2014: The Election That Changed India (19 page)

The BJP national council in March 2013 at the Talkatora Stadium in Delhi was held against the backdrop of a mini crisis in the party. Just weeks earlier, Nitin Gadkari had been forced to resign as party president over allegations of financial impropriety. Gadkari claimed in private conversation that he had been done in by the BJP’s ‘Delhi leadership’, a euphemism for the party’s parliamentary wing. Rajnath Singh was brought back to head the BJP. The council was meant to ratify his appointment. It became instead an event that showcased the emerging star power of Modi.

At the two-day council meet, Modi became a Pied Piper. News cameras followed his every move, party cadres wanted to click selfies with him; every time his name was mentioned in any speech there were loud cheers, and he was given a standing ovation for a third successive win in Gujarat. ‘I hadn’t seen anything like this in the BJP,’ confessed a veteran BJP watcher. ‘The man’s popularity within the rank and file was even greater than Vajpayeeji in his pomp.’ Vajpayee, after all, was seen as a statesman in the Nehruvian mould; Modi was an ideologue who tapped into the BJP’s natural Hindutva moorings. The groundswell of support to anoint him as the party’s leader for the 2014 elections was rising.

Modi spoke on the second day of the meet. The speech was vintage Modi—he was addressing the party faithful, and the political aggression was back as he launched into the Gandhi family and the UPA government. ‘Sacrificing national interest for the interest of one family is the tradition of the Congress,’ thundered Mr Modi, going for the jugular. ‘They appointed a nightwatchman by naming Manmohan Singh as prime minister . . . the prime minister is nothing but a puppet of the Gandhi family.’ The 2000-strong cheering crowd chanted his name repeatedly. A political meet had become a show of strength.

That very day, Sushma Swaraj also spoke. Her speech, too, was powerful but stateswomanlike, as she reflected on the need to topple the UPA government. Her speech was applauded, with L.K. Advani even likening her oratory to Vajpayee. But while the television channels aired Modi’s speech without any advertising breaks (it would become a familiar practice over the next twelve months, causing loss in revenues to news channels!), Sushma Swaraj’s speech was shown only intermittently. In the TRP (television rating point) war, Modi was already the winner.

He also won another battle that day. Who amongst the BJP’s Generation Next would succeed the Vajpayee–Advani duo as the face of the party—the issue had unsettled the BJP ever since Vajpayee had lost the 2004 elections. Vajpayee and Advani had, after all, dominated BJP politics for almost four decades, a unique partnership that was respectful and competitive at the same time. The battle to become their successor had left the BJP looking like a Hindu Divided Family.

Swaraj as leader of the party in the Lok Sabha had been one hopeful—with her blazing red sindoor and big bindi, she might have come straight out of a
saas–bahu
set. A terrific campaigner and forceful public speaker, she had the backing of Advani who had groomed her. There was also Jaitley, the suave lawyer and election strategist, who was leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha. He had a strong equation with Modi, having given the Gujarat chief minister sharp legal advice through his many battles with the judiciary. He had even got his Rajya Sabha entry from Gujarat.

Swaraj and Jaitley disliked each other and their ‘camps’ would often accuse the other of planting stories against the other. Once a photograph came out in the newspapers of Sushma ‘blessing’ the Reddy brothers of Karnataka after they had just been indicted in a mining scam. ‘I know you have got this photo from Jaitley’s office only to discredit me,’ she told us.

A more charitable explanation of the Sushma–Jaitley cold war would be to call it ‘sibling rivalry’ between two individuals sharing a common space. Swaraj, in fact, once told me in half-jest, ‘
Arre,
tum toh Arun ke dost ho
[You are Arun’s friend], you go for a walk with him, you will only project him!’

