2014: The Election That Changed India (8 page)

A Sadbhavana Yatra was a good first step but clearly
not enough to provide a healing touch. Nor would a token apology suffice. In my view, Modi needed to
provide closure through justice and empathy. He did not provide Gujarat’s riot victims with
either. Their sense of permanent grievance would only end when they were convinced that their chief
minister wasn’t treating them as second-class citizens. In the end, the high-profile,
well-televised yatra only served as a conscious strategy to recast Modi’s image as a potential
national leader who was now ready to climb up the political ladder.

How should one analyse Modi’s complex
relationship with Muslims? Reared in the nursery of the RSS, political Hindutva had been at the core
of his belief system. His original inspiration was the long-serving RSS chief Guru Golwalkar, whose
rather controversial writings, especially
Bunch of Thoughts
, see the Indian Muslim as
anti-national. Modi had been careful not to endorse Golwalkar publicly after becoming chief
minister, but one sensed he could never distance himself fully from his early training (not a single
Muslim was ever given a ticket by Modi in Gujarat).

Gujarat, too, had seen decades of Hindu–Muslim
conflict. In the land of the Mahatma, the Gandhian values of religious tolerance and pluralism
coexisted uneasily with a xenophobic hatred for the
‘Mussalman’.
Certainly, every time I visited Sabarmati Ashram in the heart of Ahmedabad, it felt like an oasis of
harmony amidst the prevailing communal separateness. For the socially conservative Gujarati middle
class, Modi seemed to represent a Hindu assertiveness they could identify with.

A year after his Sadbhavana Yatra, in September
2012, Modi had hit the road again. Ahead of the December 2012 assembly elections, there were
concerns that a poor monsoon and anger against local MLAs could hurt the Modi government. Modi
realized the need to directly connect with the voter. He launched a statewide Vivekananda Yuva Vikas
Yatra, ostensibly meant to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of the saint, but primarily
designed to set the stage for the Gujarat election campaign to follow. Modi had long claimed to be
inspired by Vivekananda, and by publicly identifying with him, he was looking to appropriate his
legacy of ‘inclusive’ religiosity. This was again typical of Modi—he had this
instinctive ability to create a well-marketed political event that would raise his profile.

I met Modi on the yatra in Patan district of north
Gujarat. The choreography of the interview, not just the content, was fascinating. We had travelled
around 150 kilometres to catch up with Modi. Dressed in a colourful turban, he was surrounded by
supporters. When we finally got time with him in his spacious van, we set up to do the interview in
a fairly large space at the rear end of the vehicle which allowed for proper seating and lighting.
Modi refused to do the interview there. ‘I will be sitting next to the driver—you will
have to do the interview where I am!’ he said. ‘But there isn’t space for me to
sit next to you, so how do I do the interview?’ I asked. Modi smiled. ‘That is for you
to work out!’

The interview was eventually done with me on the
footboard of the vehicle, the cameraperson seated on the dashboard. It was perhaps Modi’s
rather characteristically perverse way of reminding me of my station in life as a humble journalist
who was interviewing a Supreme Leader. Or perhaps of putting the English-language television media,
which had haunted him all these years, in its place. To this day, Modi’s relationship with the
English-language media
continues to be adversarial, even though there are
many in its ranks who would be happy to be counted as his cheerleaders.

While he predictably stayed silent on any question
related to an apology for the riots, turning away rudely from the camera, he did answer my question
on whether he planned to move to Delhi if he won the Gujarat elections a third time. His answer was
typically combative. ‘Have people of this country assigned you and the media the task of
finding the next prime minister’?’ When I repeated the question of whether the next PM
would be from Gujarat, his answer was cryptic. ‘I am only focused on Gujarat and dream of
building a strong state.’

Interestingly, I had asked him a similar question
about his prime ministerial ambitions during the
Hindustan Times
Summit in 2007. Then, too,
he had spoken of his love for Gujarat and how he was not looking beyond the state. Then, I had
believed him. Now, his responses seemed to be more mechanical and lacking conviction. As he turned
away from me, I could see a celebratory glint in his eyes—it suggested to me that, with
victory in Gujarat almost assured, Modi was now ready to stake a claim for the biggest prize in
Indian politics.

