Kishwar on Narendra Modi

“One cannot help but get the impression that Modi’s sympathy for those who were charred to death by anti-social elements at Godhra was held against him as a cardinal crime. An even more cardinal crime was that his government took prompt action and arrested and put on trial those who led or masterminded the Godhra killings. The fact that Modi did not try to underplay the seriousness of Godhra incident and condemned it as an example of anti-national activity made enemies of all those whose politics thrives on garnering the Muslim vote bank through inculcating a sense of permanent victimhood in such ways that even if Muslim criminals and terrorists are nabbed, they cry foul and dub it as an instance of anti-Muslim bias. It is the same mind-set that defends Kashmiri secessionists, guilty of unleashing ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the Valley but have never taken up the cause of Kashmiri Pandits, even though they were ousted from their homeland through violence and terror. The media tried bulldozing Modi into de-linking the post-Godhra riots and the Godhra incident but because he did not yield to that pressure, he was painted as a Hindu bigot.”

“The Congress Party and the Left have studiously built a demonology around Narendra Modi alleging that, from the moment he took charge as CM, he began his mission to polarise Gujarat on religious lines and orchestrated the 2002 riots in order to consolidate Hindu votes and force Muslims to live as terrorised second class citizens. .... Before I undertook this study, I too was inclined to think that Modi kept Gujarat riot-free after 2002 only because he learnt that the 2002 riots had boomeranged on him. However, when I looked closely at Modi’s tenure from the moment he took oath as chief minister on October 7, 2001, I realised how completely off the mark I had been.”

“The Congress Party got into panic because Modi refused to live up to the negative stereotype of a rabid Hindutva-vaadi leader who spat fire at the Muslims or Christians. He was neither speaking the language of phobic nationalism, nor mobilising any caste or community vote bank. The way he introduced transparency made it difficult to accuse him of personal corruption, nepotism, or incompetence. Modi’s development agenda had, in fact, depolarised the politics of Gujarat. In every speech that he delivered, in every programme that he unveiled, he addressed all the five crore people of Gujarat irrespective of religion, caste, or creed. And yet the entire spectrum of national media, both print and television, put their services at the disposal of the Congress and the Left parties to launch a tsunami of misinformation peddled by NGOs against Modi and made him into such a hate-object that no one, including the BJP, dared defend Modi firmly. All his good deeds were systematically brushed under mounds of lies they fabricated. No one wanted to give him a hearing. ...With eminent academics becoming part of the demonisation campaign, even young scholars kept away from the state.... That is how the web of deceit constructed by NGOs under the guise of defending minorities became not just the dominant but also the only acceptable narrative on Modi and the 2002 riots.”