Marino Andy - Narendra Modi: a political biography

NARENDRA MODI

A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY

Andy Marino

HarperCollins Publishers India

For my parents

CONTENTS

T HIS IS THE STORY of an extraordinary life.

As always there is a context: Narendra Modi is the prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in what is likely to be a historic general election.

The 2014 Lok Sabha poll will set the course for Indian politics and policy well into the next decade. It could be the most dramatic and important election since March 1977, when Indira Gandhi was defeated after revoking the Emergency. The Emergency ended before most Indians alive today were born. Today over 60 per cent of Indians are under thirty-five years of age. This election will belong to young India and that is why, despite rising disenchantment with politics and politicians, voters are energized by the prospect of change.

When I began working on this book, the compelling nature of the subject struck me: Narendra Modi is both a complex and simple man, but within a multilayered persona. He can be decisive, firm, unyielding. And yet he has a calm about him that enables him to surmount crises with dispassionate meticulousness, even detachment.

I travelled with him on his campaign rallies, interviewed him over several weeks and observed him closely as he went about his work.

Though gregarious in private, Modi hasnt granted interviews often. Where he has, they have been short and pointed. Our conversations, however, were open-ended and went back and forth over his life and work. It is possibly the first time he has granted such access to any journalist or author, Indian or foreign.

In the voluminous recorded conversations we had, he revealed for the first time details about his early life and the most controversial period in his political career: the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002.

Modi spoke with candour, without notes. Nothing, in terms of questions, was taboo. We spoke in English in which he is increasingly fluent. The obvious misgivings readers may have though are: one, how well can a British author decode the complexities of India? And two, would this book end up as an attempt to airbrush Modis faults and play up his strengths?

To answer the first question: sometimes an outsiders perspective can shed clarity on events that those too close to them, out of passion or prejudice, might miss. Having worked in India, I am familiar with Indian politics without being swayed by a particular ideology or point of view.

As for the second misgiving: my account of Modis life is based on extensive research over almost a year and interviews with a range of people, in politics and outside it, for Modi and against Modi, and this has enabled me to assess his work and life with cold objectivity.

No biography carries credibility if it is mere hagiography. Having written two biographies, published by leading publishers in Britain and the United States, it was important for me to get the tone and balance of this book absolutely right. For this reason too, footnotes and references have been meticulously catalogued for each chapter at the end of this volume.

And yet objectivity does not mean flying in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Modi has been the subject of the longest, most intense and probably the most vituperative campaign of vilification since the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat.

In recent months, after he was anointed the BJPs prime ministerial candidate Modis development record in Gujarat too has come under close scrutiny. Allegations that he is authoritarian, runs a surveillance-based state, is prone to making factual errors in his campaign speeches and has no alternative vision for India have been made by both his political opponents and the media.

I have carefully examined every one of these and several more to get at the facts and separate them from the fiction.

Modi deserves a narrative that is balanced, objective and fair but also unsparingly critical of his foibles. I hope this book meets that high standard.

W E DROVE TO THE helipad along closed-off roads. In front went the jammer, with its domed electronics bolted to the roof. The eight silver SUVs, following two or three abreast, were packed with soldiers and black-clad commandos of Narendra Modis Z-Plus security detail, the highest level the Indian government offers its VIPs.

They were there with good reason. Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), tireless in its efforts to wage a proxy war on India, had stepped up its attacks since Modi began his nationwide election campaign. The ISI trains terror cells and sends infiltrators into India, usually via Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). It smuggles arms and explosives over the border into Gujarat. The porous, poorly policed Nepal border with Bihar is another conduit.

Narendra Modi, as Gujarats chief minister, has been target number one of the ISI-financed terror network known as the Indian Mujahideen. At rallies across India, Modi has drawn crowds in lakhs and the danger of a suicide bomber is ever present. During his twelve years as chief minister, he has been firm in his resistance to incursions and terror plots. Pakistans civilian leadership has recently said it can work with Modi as prime minister but the threat to his life from a proxy terror attack remains palpable.

As our convoy sped along, soldiers and police were placed every 100 metres on the roadside with their backs towards us, looking for suspicious movements in the undergrowth and down the wide avenues. On arrival at the helipad the commandos leaped from the cars and sprinted towards the chopper while soldiers in khaki fanned out, machine guns at the ready, to provide a wider ring of cover. It was only when we were in the air that the vulnerability would be replaced by the relative safety of the skies. Then there would be only Modi, a couple of senior assistants and me in the passenger compartment, with the pilot and co-pilot up front. No commandos on board.

An aroma of unburned fuel from the helicopters exhausts leaked into the cabin as the rotors spun faster. I leant across to make myself heard to Modi. The pitch of the rotors had changed to a tighter, more aggressive note and we rose smoothly into the air while rotating to face west. A smile broke across his face: Youll love it, he said, above the engine noise, speaking about the rally he would shortly address and our interaction with the crowd. It will be the best. The choppers nose dipped and the craft surged forward.

There had been rain overnight. A mist hung below the cloud cover, restricting visibility to around 10 kilometres at our height of 1,500 feet. As we raced over towns and villages, vegetation was everywhere in shades of dark chrome and cobalt green. The rectangular grid of streets and buildings arose straight and cube-cut from entangling foliage, flat grey concrete roofs glistening grimy and rain-streaked, as if they were relics of an ancient civilization.

Modi sat quietly peering over his spectacles as we flew along, a big man in a small cabin. He mulled over a few handwritten notes, facts and figures, for the speech he was going to deliver. After that he skimmed through some articles culled for him from the previous days newspapers. Outside, the sky brightened slightly as we headed south, the villages below now showing pitched, red-tiled roofs. More temples flashed up at us in the brightening morning light.

The fields were still green but the topsoil shallower, the vegetation lighter and sparser as the ground became rockier and showed more outcrops and escarpments, heading towards the wide littoral of the Arabian Sea.