As with Narendra Modi, 2012 was a crucial year for
the Congress’s heir apparent Rahul Gandhi as well. He was turning forty-two, still
‘young’ by Indian political standards but no longer a novice in public life. If the
Gujarat assembly election battlefield at the end of that year was Modi’s Kurukshetra, then the
Uttar Pradesh elections at the start of it were a severe test for the man blessed with the most
famous surname in Indian politics.

Uttar Pradesh was, after all, not just the most
populous state in the country—it was the
karmabhoomi
of the Gandhi–Nehru family
stretching back several generations. The family tag had bestowed him with a ‘national’
leader status almost instantly, but Rahul Gandhi needed to prove himself on home turf to the
Congress party and beyond. Rahul understood that, which is why through much of the summer of 2011 he
had slogged it out in the heat and dust of UP, courting arrest during a farmers’ agitation
over land acquisition in the western UP village of Bhatta Parsaul and then starting off on a
padyatra
through the affected areas. Sleeves rolled up, both literally and metaphorically,
he seemed ready for a big fight.

As the build-up to the UP elections continued, Rahul
was drawing crowds and eyeballs. His Hindi had visibly improved, his
speeches
appeared less staccato and there was a definite energy in his campaign. Through this period, I had
been attempting to contact him for an interview. But chasing Rahul is never easy—ensconced in
a feudal political structure, the heir to the Congress family fortune would hardly ever reply to
email and phone queries. A wall of deafening silence existed between him and me. Which is why I was
pleasantly surprised one late evening in the middle of February, while UP was in the midst of a
seven-phase marathon election, to receive a call to say that Mr Gandhi would be pleased to have
breakfast with me the next morning.

There was only one slight hitch—I was in
Mumbai doing a live show on the city’s civic elections when the call came. My appointment, I
was told, was at 8 a.m. sharp. No early morning Mumbai–Delhi flight would get me back on time
and I was too late to take the late-night flight. Thankfully, I discovered that there was an
international flight at 2.30 a.m. which ferried hordes of migrant workers from Mumbai via Delhi and
Lucknow to the Gulf. So, seated amidst a large crowd of sleepy, rather desperate-looking Indians
heading out to make their future in the Saudi capital, I finally reached our national capital. A few
hours’ sleep and I was on my way to Rahul’s office-cum-residence at 12, Tughlak Lane,
bleary-eyed but hopeful that my long vigil for an interview was over.

On arrival, I realized I wasn’t the only
editor who had been summoned to the ‘court’ of Mr Gandhi. What I presumed was an
interview was actually an informal press conference. Chai and idlis had been laid out and Mr
Gandhi’s man Friday Kanishka Singh was bustling around making sure every journalist was
feeling comfortable. When Mr Gandhi arrived, he apologized for the last-minute invitation but
mentioned he’d been awfully tied up crisscrossing UP. ‘But I shall be happy to take all
your questions,’ was the earnest assurance.

Editors in a group can be terribly competitive and
self-important. Each one of us was attempting to outdo the other by asking that one question which
would be seen as truly ‘newsy’. I asked two questions. The first was whether Rahul had
ever considered putting himself up
as the Congress’s chief ministerial
candidate for Uttar Pradesh. After all, Mayawati was the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) incumbent
chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav was the face of a potential SP government, why should anyone vote for
the Congress when the party didn’t even have a chief ministerial nominee? Even Jawaharlal
Nehru had cut his teeth in Allahabad politics and had even been the city’s mayor, so why
didn’t Rahul Gandhi offer himself to the UP voters as their man in the Lucknow hot seat?
‘Good question,’ said Mr Gandhi. ‘I would be very happy to do that, but my party
is a national party and won’t allow me to just focus on one state.’ Matter closed.

