The Narendra Modi thread

[dial_100]

going by that logic neither party is eligible to lead the country. One is leading us for decades now. I hope all the people of our country hold such values deciding their leaders.

[ravishingravi]

Narendra Modi: Sanjay Gandhi in a new avatar? Cometh the hour, cometh the redeemer. This sums up the mood of India 2013. Our newspapers and TV channels constantly remind us that anarchy has been let loose and the Centre has been unable to hold for at least a decade. True. Only a lunatic would deny that our republic suffers in grave crisis. For the past six months the prospect of picking up the newspaper for the citizen has become a nightmare . (I begin the morning ritual with the Delhi Times whose fun and frivolity suggest a semblance of normality — normality which prepares the reader for the grim news in the main paper.) Is it any surprise then that all around us the cry for a "strong leader" goes up with mounting force? Only he (a 'she' could emerge but that's another story) can rescue our nation with his firmness, rigour and capacity to punish the disobedient. In 1978 I wrote a biography of Sanjay Gandhi which has been reissued for the laughable sum of Rs 499 by HarperCollins. Sanjay was then recovering from the wounds of his Emergency exploits. Yet, during 1975 to 1977 he was pronounced as our redeemer, the strong one. Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, George Fernandes and others spreading "sedition" had been locked up by the strong one while he, sitting in his mother's house, had taken on the mantle of "extra-constitutional authority" . And in the words of Indira Gandhi had "made the trains run on time". That is before he subverted almost every democratic institution in the country. So, those over a certain age who are told that what India needs is a "strong leader" have some experience of the havoc such a leader can cause. I recount this cautionary tale as another strong one hovers over our national consciousness, and millions of urban middle class folk confidently believe that without him we are doomed. Why even that pipsqueak Rahul Gandhi could be presiding over our destiny! I make no value judgements since Mr Modi is perceived today as someone close to Lord Shiva — creator, preserver and destroyer. The strong leader, meanwhile, has three defining characteristics. One, he has a solution to every problem and the timeframe in which it can be solved is usually a few months. He is a loner. He works alone. There are no hangers on, no chamchas, no family. He is personally incorruptible. Naturally, he collects a few henchmen/ henchwomen to execute his orders. Finally, the strong one has minimal interest in means. He is concerned solely with things being done. Indeed, he does not wish to be bothered by means. Sanjay Gandhi was an exemplar of that approach. Once when he was demolishing slums with bulldozers in old Delhi and the residents were up in arms, he told a friend he was totally mystified by the protests. He was doing the slum dwellers a favour by pulling down their hovels and offering them alternate accommodation trans-Yamuna. Same with population control. Men who were being forcibly put on the operating table and having their 'indiri' (penis) cut off should send him flowers and sweets. The strong one then has simple solutions to not-so-simple issues. Is Narendra Modi Sanjay Gandhi? Am I presenting a caricature of a chief minister who by all accounts has a "strong" record? Am I pleading for weak and effete leadership, the kind we have today, and asserting that it may be better for the country to have incompetent and feckless leaders instead of those who are ruthless and assertive? Certainly not. I would go so far as to concede the desperate need today for strong leadership. What we see all around is monumental incompetence. Besides weekly scams, the UPA specialises in infantile ****-ups . The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and occasionally both the hands seem oblivious of each other's existence. But, but, but. Strong leadership of the Narendra Modi type has the tendency to descend into authoritarian oneman rule where the delicate checks and balances placed by our founding fathers are seen as a hindrance to good governance. Mr Modi, who is presently the champion of the corporates, has frequently expressed his frustration that "things do not move fast enough" for big business to prosper. The notion of inclusive growth under his dispensation may disappear. If the majority of our countrymen and countrywomen are so keen to see Narendra Modi sitting in 7, Race Course Road, we the sceptics should have the grace to fall in line. However, our guard must be up. Civil society, the media, the courts, need to remain vigilant and alert so that the strong leader does his job within the statute of democratic India. Strong leadership, yes. Extra-constitutional authority, no. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/narendra-modi-sanjay-gandhi-in-a-new-avatar/articleshow/19763985.cms

[FischerTal]

^

[jiggo]

Cry when UPA is ****ing up the nation, and come out with some weird kind twisted reasoning week in/week out to prove Modi will be failure too. Yet all are in it for the ratings from News Channels to journalists, who all just want more eyeballs on them. And it works!

