New Delhi: In 2012, a year before the BJP declared him to party’s Prime Ministerial candidate, the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi believed that only he could bring about a “tectonic shift” to India’s political scenario.
While sharing his thoughts with the former editor of Organiser, RSS mouthpiece, Mr Modi was not merely “aware of his immense popularity” but “expressed fear” if the Sangh Parivar did not back his candidature, “a great opportunity maybe lost.”
These are a few excerpts from the book on Modi, “Creative Disruptor: The Maker of New India” by the former editor of Organiser, R. Balashankar. The book will be released by BJP chief, Mr Amit Shah on December 10.
While analyising Modi the politician, Mr Balashankar writes: “He was strikingly unlike most of his colleagues in his party and in other parties. He was clearly a man in a hurry.” The author once asked the Prime Minister about the secret of his success. “His reply was eloquent: Mein swayam ko mitane ki kshamta rakhta hun (I possess the capacity to even destroy myself in pursuit of my aim).” What he meant was that he works like a karmayogi without bothering about the outcome.
Talking about the attacks and murders of free thinkers, the author claimed that these are nothing new. “Murders of the writers, so-called progressive thinkers, robberies in churches, killing of a man from the minority community and burning of the hut of a Dalit-these and much worse have happened during six decades of Congress rule,” he writes and gives examples of social activists, Narendra Dabholkar and M.M. Kalburgi, who were assassinated during the Congress regime.
In the chapter ‘Anti-Modi Front’, the writer claimed that “with regular frequ-ency Hindu-Muslim riots have happened all over the country, with the majority community taking the brunt of the attack. People have been butchered worse than cattle and yet nobody spoke about it.”
He then argued that “if one were to go into the details of each of these incidents, it would be clear that stray, concocted events were joined together to create a mirage, whose only purpose was to tarnish the image of the Modi government.”
Toeing a similar line he writes: “Mob lynching and hate crimes are not new to India. We have been like this for years and lynch mobs are not Modi’s creation.”
On the contentious subject of beef ban and cow slaughter, author writes: “There is a lot of misleading propaganda in the name of ban. A ban on cow slaughter is not exactly a ban on eating other varieties of beef. Hence the fear that it will affect li-velihood of the butchers a-nd meat sellers is wrong.”
