2014: The Election That Changed India (25 page)

In the 2009 elections, the BJP won just ten of
UP’s eighty seats in the Lok Sabha, its worst performance in twenty years. In the 2012
assembly elections, things only got worse for the party. The BJP won just forty-seven of the 403
seats and got a mere 15 per cent of the vote share. I remember meeting a veteran BJP leader from UP
after the assembly results who looked totally despondent.
‘Sab kuch khatam ho gaya. Ab bas
Mulayam aur Mayawati ka khel chalega’
(It is all over for us. Only Mulayam and Mayawati
will rule UP now), was his verdict.

Modi’s own role in the 2012 UP elections had
proved controversial. He refused to campaign in the state in protest against the party choosing his
great rival Sanjay Joshi to handle the campaign. Joshi had been hand-picked by the BJP president
Gadkari, with the RSS supporting the move. Modi would have none of it. I was privy to a phone
conversation where Gadkari was literally pleading with Modi to at least address some rallies in UP
since his absence was sending out the wrong message to the cadres. A defiant Modi refused to
relent.

I remember telephoning Modi
that night to find out why he was so insistent on not going to UP to campaign. I even
‘advised’ him that as a senior leader he was making a mistake by refusing to campaign in
a crucial state.
‘Jab tak woh aadmi wahan hai, mere campaign karne ka sawaal hee nahi
uthta!’
(As long as that man [Joshi] is there, there is no question of my
campaigning.)

Four months after the 2012 UP elections, Joshi was
removed from the BJP national executive and almost banished from the party. I asked Gadkari why he
had buckled so easily to Modi’s determination to isolate Joshi.
‘Arre, Rajdeepji,
aap Modiji ka swabhaav jaante hai, unka mind badalna aasan nahi!’
(You know Modi’s
nature, getting him to change his mind is not easy.)

The Modi–Joshi feud has a chequered past but
is highly revealing about the man who was now aspiring to be the next prime minister. Like Modi,
Joshi, too, was an RSS pracharak but with a less dominating presence. Low-profile and soft-spoken,
the Nagpur-born Joshi had worked with Modi in the party in Gujarat since 1989. When Modi was ousted
from Gujarat in 1996 over a leadership battle, he was convinced that Joshi was behind his
‘vanvas’. When he became chief minister in 2001, almost his first act was to have Joshi
packed off from the state.

At the BJP’s silver jubilee celebrations in
Mumbai in 2005, a mysterious CD surfaced which allegedly showed Joshi in a compromising position
with an unidentified woman. The buzz in the BJP was that the CD had been organized by the Gujarat
police and distributed by leaders close to Modi. ‘It is a well-planned conspiracy to malign
me,’ Joshi told me at the time. He was removed from all party posts and pushed into political
exile. The UP elections were meant to signal his rehabilitation. Only, Modi would have none of
it.

Modi by 2012 was poised to be the BJP’s
top-ranking leader, having been Gujarat chief minister for a decade. Joshi, by contrast, was
struggling to revive his career. There was no comparison in power or stature between the two
leaders. And yet, Modi was keen to exact revenge. ‘It is not a question of who is a big or
small leader,’ Modi had told me in the phone conversation, ‘it is a question of
principle.
Woh aadmi achha nahi hai
’ (He is not a good man).

What I realized that night was that Modi is an
individual who does not forgive or forget easily—he has a long memory and bears grudges
against those who he believed had harmed him. Dynamic, driven and energetic, he is convinced that he
alone is the master of his destiny and must fight those who stand in his way. He may have become a
national leader but at times he has a deeply insecure mindset of a provincial strongman constantly
looking to settle scores. What was equally striking was the manner in which the BJP’s central
leadership seemed intimidated by Modi and did not want to alienate him in any manner.

But if in 2012, Modi did not even campaign in UP
because of personal vendetta, he could not afford to think even remotely of any such move in 2014.
Now, he needed to desperately turn around the BJP’s fortunes in the state to achieve his prime
ministerial ambition. And this time, he needed someone by his side who he could implicitly trust.
There was only one such man in Modi’s eyes.

