2014: The Election That Changed India (23 page)

Over the next five months from September 2013 to February 2014, Modi addressed several such large rallies across the country, from Arunachal to Andhra Pradesh, from Mumbai to Meerut. In Hyderabad, he laced his speech with Telugu greetings; in Mumbai, with Marathi. Most of the speeches were on weekends, when television audiences are often at home. The standing joke in office was—if it is a Sunday afternoon, forget all other programming, there will always be a Modi rally to telecast live.

On weekdays, Modi was busy criss-crossing the battleground states which were going to the assembly polls—he did fifty-five rallies in four states in October and November alone. ‘This was carpet-bombing, part one, a trailer for the general elections that were to follow,’ says an aide. The stakes were high—in all the four election states, the BJP was in a direct contest with the Congress. If the BJP
could sweep these states, it would be the ideal launch pad for the 2014 elections; the Congress, by contrast, would be demoralized by defeat.

The key state in the Modi game plan was Rajasthan. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had strong BJP chief ministers in office—even in victory, the glory would have to be shared. Delhi had been complicated by the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Rajasthan, though, was a state that could serve as a laboratory to test Modi’s appeal beyond Gujarat. Bordering Gujarat, it had a large tribal and rural population. ‘If we could score a big win in Rajasthan, we would know we were on the right track and our campaign was making a dent beyond our traditional voters,’ was how a Modi strategist described it.

It helped that the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, was someone Modi got along with. Raje, like Modi, was a fierce individualist. She had endured her fair share of run-ins with the patriarchal male-dominated RSS leadership in the state and wouldn’t be bullied into submission easily. Their private lives couldn’t have been more different. Raje likes her occasional glass of wine, is often spotted at Page Three events, has even walked the ramp and celebrates her birthdays with much joie de vivre. Modi, of course, leads a more austere life, though he’s partial to his designer kurtas, pens, watches and glasses, and even, I am told, shoes. And yet, the two of them made a good team. I once asked Raje what she liked about Modi. Her answer was breezily aristocratic. ‘He is a man of action who doesn’t bullshit around like the rest!’

It was in Rajasthan that Team Modi spent most of its energies in the 2013 elections. One of the campaign strategies here was to send 200 GPS-enabled mobile vans or digital raths with 50-inch LED screens across the state to reach out to far-flung villages where traditional media could not reach. The pick-up vans had images of Modi plastered all over them and the television set would play sixteen-minute videos of Modi’s best speeches. Every day, the vans would touch fifteen to twenty villages, almost like a modern-day
jatra
enacting a slice of political theatre. Says the Modi aide, ‘Our
aim was to create excitement in the village around the theme
“Modi aanewala hai!”’
(Modi is coming.) (See chapter 5 for more.)

When the results of the assembly elections streamed through on 8 December 2013, the Modi campaign team was delighted. The victories in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had run according to script. In Delhi, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party but a hung assembly had been thrown up. In Rajasthan, however, there was real reason to celebrate—not only had the BJP won, it had scored a historic three-fourths triumph. It had won a record 162 seats, with the Congress down to just twenty-one. Importantly, it had swept rural Rajasthan. Rajasthan, interestingly, was a state where the Congress and the Gandhi family had also invested heavily. Many of the party’s pet social sector programmes—be it NREGA or a free medicine scheme—had been incubated there. Moditva versus Sonianomics—Rajasthan settled that debate conclusively. It also extinguished any whispers within the Advani–Sushma camp in the BJP that Modi was the wrong choice for prime minister. The anger against the Gehlot government in Rajasthan was palpable, but no one had expected such a tidal wave. The one state where Modi had campaigned most aggressively had yielded the most spectacular result.

‘I think the scale of that win told us that we were onto something unique. This was a wave election in Rajasthan. If we could replicate the formula in other major states, Mission 272-plus was not a pipe dream,’ is how a Modi team member summed up the post-Rajasthan feeling.

Mission 272-plus had been calculated keeping in mind that the BJP did not have an all-India base like the Congress but was largely focused on north, west and central India. ‘A north-west monsoon seems to be building up in the BJP’s favour,’ is how I described on television the election mood after the assembly elections.

