mood Narendra Modi with his impeccable records of how the party wants its agenda to be executed on ground perfectly fits in at least for the present.
M Abdul Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.