My second question was a little more controversial.
Was it true that the Congress party was waiting for Rahul to take over as prime minister, and Dr
Manmohan Singh as prime minister was a bit like Bharat in the Ramayana doing a holding job for Ram?
The question was perhaps framed rather crudely or was considered inappropriate. Either way, it
touched a raw nerve. ‘I resent that, Mr Sardesai!’ was the terse, angry response.
‘The prime minister is doing a fine job and a question like this only belittles Dr Singh in a
manner that I find unacceptable.’ I had been suitably admonished. For the next hour, Mr Gandhi
took other questions and lectured us on how UP was caught in caste and community politics, and how
he could have easily lived abroad but had chosen instead to serve the people of the
country—almost it appears out of a sense of noblesse oblige. I silently ate my idlis.

When the session was over, some of us asked if we
could carry quotes from the interaction on the channels. I had already mentally conjured up a
headline: Rahul wants to be chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh but his party won’t
let him! But we were all in for a severe disappointment. Just as we were all drafting headlines and
working out the pitch, bang came the spoiler. ‘Sorry, this is all off the record, I
don’t want any controversy in the middle of an election,’ we were commanded by the
Gandhi scion. My 2.30 a.m. flight with the bleary-eyed Gulf-bound breadwinners had been in vain.

So why had a galaxy of editors been summoned in the
first place? The answer came from an old Congress source. Apparently,
Mr
Gandhi had found the ground was slowly slipping away from the Congress in UP. Yes, his rallies had
attracted sizeable crowds, the television cameras had focused on him, but the votes, not
surprisingly, seemed to be going elsewhere. The enthusiasm of the previous summer when Mr Gandhi had
led a farmer agitation had given way to the harsh realities of a UP winter where it was becoming
increasingly obvious that the SP was in pole position to gain from the anger against the Mayawati
government. The meet-the-press was designed almost as an anticipatory bail application. Mr Gandhi
wanted to tell media leaders that he had tried, and tried hard, but that rebuilding the Congress in
UP was a long-term project that would require more than one election to fructify.

A few weeks later, on 7 March, the UP results were
out. The SP swept the elections. Akhilesh Yadav, not Rahul Gandhi, was the new great hope of UP. The
Congress ended up with twenty-eight seats in the 405-member assembly, just six more than what it had
got in the 2007 elections. The Rahul factor, if there ever was one, had failed. If this was a
cricket match, the captain would perhaps have been dropped. But this was the Congress party, where
the Gandhi family were not just the captains but the coach, manager and chief selectors too. As the
enormity of the Congress defeat sunk in, the enduring image for the television cameras was a rather
forlorn-looking Rahul Gandhi being consoled by sister Priyanka as the two of them, arms around each
other, walked into the forbidding gates of 10, Janpath. If 2012 was the year that Narendra
Modi’s national ambitions began to crystallize, it was also the moment when Rahul Gandhi was
given a rude wake-up call. A durable family name was not enough to overcome serious deficiencies in
his political persona.

A boyish-looking Rahul Gandhi made his political
debut in 2004. The decision to formally enter politics, like so much else in the Gandhi family, was
taken at the dinner table with Sonia Gandhi and sister Priyanka in attendance. Rahul, we were told,
was the apple of
his mother’s eye—‘She just can’t say
no to him and he can be very obstinate,’ is what a family friend told me—and Sonia was
keen to see him take over what, for all purposes, had become a family business. Till then, he had
zealously guarded his privacy. There was the occasional gossip item of a Latin American girlfriend
he had been photographed with but little else. Rahul, we were told, was working with a management
consultancy firm in London, was not particularly enamoured of politics and was still debating
whether to live abroad or return to take forward the family legacy. He had seen his grandmother and
father assassinated while still in his teens, had been forced to change his surname at Cambridge to
ensure security, and had consciously shunned the limelight. And yes, he was still a bachelor.

His mother and sister had adopted different
trajectories. Sonia Gandhi had entered politics in 1998 after a bloodless but rather unseemly coup
in which veteran Congressman Sitaram Kesri had been removed overnight as party president.
Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi had married young, was a mother of two and had also acquired a
slight political profile while handling Sonia’s campaign in 1999. I had spent a day filming
with her at the time and must confess was thoroughly charmed. Forthcoming and attractive, with a
striking resemblance to her grandmother Indira, Priyanka had then come across to me as a potential
leader for the future. I still remember a local UP Congress leader, Akhilesh Singh, telling me,
‘
Dekhna, ek din Priyankaji bahut badi neta banegi!’
(Priyanka will one day
become a big leader.)