Yes, Jaitley was part of our ‘middle-aged’ walking club in Delhi’s picturesque Siri Fort forest park before he moved to the more upscale Lodi Gardens, but to be honest, he liked to talk as much as walk! The loquacious, extroverted Jaitley is a natural raconteur—from politics to cricket to just simple gossip, he has more than a story a day to offer. As brilliant a host as he is a lawyer, Jaitley is an aficionado of fine food, and his parties are examples of big-hearted Punjabi hospitality, though his taste in cholesterol-heavy Moti Mahal
burra
kebabs probably does not please his physician. I don’t think I have met a politician with a wider circle of friends outside politics; within the power corridors, however, he was feared as much as admired. Feared because he never cloaked his fierce ambition in diplomacy, admired for his sophisticated and erudite debating skills. He was also totally wired into the media—if beat reporters of newspapers and channels had to vote for their favourite politician, Jaitley might win comfortably.

There was also Rajnath Singh, a former UP chief minister who liked to see himself as a consensus builder with friends across parties. As a proud Thakur from the Hindi heartland, he’d often been accused of strong caste loyalties and was not above low cunning, and sidelining his rivals. His personal astrologer had apparently told him 2014 would be a big year for him.

But for all their strengths, the triumvirate of Delhi-based leadership aspirants did not have a genuine mass base nor had they delivered election victories. The BJP was looking for a vote catcher and Modi in the spring of 2013 had the look and feel of one.

Three weeks after the national council meet, Modi was inducted into the BJP’s parliamentary board, its highest decision-making body, the only BJP chief minister to get that honour. A few days later, I interviewed Rajnath Singh and asked him the obvious question—would Modi now be made the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate? Singh, a smooth talker who had refined political diplomacy to a fine art, was evasive. ‘Our party has many capable leaders. We are
a democratic party and the parliamentary board will decide the leadership issue at the appropriate time.’ I persisted, ‘But isn’t Modi the most popular BJP leader today?’ Singh’s answer was revealing. ‘Yes, Narendrabhai is the most popular chief minister.
Logon mein unka jadoo toh hai
[There is Modi magic among people].’ I had got my answer. Modi was no longer first among equals. He was THE BJP leader of the future. Only one man disagreed—the person who had once been seen, ironically, as a mentor of the Gujarat chief minister. As Modi’s graph rose inexorably, a combative senior citizen readied for revolt.

Goa will always have a special place in the life and times of Modi. It was here that his political career was saved in the aftermath of the 2002 riots. And it was here in June 2013 that he was made the chairman of the BJP’s election campaign committee, the first step towards making him the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. If he had to fight for his chief ministership in 2002, he also had to battle hard to lead the party in 2013. At the centre of both fights was the BJP patriarch and the man who had redefined the BJP, L.K. Advani.

Advani is one of the most complex characters in Indian politics. I had first met him during the 1990 Ayodhya rath yatra, a seminal moment in his political career. Till then, he was seen as an organizational man, not a mass leader. The yatra imbued him with a certain nationalist machismo and transformed him into the ideological mascot of militant Hindutva nationalism. And yet, he would often be discomfited with the description. In one interview he told me, ‘I don’t know why the media keeps referring to me as a Hindu militant. There is not a trace of militancy in me.’ He then looked at his devoted wife Kamala and daughter Pratibha for endorsement. They both nodded in agreement.

Maybe Advani was the victim of an image trap, especially after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Maybe he was simply having to live with the fact that while his yatra had consolidated
a Hindu vote bank, it also led to communal riots. The divisive nature of that period in Indian politics meant that Advani could never become prime minister when the BJP first came to power in 1996, that honour going to Vajpayee instead. Vajpayee was seen as a statesman in the Nehruvian mould; Advani had been pigeonholed as a Hindutva ideologue.

And yet, the Karachi-born, Jesuit school-educated, English-speaking leader, who liked a Naipaul novel as much as he did a Hindi film, was always looking to evolve and reinvent himself. In 2005, he went to Pakistan and described Jinnah as ‘secular’ and an ‘ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity’. The remarks sparked off a controversy within the Sangh Parivar for whom Pakistan’s founder is a hate figure. Advani had to eventually step down as BJP president. It was almost as if his roots in the RSS would prevent him from breaking free from his past.

