A dam break to a farmer movement to party structure: a book on Modi digs out details

In the book, which is set to hit the stands soon, Singh lists a series of incidents that have contributed towards Modi finessing his electoral prowess and emerging as a strong leader.

One of the incidents he mentions is a flood in Morbi town in Saurashtra, a manufacturing hub for pottery and wall clocks, after a dam burst on the Machchhu river, on August 11, 1979. With government help delayed, social organisations stepped in to fill the gap. “What appears to have stood out in this relief operation was the focused approach of a team of RSS volunteers led by a young pracharak… known as Narendra Damodardas Modi. When the dam broke, Modi was in Chennai along with Nanaji Deshmukh of the RSS. He rushed back to Gujarat to organise relief operations.”

According to the book, this proved a major boost for the RSS, at a time when its political wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh had lost its identity after merging into the Janata Party.

Later, when farmers launched Khedu movement seeking free trade for their produce across states for best returns, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh roped in Modi in Gujarat and Om Mathur in Rajasthan to plan the agitation. When the agitation faced police action, Modi ensured that donations gathered by cadres from across the state went to families of victims of police firing, says the book. “For the first time, the movement expanded the Sangh Parivar’s base in the rural areas of Gujarat and effectively enhanced its social acceptability.”

Singh says that the gesture also helped “exorcise the ghost of Gandhi’s assassination that had got stuck with the RSS” by playing up the symbolism of Gandhi in the peasants’ movement.

The book also talks of a chariot procession planned on the lines of the Rath Yatra in Puri, at a time when it was banned due to a communally sensitive situation in Ahmedabad. The heavy police deployment was a hurdle, till an elephant housed in a temple complex for the procession broke the barriers. “All police arrangements were thrown out of gear, and before anyone could realize what was happening, the Rath Yatra had started. Since big elephants with trained mahouts were leading the charge, the policemen, having run helter-skelter, rearranged themselves and provided a security cordon to the yatra,” the book says. The procession came to be known as Swayambhoo Yatra, it adds.

“But of course, it did not happen ‘on its own (or Swayambhoo)’, and the elephant did not plan to defy the government order. There was a meticulous strategy behind it all. And it was widely attributed to Modi, even if there was never a credible acknowledgment from him,” the book says.

Singh further writes that the 1987 Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation elections helped Modi hone his skills as an organiser, having taken over when the structure of the city unit was “quite nebulous and loose”. Modi roped in popular leaders from other parties, mobilised the cadre, classified booths as per the attention they needed, and deployed workers accordingly, apparently overriding objections from senior leaders like Harin Pathak.

The book says that Modi prevailed against, among others, Latif, the gambler-turned-bootlegger-turned mobster who is believed to have been the model for Shah Rukh Khan’s role in Raees.

Singh writes that Modi’s strategy of building the organisation has held the BJP in good stead since, establishing a “unique harmony” between the party and government. Citing how he “carefully devises government schemes in a manner that is connected with people’s welfare at large without having overt political implication”, Singh predicts: “This predominant political position is unlikely to be unsettled in a post-Modi phase, as he will be leaving behind a robust political structure that will keep on creating its own icons of the time.”