Edward Luce: Narendra Modi: India’s Jekyll and Hyde
If you want the best case for Narendra Modi, you can do no
better than read my colleague Gideon Rachman’s latest column – India needs a jolt. After a decade of prevarication under
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (to put it politely), India ’s
economy is languishing and investors have lost confidence in its reform story. Delhi
is almost permanently mired in corruption scandal and politics has turned into
a national joke. India
desperately needs a change. Who better than Gujarat ’s
chief minister to give the subcontinent the decisive governance it craves?
That, in a nutshell, is the rationale much of India ’s
secular elites have backed themselves into. It is a counsel of despair. Mr Modi
is certainly a decisive leader. In contrast to Mr Singh’s style of operating,
which has been dilatory and weak, files rarely gather dust in Gujarat .
Investments get swiftly approved. Projects are executed on time. And bribes are
rare. Gujarat continues to outpace most of India
in terms of its investment flows and per capita income growth. By electing Mr
Modi, India ’s
middle classes hope he can transpose Gujarat ’s story to
the national level.
That is the hope. It should also be the fear. Much like
Jekyll and Hyde, there are two sides to Mr Modi’s character. And the dark side
is very dark indeed. In addition to presiding over its impressive economic
performance, Mr Modi has killed the spirit of Indian secularism in Gujarat .
The region of Mohandas Gandhi’s birth has become a shrine to Nathuram Godse,
the Hindu nationalist who assassinated him in 1948. Twelve years after more
than 1,000 Muslims were killed in one of India ’s
most brutal pogroms, Muslims are treated as second class citizens in Gujarat .
Tens of thousands have fled the state altogether. Mr Modi’s apologists point
out that India ’s
Supreme Court cleared him of direct involvement in the 2002 riots. But absence
of proof is not the same as innocence.
I was living in
Mr Modi did not wait for any inquiry. Just a few months before facing re-election in a contest he was by no means certain to win, Mr Modi seized on the Godhra incident to show how decisive he could be. Citing
No one, Indian or foreigner, who covered the following,
gruesome, 72 hours, was in any doubt about the meaning of Mr Modi’s signal. For
three days and nights, mobs of fanatics went from house to house armed with
electoral rolls (to identify the religion of each household), dragged women and
children out of their homes, poured kerosene down their throats and ignited
them to crowds of cheering onlookers. The police in Ahmedabad and other
Gujarati cities did not intervene. After 72 hours, the police intervened and
the rioting stopped. Defenders of Mr Modi would have us believe that he lost
control of his own police force. That would make him a weak leader, which
contradicts his principal selling point. I do not believe that explanation. Six
months later Mr Modi won re-election in a landslide. As he put it at the time,
the Hindu majority had awoken.
Apologists also point out that Mr Modi has mellowed since
2002 and discarded the harsher sides of his communal ideology. They forget that
he is a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the quasi-fascist
Hindu militant group to which Gandhi’s assassin also belonged. He is a
life-long celibate in the cause of Hindutva – literally Hinduness – to which
the RSS subscribes. Given Mr Modi’s reputation as a Hindu nationalist, he can
afford to tack to the centre as far as he likes. He will never lose the Hindu
nationalist vote. This is the risk India ’s
beleaguered secular classes are taking. They want the sunny Dr Jekyll and pray
the nocturnal Mr Hyde has been put away for good. It is big bet.
For my part, I believe Mr Modi is a brilliant tactician who is saying and doing what it takes to reach