WOULD it not make breaking news if Narendra Modi gave a
sound bite saying he felt like an outsider in the RSS? That he failed to connect
with them intellectually? That he had nothing to do with the Ram temple
movement? Well, he did that in this campaign, and we missed it!
As journalists and editors, many times our self-absorbed
opinion making is self-serving too. So the only point that made news out of
British author Andy Marino’s political biography of Modi was his sadness on
2002 riots. Political observers did not bother to look beyond that in the book.
“Most of the time I found that they could not understand
me,” says Modi of his disconnect with the RSS on page sixty-two. During
brainstorming sessions, “I would always sit on the last bench, preferring to
listen than to participate,” is another quote.
Marino builds a narrative – with Modi’s due sanction it
seems – where the BJP's Prime Ministerial nominee is at odds with the Sangh Parivar on both legs
of its ideological moorings: economic and religious.
In this part of the book Marino is writing of a time when
Modi was yet to arrive in the BJP, so if he, with his economic thought, felt
like a misfit, clearly it must have been with the Sangh. Here’s what Marino
writes: “…the solution was to produce more wealth…that would entail an
alternative economic model…a free market economy…that this put him in opposition to Congress was obvious, but this placed him in
opposition to his own colleagues in the RSS whose outlook was equally
conventional...Modi’s economic thinking in this phase gave him a career full of
friction with his colleagues it seems, whom he attempted to persuade to accept
new ideas.” This is backed by a Modi quote: “Not a single proposal, not a single
initiative was appreciated…always there was resistance, always there were
questions.” The author adds Modi’s experience in the parivar, because of his
alternative views, his own way of looking at and approaching problems, was that
of an outsider.
On the other leg of the ideological diad – Hindutva and the
Ayodhya movement, Modi’s distancing is even more dramatic. When the Advani led
BJP was busy in the Ram temple movement, Modi on a sabbatical was setting up
his co-ed model school – Sanskardham – on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Marino
pleads that an objective and balanced assessment of Modi’s life must take note
of this. As ironies go, the book underscores that while Modi remained a mere
spectator, his arch rival and now Congress’ top leader in Gujarat, Shankarsinh
Vaghela was present in Ayodhya and is one of the 68 people indicted by the
Liberhan Commission.
Now why is this narrative important? Of whatever I know
about Marino’s book, it is by all accounts a sanitized biography. The kind of
access the author has been given is incomparable and decidedly deliberate. What
can be safely concluded is that contents of the book have clear sanction from
the Modi team. The narrative is what Modi wants to be known.
So this is the picture of his that Modi wants the world to
know: Yes, he is a product of the RSS, but he does not carry the
baggage of Sangh’s thinking on two of its most important moorings. On economics
he is going to be a free-marketeer, not a Swadeshi wonk. Comparison is drawn with Margaret Thatcher on page 235.
Page 193 mentions how Manmohanomics has impressed Modi, despite the jibes the
two have shared in the campaign. And on Ayodhya it’s an arms length. The lesson
Modi drew from Ayodhya was that India
could be governed from the centre…not the extremes. It is clear someone in Modi
team told the author this. On page 211, Marino says as much. Modi’s right wing
route was by now a reference not to chauvinistic Hindutva – distant, irrelevant
– but to the idea of the free market and innovative governance.
If in a week’s time Narendra Modi is India ’s next Prime Minister, this
is how he would want himself to be seen. India's Thatcher. Period.