All that changed in 2004 when it was formally
announced that Rahul Gandhi would be the Congress candidate for Amethi, the seat from where his
father Rajiv and uncle Sanjay had contested. That general election was expected to offer little hope
to the Congress’s declining fortunes. The BJP, under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was the
overwhelming favourite for a hat-trick of victories. India Shining was the buzzword and most opinion
polls were predicting a comprehensive win for Vajpayee, the BJP’s original vikas purush.

After we broadcast the results of one such pre-poll
survey, I was
called for an informal chat with Sonia Gandhi to her residence
at 10, Janpath. It was only the second time I had visited the home of the Congress leadership; the
previous occasion was an interview with Sonia Gandhi after a court order had exonerated Rajiv Gandhi
in the Bofors case. With life-size pictures of Rajiv Gandhi on the wall and photographs of Nehru and
Indira, the main room in 10, Janpath is an in-your-face reminder of the family tree that has
dominated the country’s post-independence politics. It can also be a little intimidating since
there is an almost eerie silence when you enter. ‘Are you sure we are doing so badly as your
polls suggest?’ was Mrs Gandhi’s pointed query. I was about to explain our poll
methodology, when a rather shy, tentative-looking Rahul entered the room, and was promptly
introduced by his mother.

We shared polite smiles. Slightly nervously, I began
to show our data to mother and son. Mrs Gandhi seemed concerned, the son a trifle dismissive.
‘How can anyone do serious polling in a country of India’s size with such a small
sample? I’ve done market research and know how difficult it can be to get these things
right,’ was Rahul’s initial response. He struck me at first sight as someone who
didn’t have too much time for pollsters or journalists. In fact, he almost deliberately
demonstrated his scorn for urban election pundits in the usual fashion of a newly minted grass-roots
embracer. As I attempted to defend my case, Rahul’s mobile rang. He excused himself and did
not return. Mrs Gandhi remained attentive to our presentation. The contrast was striking.

The family picture was complete when Rahul filed his
nomination for the 2004 elections. Son with mother and sister next to him and brother-in-law Robert
Vadra just behind—the nomination ceremony in Amethi was a family affair. Watching it was an
audience which, in Amethi at least, appeared umbilically tied to the family. We were attempting a
‘follow the leader’ programme, which essentially involved tracking a leader for
twenty-four hours. It was a terribly hot April and the team’s energy was flagging badly in the
heat. To make matters worse, the Special Protection Group (SPG) had created a firewall between Rahul
and us. We spent four days in Amethi,
seeking to speak and film with Rahul
but with virtually no success.

Rahul just didn’t seem interested in speaking
to us. We even chased him on a late-night walk with his brother-in-law, but to no avail.
‘Look, if I speak to you, I will have to speak to every news channel, and I don’t want
to do that at this stage,’ was his firm response. When he finally did address the media in
Amethi, it was almost as if he had been coerced into it. ‘I just want to take my
father’s legacy forward and fulfil the work and dreams he had for Amethi,’ was his
answer to most questions. Any slightly loaded political question was deflected. ‘I am not the
leader of the Congress—you must ask Soniaji about this.’

Political novice or simply a shy recluse, the family
surname was enough for Rahul to win his first election from Amethi very easily. What was more
surprising was that the Congress and its allies emerged as the leading pre-poll grouping, leaving
all opinion pollsters wondering where they’d gone so horribly wrong. The ‘aam
aadmi’ plank had got the better of India Shining, and flawed alliances in Andhra and Tamil
Nadu contributed to the Vajpayee government’s shock defeat. That wasn’t the only
surprise. In a political masterstroke, Sonia Gandhi decided she would forego her prime ministerial
claims, and chose Manmohan Singh as her nominee. She had listened, she claimed, to her ‘inner
voice’. With that one decision, she buried the debate over her foreign origins, achieved the
halo of apparent renunciation and blunted, at least for the moment, the BJP’s searing attack
on her.