The first time I met Amit Shah, the circumstances
were rather unenviable, to say the least. I was covering the highly surcharged Gujarat 2002 assembly
election campaign being held in the backdrop of the riots. My travels had brought me to Sarkhej on
the outskirts of Ahmedabad where Shah was standing for re-election. Advani, who was the MP from
Gandhinagar which encompassed the Sarkhej area, was to address a rally. I was attempting a live link
with our Delhi studio when suddenly the crowd encircled me.
‘Arre, yeh wahi Rajdeep
Sardesai hai jisne Gujarat dangon mein hamare khilaaf prachar kiya. Isko hum nahin
chodenge’
(This is the same Rajdeep who campaigned against us during the Gujarat riots.
We must not let him get away). The next thing I knew I was being pushed and kicked by Shah
supporters wearing saffron bandanas. A kind police officer stepped in and had to whisk us away to
safety.

When the rally was over, I met Shah to complain.
‘What kind
of behaviour is this, sir? You must rein in your
supporters,’ I told him. He was duly apologetic.
‘Yeh galat hai, mein iski ninda
karta hoon. Mein kabhi hinsa ke paksh mein nahi hoon’
(This is wrong, I condemn it. I
would never support any kind of violence). And then, he smiled and delivered a parting shot,
‘Rajdeepji, aapko bhi thoda apna khyal rakhna chahiye’
(You should also be
careful). The words were said in a soft and gentle manner, but the underlying message, I feared, was
a little more harsh.

That was then. In the decade that followed, much had
changed in my life but also, more importantly, in the life of Shah. Then, he was seen as the local
dada of Sarkhej, someone who enjoyed the unquestioned support of the BJP–VHP cadres. He had a
reputation of winning elections by big margins—he won the 2002 elections by 158,000 votes; he
won the 2007 elections by an even more impressive 235,000 votes. ‘No one can touch Amitbhai in
Sarkhej,’ was the unanimous verdict. Sarkhej was typically new Ahmedabad—middle class,
commercial, and with a strong Hindu religious identity.

Born in a Vaishnav Vania orthodox Hindu family (he
still visits the Shrinathji temple in Rajasthan’s Nathdwara at least twice a year), Shah had
handled a successful family business in PVC pipes and had even dabbled in stockbroking like any
financially sharp Gujarati. ‘His blue-chip stock portfolio is pretty impressive,’ one of
Shah’s friends told me. But while his mind may have been counting the money, his heart was
really in the RSS. He joined the Sangh in the early 1980s while still a teenager. ‘It was like
my extended family,’ he told me once. ‘Being in the Sangh was the best thing that
happened to me as a young man.’

Within the Sangh, Shah developed an image of an
astute organizer and skilled election strategist. ‘Then, whether it was a garba function
during Navaratra, a charity drive or a political meeting, when we needed to organize something in
the area, we always turned to Amitbhai and he was always there for us,’ recalls an old
colleague.

It was in the 1980s, while Shah was a Sangh
activist, that he and Modi got to know each other. Modi, very much the senior leader, was impressed
with Shah’s organizational skills and total commitment
to the Hindutva
ideology. The Ayodhya movement had begun to bubble, the BJP was a party on the rise in Gujarat, and
Modi as state secretary was looking for young men with desire and ambition. ‘I think Modi
liked the fact that Amitbhai was ready to do a lot of hard work silently without taking credit. He
was not the kind who would challenge Modi’s authority at any stage,’ is how one Gujarati
journalist explains the Shah–Modi chemistry. They both had strikingly similar looking beards
as well!

When Modi was re-elected Gujarat chief minister in
2002, he gave Shah multiple portfolios, including the crucial home portfolio. The home ministry was
critical because it gave Modi control over the police. In the backdrop of the riots and charges of
conspiracy being made against the chief minister’s office, Modi needed someone in the home
ministry who would be totally faithful to him. Modi trusted very few individuals—Shah was the
one politician he felt a certain comfort factor with. ‘He was the eyes and ears of the chief
minister,’ is how one Gujarat bureaucrat describes Shah’s role in that government.