The belt from Maharashtra in the west to Bihar in the north had 314 seats across fourteen small and large states. In 2009, the
Congress had won 116 seats here, the BJP just eighty-nine. Now, the BJP needed to not just reverse that scoreline but virtually dominate this entire region and get a strike rate of at least 70 per cent of these seats, if not more. The key to fulfilling what seemed a highly ambitious target lay in the Indo-Gangetic plain, in the prized states of UP and Bihar. With 120 seats between them—UP with eighty and Bihar with forty—it was in these two states that Modi would now have to fight his biggest battle if he wanted to be India’s next prime minister.

Every election campaign has a defining moment, an
event which changes the course of the contest permanently. In the historic 1977 election, it was the
day senior minister Jagjivan Ram left the Congress, signifying the beginning of the end of Indira
Gandhi’s government. In 2004, it was arguably a stampede over saris being handed out to poor
women in Lucknow (where Vajpayee was the BJP candidate), which left twenty-one persons dead, raising
the first big question over the Vajpayee government’s India Shining campaign. The turning
point in the 2014 battle was probably 27 October 2013 when serial blasts ripped through
Patna’s railway station and Gandhi Maidan where Narendra Modi was holding a massive rally,
killing five and injuring more than eighty people.

The rally had been billed as Modi’s grand
arrival into ‘enemy’ territory. He had been kept out of Bihar for almost a decade at the
chief minister Nitish Kumar’s insistence. The BJP had been in an alliance government for eight
years with Nitish, who had made it clear that Modi was not welcome in Bihar because of the taint of
the Gujarat riots. When Modi was made the BJP’s campaign committee chief in June 2013, Nitish
had chosen to break the alliance. The war of personalities between Modi and Nitish was not just an
ego
clash. Priding himself on uncompromising religious neutrality, rugged
anti-Congress-ism and plebeian rootedness, Nitish had lost no opportunity after breaking with the
BJP to heap veiled scorn on those relying on PR machines, media and advertisements to build their
image. Nitish even seemed to be readying to set himself up as a national alternative to Modi,
thumbing his nose at a BJP that he felt had betrayed his trust. The BJP was yearning for
revenge.

The
hunkar
(a war cry) rally had been
planned by the state BJP for months. All over Patna, large posters of Narendra Modi had come up at
every vantage point—the city was dressed up to receive a special guest. The BJP had offered to
take correspondents from Delhi to Patna for the rally. The CNN-IBN bureau chief in Patna, Prabhakar
Kumar, was peeved and made his unhappiness clear. ‘Why do you always need to send reporters
from Delhi to cover a major event, sir? I am sure we can handle it on our own here,’ he
complained.

I tried to reason with him that this was a major
news event. ‘What if there is a bomb blast at the site, Prabhakar, what will we do then?
Surely, we need a stronger team on the ground,’ was my defence. Little did I or my Patna
colleague know that the words would prove eerily prophetic.

The rally was scheduled for noon but being a Sunday,
the crowds had begun to gather from early morning at the maidan. The BJP had organized buses to
bring in people from neighbouring districts for a show of strength; the trains, too, were
jam-packed. ‘This will be the biggest ever rally in the history of Bihar,’ the BJP
spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy told us.

‘Big’ in Bihar means
gargantuan—the Biharis love their politics. In no state is the political discourse as animated
as it can be in Bihar. Involvement in politics is almost a cottage industry for many Biharis. I had
once attended a Lalu Prasad ‘Lathi’ rally in 2003 against George Bush’s Iraq
invasion. I never understood why nearly 2 lakh people would gather to protest against a war in a
distant land, but they did. This time, Gandhi Maidan was poised for another massive show with some
estimates suggesting an audience in excess of 2 lakhs.

The first blast went off in
the toilet at platform ten of Patna junction at around 9.30 a.m. One person was injured. It sparked
a scare but remained a news flash. The station, after all, was far away from the Gandhi Maidan. Two
hours later, we knew we were dealing with a big breaking news story—between 11.40 a.m. and
12.15 p.m., four blasts ripped through areas in and around the maidan. A final blast took place
while BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain was speaking on stage. Hussain thought it was a
‘cracker’. It wasn’t. This was no longer just another incident on the campaign
trail—it was now clearly a major, possibly terror, attack on a rally of the BJP’s prime
ministerial candidate.

