KS Muralidharan
So what is trending today about Narendra Modi? 9 out of 10, every day brings a new hate or a cussword against Modi. But one trending charge that is stuck on him like a broken record is parroted every week, and that is, Modi is vindictive.
Almost to a man, the opposition to BJP has routinely accused Narendra Modi of being a vindictive leader at some time or the other, be it the Congress at the national level or regional leaders from Chandrababu Naidu, MK Stalin and Siddaramaiah to Uddhav Thackeray, apart from his critics in the media. In fact, this accusation goes back even to his days as the Gujarat CM. But what is the truth?
First, let us consider the basis of this accusation, in the past and now. During his Gujarat days, one of the main reasons for this “vindictiveness” was his spat with the local VHP unit, especially Praveen Togadia. But no one will tell you that the reason for the spat in the first place was due to Modi taking a tough stand as CM in the days following the Godhra incident, and not toeing the Togadia line. The VHP under Togadia in Gujarat was very strong and wanted to control Modi, but he stood firm and refused to be used as a pawn in their game. At the same time, we must also remember the political somersault which Togadia went on to do out of his hatred for Modi, when he even contemplated to contest against Modi in Gujarat. Eventually, while Togadia’s credibility hit rock-bottom and he became irrelevant, Modi’s stock only rose and rose higher.
So while this allegation does not really stand on facts, the media and the ecosystem historically ill-disposed against Modi continued to color such and other incidents, using other straws in the wind which were just slanted views blowing in the wind, deliberately touted as a truth blowing in the wind.
In 2014, when Modi became the PM, the media and the opposition latched on to how he “sidelined” his mentor, LK Advani when he was sent to the Margdarshak Mandal, mischievously described as a sort of old-age home for the forcefully retired leadership in the BJP.
Now that it has been decided to honor LK Advani with the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest award, this allegation has simply no legs to stand on.
In this context, it is all the more instructive to remember that there was good reason for Modi to be vindictive towards Advani, if he really wanted to.
In 2013, when Modi was named the PM candidate from the BJP, Advani not only opposed his candidacy, but also flirted with fleeting thoughts about even deserting the party he built from oblivion to national prominence. According to insiders, leaders like Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley persuaded him not to take such a drastic step and to gracefully accept the party line.
In an ironical twist of fortunes, Advani voluntarily gave up prospective power in favor of his mentor, Atalji in 1995, when he named him the PM candidate of the BJP, at a time when his sown stock was at the highest within the party and over and above Atalji’s for the first time ever. Less than two decades later, hubris overtook him when he could not digest his political heir being chosen as the PM candidate overlooking him, never mind that he was in his mid-80s.
If ever you wanted a perfectly valid reason to be vindictive, it was this. But there is more.
The bestowing of the Bharat Ratna on Atal Behari Vajpayee too is another previous instance of nailing the lie about a vindictive Modi. Just as in Advani’s case, in Atalji’s case too there was a compelling context for Modi to be vindictive, if indeed he was.
It is now well documented that in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, the then PM, Vajpayee had prevailed upon his party leader, Advani to seek Modi’s resignation as the CM, as “the party had to be seen to be doing something in the face of the media onslaught, the global image of India and the tormenting situation in Gujarat”. As it transpired, though Modi, who got wind of this through his sources in the party, offered to resign on his own at the national executive meeting, he was retained under raucous and visible pressure from the party workers, the likes of which a regimentally disciplined BJP had not witnessed before.
The fact is, two of the biggest mentors of Modi, one of whom handpicked him for party posts and for being the charioteer cum organizer of the Rath Yatra in the 1990s — which was instrumental in bringing BJP to national prominence and to power in Delhi — and the other who picked him to be CM of Gujarat in late 2001, both of them had also gone against him, for different reasons that were relevant at the time.
In retrospect, a vindictive Modi, would certainly be expected to not forget this hurt, and at the opportune time, avenge the wrong done to him. Would he instead think of awarding them the country’s highest honor? And at a time when he had hardly anything tangible to gain in terms of political value?
If at all it showed anything, it was only Modi’s gratitude to his mentors, which is the exact opposite of being vindictive. The fact that Modi ignored the slight plotted against him by his mentors (and it was not at all slight), which, if they had had their way, would have finished his political career, and gone ahead to confer them with the highest national award, reveals, over and above gratitude, a heightened sense of complete devotion to his mentors, warts and all.
If even this is not sufficient enough evidence for the diehard Modi-baiters, consider the way Modi has handled Nitish Kumar, his foe turned friend, about 3–4 times.
Modi’s treatment of Nitish Kumar most clearly reveals that calling Modi vindictive would not be just stupid and untruthful, but unimaginable even for a man who has lost his sanity.
Till a few weeks ago, Nitish Kumar aspired to be the opposition’s PM candidate against Modi, and rightly so, as he was the first to take the initiative to stitch together the disparate opposition parties into a national INDIA alliance against Modi, But when his party, the JDU faced a poaching threat from his own state ally, the RJD, he promptly re-embraced the NDA.
Now, the BJP, which had openly declared that his doors are permanently shut to Nitish Kumar, took him back because of hard political calculations in the 40 LS seats in Bihar. At the same time, it is not like the NDA was in such a weak wicket in the state for them to do a Nitish. Without Nitish, maybe around 8 tough seats may have been on the line for the BJP to win. Further, today, Nitish Kumar is widely accepted by most commentators to have lost his political clout, and his image as a Sushasan Babu is a joke.
But if you add a vindictive Modi to the mix, then a vindictive BJP would have definitely not relented to accept Nitish Kumar back — when it had little to gain, and when Nitish Kumar’s own political capital was negligible and nose-diving by the day. And horror of horrors, it would have most definitely not rolled out the red carpet to a man who plotted to be the challenger to Modi himself!
The BJP would have preferred to let him fry in his own self-created boiler plate. If his party, the JDU was under threat of splitting, so much the better for the BJP to prey on their MLAs and fatten its slice of the pie in Bihar!
So the re-entry of Nitish Kumar most effectively nails the lie of Modi being vindictive.
Be that as it may, the opposition and the anti-Modi ecosystem will continue to parrot the line that Modi is vindictive. To be vindictive, one, howsoever high or virtuous, has to be petty. And Modi is anything but petty. Mind it!