It was Advani’s ideological training in the Sangh that also, in a sense, defined his relationship with Modi. As a committed organization man, Advani had discovered similar skills in the young pracharak from Gujarat in the 1980s and had given him his first major break in the party. Advani believed in mentoring young people, and an entire generation of BJP leaders has been nurtured under his tutelage. Modi was one of them. That belief in Modi’s abilities had even led him to strongly insist that the Gujarat chief minister be allowed to continue in office after the 2002 riots when Vajpayee had decided to remove him. ‘Let’s be clear, if there was no Advani, Modi would have lost his chief ministership at the Goa national executive in 2002,’ one senior BJP leader affirms. ‘Only Advani could have changed Vajpayee’s mind that day.’

Now, the BJP’s national executive was meeting again in 2013 at the very same Marriott Hotel along Panaji’s Miramar Beach. Only this time, the party was preparing to announce Modi as campaign committee chairman for the 2014 elections. Advani’s supporters claim he was informed about the plan just twenty-four hours before the executive was to begin. That’s when he decided to stay away and boycott the meeting, citing ill health, and virtually forcing a
confrontation. ‘It wasn’t a personal fight with Modi. Advaniji was just upset that as the seniormost BJP leader he hadn’t been properly consulted before such a major decision was taken,’ claims an Advani insider.

But the public nature of Advani’s response suggested otherwise. A day after the Modi announcement was formally made in Goa, Advani announced his resignation from all party posts and shot off a three-paragraph letter to Rajnath Singh, claiming that the party had lost the ‘idealism’ of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya, Nanaji Deshmukh and Vajpayee. The letter stated: ‘For some time I have been finding it difficult to reconcile with the current functioning of the party, or the direction in which it is going . . . Most leaders of ours are now just concerned with their personal agendas.’ There was no mention of Modi in the letter, but it was obvious who the target of Advani’s ire was.

The letter, leaked almost immediately to the media, embarrassed the BJP just when it was poised to announce its 2014 campaign strategy. It also reignited divisions within the party. A small group, which included Sushma Swaraj, appeared to back Advani. At the Goa meeting, Swaraj had suggested that any announcement on Modi as campaign chief be deferred because Advani was not present. She was overruled. Swaraj always saw Modi as authoritarian even as she had abiding affection for Advani. She also knew her great rival, Jaitley, was close to Modi and was worried the duo were plotting to marginalize her. Veteran leader Jaswant Singh, who had already been isolated within the party, also decided to stay away from the executive. But apart from the handful of veterans, the majority of the party was firmly with Modi.

A worried Rajnath Singh consulted the RSS top brass in Nagpur who advised him to stick to the original decision on Modi. But the Sangh leadership was also keen that he broker a truce with Advani. Gadkari, who enjoyed the full trust of the RSS, was assigned the task. The Nagpur-based leader kept shuttling between Advani and Rajnath Singh’s residences. ‘I lost a few kilos in the process,’ he joked later. Modi called up Advani as well, and said he remained his
‘guiding force’. Jaitley met Advani for two hours and told him that as the man who had built the modern-day BJP, his newfound image as a dissident was only doing him harm. After forty-eight hours of a family soap-like political drama, Advani had little choice but to take back his resignation.

So, why did the eighty-five-year-old Advani attempt to stall Modi’s ascent? Critics suggest that the elderly leader had been driven by undiluted personal ambition, and that his family in particular was keen that he remain in the prime ministerial picture. ‘Advani had not got over the disappointment of 2009 and could not accept the fact that the party had now moved onto a new leadership as represented by Modi,’ says a BJP commentator. When a former political aide of Advani, Sudheendra Kulkarni, went on television calling Modi a ‘dictator’, it only seemed to confirm the belief that the Advani ‘camp’ had been spoiling for a fight. Kulkarni, though, denies drafting Advani’s letter of resignation.