Modi was just landing in Patna when the blasts
occurred. BJP president Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley had already arrived. Jaitley was staying at
the Maurya Hotel that overlooks the maidan. ‘As a result, I reached the venue a little
early,’ recalled Jaitley. He was met by a senior officer of the Gujarat police who was
handling Modi’s security (the Centre still hadn’t given him special Z category cover).
‘Sir, we are asking Modiji to stay at the airport and not come to the venue. The rally will
have to be cancelled,’ the officer told Jaitley. The BJP leader consulted with Rajnath Singh
and the duo decided to stay put. ‘If we call off the rally, there will be total panic and
people could die in a stampede,’ was their fear.

The local Bihar police, which had clearly made
inadequate security preparations, was asked to prepare for an emergency situation in case there was
another blast near the stage. Four cars were lined up behind the main podium to whisk the top BJP
leadership away in any such eventuality. Modi by now had arrived on the stage and the crowd began
roaring his name out, almost oblivious to the crisis brewing around them. ‘It was a bizarre
situation. Serial blasts had taken place, but the crowd just wanted a glimpse of Modi,’
remembers a senior police officer. ‘I hadn’t seen anything like this.’

Knowing the urgency of the situation, Jaitley
completed his speech in just seven minutes. Rajnath Singh, who had promised to complete his address
speedily too, took twenty minutes. The crowd was getting restive; the police increasingly worried.
That’s when Modi took over.

In a forty-five-minute
speech, laced with phrases in the local Maithili and Bhojpuri dialects, Modi proceeded to tear into
Nitish Kumar’s government, calling the chief minister an ‘opportunist’ and a
‘hypocrite’. ‘Nitish Kumar has betrayed Bihar. He even betrayed his mentors
Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia. How can anyone trust such a man!’ he bellowed.

Modi emphasized his backward-caste credentials.
‘Congress leaders don’t know what poverty and hunger are. I used to sell tea on trains.
I know how difficult it is to get onto trains and make a living. Even the railway minister
doesn’t have my experience of the problems one faces on trains.’ He even reached out to
Muslims. ‘Our Muslim brothers in Bihar are so backward. In Gujarat, one of the fastest
developing regions is Muslim dominated. Let Hindus and Muslims come together and work towards ending
poverty. Our religion is India first. We have to maintain peace and harmony at any cost.’

He spoke of Bihar as the land of Buddha and
Mahavira. He even got a bit carried away (not for the first time) with the historical references,
wrongly claiming that Alexander was defeated by Biharis, and Taxila was in Bihar (when it is
actually in Pakistan). But these were only blips in what was clearly a virtuoso performance once
again.

Significantly, not once did he refer to the blasts
in his speech, only asking people to go home safely at the very end of his address. A few hours
later, he visited the injured in the hospital and expressed his solidarity with the victims. I asked
Modi later whether he had ever considered calling off the rally. ‘No, if we had called it off,
there would have been an even bigger calamity,’ he insisted.

This direct contact with a vast crowd is precious to
Modi. Whether yelling ‘Yes, we can’ in Hyderabad, or exhorting an Ahmedabad crowd with
chants of ‘Vande Mataram’ or extracting a laugh through colourful attacks on the
Gandhis, the moment of contact with the public, the seizing of mass attention, is Modi’s
biggest prize, a legitimization of and a spur for his leadership.

That day in Patna was no different. Modi made a
speech that
revealed a development-driven agenda—not divisive but
potentially unifying. He had refrained from falling into the obvious trap—a BJP leader could
easily have played victim and used the occasion to raise the familiar spectre of ‘Islamic
terrorism’ even without waiting for the investigation into the serial blasts to begin (much
later, the Ranchi module of the Indian Mujahideen would emerge a prime suspect). Most importantly,
he had shown strong ‘leadership’—staying calm and unflustered in the face of a
major crisis unfolding around him.