It was during his tenure as home minister of Gujarat
that Shah courted controversy. Between 2003 and 2007, there were a series of encounter killings in
Gujarat in which several young Muslims were killed. Shah claimed they were ‘terrorists’,
some of whom wanted to kill the chief minister, and that the killings were driven by a
zero-tolerance policy towards terror. Human rights activists argued that many of the encounters were
‘fake’ and Shah was a ‘Muslim killer’.

In 2010, Shah was arrested by the CBI and accused of
killing a criminal, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and their associate Tulsiram Prajapati,
in a staged encounter. According to the CBI, Sheikh had been extorting money from marble traders in
neighbouring Rajasthan. The traders complained to Shah, who reportedly got the state’s
Anti-Terrorism Squad to organize the killing. Several police officers were also arrested in the
case.

Shah got bail three months after his arrest but was
told he would have to leave Gujarat for fear that he would influence the investigation. For nearly
two years, Shah stayed at Gujarat Bhavan
in the national capital, away from
his home state. ‘What do you miss most?’ I asked him. ‘The khana,’ he said
with a hint of a smile. His wife had to come to live in Delhi with him to ensure that the
shudh
vegetarian Shah remained well fed—he liked his dal,
kadhi
,
khandwi
and Gujarati snacks.

Interestingly, on the day in September 2012 when
Shah was finally allowed to return home, I was on the same flight with him, travelling to Ahmedabad.
Dressed in his trademark kurta–pyjama and with a small bag in hand, he could have been
mistaken for a small-time businessman. He was alone, no sidekicks by his side. But his spirit was
undaunted.

I asked him about the serious charges he was facing.
‘Sab saazish hai, bahut badi saazish hai’
(It is all a big conspiracy). I asked
him who was behind the conspiracy.
‘Poora Congress isme involved hai. Yeh chahte hain ki
Modiji ko target karein aur mujhe isme phasaye’
(The whole Congress is involved. They
want to target Modi and trap me), he said firmly. I sensed that adversity had brought Shah and Modi
closer together. It was almost as if Shah was taking the bullets as a proxy for his
‘saheb’. It was a ‘sacrifice’ that meant Modi was almost beholden to his
junior minister. In an interview I did with Modi in 2012, I had asked him a question on Shah’s
legal travails. It was the one question he asked me to later edit out.

So, was Shah really the ‘most dangerous man in
Gujarat’, as one police officer once described him to me? Was he, as one of the arrested
police officers, D.G. Vanzara, claimed in a letter, an ‘evil influence’ on Modi? (Shah
claims the letter was dictated by the Congress.) Or was he, as his supporters insisted, ‘One
of the most honest and straightforward persons you could wish to meet, an ace political mind’?
The verdict was evenly split, depending on who you spoke to.

A former
Tehelka
journalist, Rana Ayyub,
who had carried out a detailed investigation on Shah’s alleged role in encounter killings,
claims that the minister’s men once tried to browbeat her. The magazine was pulled out of the
news stands in Gujarat, and Ayyub got threatening calls. When nothing seemed to work, she received
a courier package at her hotel in Ahmedabad with a wad of notes. ‘I
fear someone was trying to bribe me into getting off the story,’ she says.

A local Gujarat journalist describes Shah as a
karyakarta first, a political leader later. Apparently, when a local UP businessman offered to
finance the BJP campaign, Shah did not entertain him for more than a few minutes. ‘You must
meet my district head first,’ he told him. But when an RSS worker came to his office, he spent
half an hour with him, trying to understand what was happening on the ground. ‘He is the
strong, silent type who likes his work to do the talking, he is not a
hawabaaz
[gasbag],’ is how an old friend describes him.

My own sense is that Shah is a bit of a split
personality. He could be warm and approachable in private conversation, with a sharp sense of
humour. But he is also a ruthless politician who believes in a ‘
saam, daam, dand,
bhed
’ brand of politics where ends mattered more than the means adopted. Whether the
ruthlessness extended to ordering extra-judicial killings, is a matter for the courts to decide; but
clearly, the numerous controversies which have swirled around him suggest that Shah still has much
explaining to do.