The crowds at Gandhi Maidan and beyond had
discovered a Modi trying to unshackle himself from a contentious past and evolve into the hope for
the future. The chanting was almost frenzied—the crowd wanted more. A rally per se
doesn’t define an election campaign but Modi’s Patna rally, with all the controversy
swirling around it, was a landmark event. It gave the BJP the confidence that its leader could evoke
a feverish response even in unfamiliar territory. ‘Till that day, we were looking at the
election from the point of view of conventional arithmetic. From that moment on, it was all about
chemistry,’ says Jaitley.

That very day, around the same time as the Modi
rally, Rahul Gandhi addressed an election rally in Mangolpuri in Delhi. Most news channels kept it
on mute, or ignored it altogether while focusing on Modi. There was to be only one obvious winner
that day. Sitting at home and watching the events unfold, Nitish Kumar must have been a worried man.
His government faced the serious charge of having provided lax security to his main political rival.
A new hero had entered the Bihar drama. Post-blast emotionalism, surcharged TV debates on the threat
to Modi’s life and consequent disillusionment with administrative measures began to gather
momentum. The battle for Bihar was about to be lost.

Some relationships are just not meant to be. The
equation between Modi and Nitish Kumar is one such. I remember asking Nitish over dinner a few years
ago what was it about Modi that enraged him
so much.
‘Isse kisi
vyakti se mat jodiye . . . yeh
Kisi
vyakti vishesh nahi hai, yeh ek vichardhara ki ladai hai . . .
Yeh desh secular hai aur secular rahega . . . kuch logon ko yeh pata hona chahiye . .
.’
(Please don’t link this to an individual, this is about an ideology. This is
a secular country and will always remain one, some people must understand this), was his response.
Typically, he did not refer to Modi by name; he would always refer to him in the third person.

But this was not just a simple ‘secular’
versus ‘communal’ divide, as Nitish would have us believe. When the 2002 Gujarat riots
occurred, Nitish Kumar was a minister in the Vajpayee-led NDA government. Unlike Ram Vilas Paswan
who resigned in protest, Nitish stayed on in the government. Nor did he call for Modi’s
removal. If he did protest, it was only in private. The public face of the NDA was Vajpayee, and
Nitish appeared content with the prime minister’s inclusive image. He even visited Gujarat as
railway minister and shared a stage with Modi.

Nitish’s formal break with Modi really began
only in November 2005 when he formed a majority government for the first time. That’s when he
realized that his long-term political future hinged on reaching out to at least a section of the
state’s Muslims. He could not be a durable chief minister of a state with a Muslim population
of 16 to 18 per cent by ignoring their concerns. One of those concerns was the nature of the Janata
Dal (United)’s alliance government with the BJP. So, Nitish drew a Lakshman-rekha for his
partners—his government would be guided by secular principles as defined by his socialist
past. Protecting Muslim interests was an unwavering commitment. To that end, Bihar would be off
limits for Modi. The BJP, as the junior partner, accepted the conditions.

Nitish had built a strong personal equation, in
particular with Jaitley. Whenever he visited Delhi, he’d go to Jaitley’s house for
dinner. He also had a special connect with his deputy, Sushil Modi of the BJP, who had gone to
university with him. With Bihar’s Modi by his side, he believed he didn’t need to worry
about having to deal with a Modi in distant Gujarat.

Two events changed it all. The first occurred during
the 2009
general election campaign. The NDA was holding a joint rally in
Ludhiana as a grand show of strength under the leadership of their prime ministerial nominee,
Advani. Nitish was reluctant to go, fearing Modi would also be present. Jaitley assured him that
this was a personal invite from Advani and his presence was important. Nitish had grown to respect
Advani; he agreed to make the trip.

No sooner had Nitish stepped onto the stage, Modi
rushed to greet him, took his hand and held it aloft to the cheering crowd. It may not have been
more than ten seconds, but the news channels had got their photo op, the newspapers a front-page
picture. Nitish was left red-faced. He told his aides that the Ludhiana hand grab had been a breach
of faith. ‘You did not keep your word,’ a fuming Nitish told Jaitley later. The BJP
leader insisted that it wasn’t a deliberate act.