[someone]

You are disgusted over some people taking potshots at Sareshwala. But if it were a Hindu who were to criticize Modi' date=' the generic response to such a person[/quote'] Anybody can criticize anybody. The issue here is about why bring religion and how Congress Party deliberately utilizes it. And the below paragraph from the article previously mentioned summarizes it well. 1C0LEwcIiRk And that is a true Muslim and it is not surprising that the major Indian media who are known for biased reporting never shown that.

[Sachin=GOD]

I don't know how much of that article is true but the image it presents is of a man who is autocratic, doesn't have respect for rules, never ever forgets or forgives his rivals, is back stabbing, who wouldn't mind finishing off people physically or politically if they oppose him and most importantly, believes in Govt bring a one man show where he doesn't have to listen to anybody else. Here are some sections of the article which may point towards what could happen if he rises further:

IN A FAMOUS ESSAY published in Seminar a few months after the riots in 2002, sociologist Ashis Nandy, one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, described having interviewed Modi more than a decade earlier, in the late 1980s, when the future chief minister was “a nobody, a small-time RSS pracharak trying to make it as a small-time BJP functionary”. Nandy, who was trained as a clinical psychologist, recalled his impressions of Modi during their “long, rambling interview”: It left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one’s ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology. Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence—all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist.

“Modi only thinks of winning—and winning all the time,” a former chief minister of Gujarat told me. “Other politicians can imagine that they will someday lose, and plan accordingly. But this attitude may get him into trouble, because in the future he can only be at one of the extremes: either he will be prime minister or he will go to jail. If I live long enough, I would be surprised to see him anywhere else—it has to be one or the other.”

Currently he is by far the most popular leader in the BJP so its obvious that many people would like him to be the PM candidate but they don't seem to realize how damaging this could be to BJP and to India. He is the very model of what we do not need in India right now.

[ravishingravi]

An old article that sheds some light on Modi's rise: The Emperor Uncrowned The rise of Narendra Modi By VINOD K JOSE | 1 March 2012 http://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/emperor-uncrowned

Thats an excellent article. I cannot comment on authenticity of some of claims. But beautifully structured. I just enjoyed reading it. It makes Namo more mythic than what he is.

[someone]

A very baseless and biased article, they do not understand the idea of a leader especially someone who have started from the grassroots. They talk about opinion as facts. Wonder what will they say about the Gandhis who till today have just "dictated" the country. And this is one interesting tweet. I am sure a lot of pro-Congress will have that in mind. So it seems that Muslims are not oppressed, they will riot. And how events are judged by who are ruling state government is. If Congress (UPA), it's one reason and if non-UPA, it's another reason. Poor logic indeed.

[jiggo]

A very baseless and biased article, they do not understand the idea of a leader especially someone who have started from the grassroots. They talk about opinion as facts. Wonder what will they say about the Gandhis who till today have just "dictated" the country. And this is one interesting tweet. I am sure a lot of pro-Congress will have that in mind. So it seems that Muslims are not oppressed, they will riot. And how events are judged by who are ruling state government is. If Congress (UPA), it's one reason and if non-UPA, it's another reason. Poor logic indeed.

What a tosser. She is one low life scumbag.

[ravishingravi]

A very baseless and biased article, they do not understand the idea of a leader especially someone who have started from the grassroots. They talk about opinion as facts. Wonder what will they say about the Gandhis who till today have just "dictated" the country. And this is one interesting tweet. I am sure a lot of pro-Congress will have that in mind. So it seems that Muslims are not oppressed, they will riot. And how events are judged by who are ruling state government is. If Congress (UPA), it's one reason and if non-UPA, it's another reason. Poor logic indeed.

Wow. The pseudo secularists really seem to be losing their collective s@@t. Why would anyone say anything like that ?

[The Outsider]

Modi bhakts have taken desperation to a new level by making tweets from some "Faieza Khan" who no one has heard of into a talking point. Who is she, BTW?

[CSK Fan]

Modi bhakts have taken desperation to a new level by making tweets from some "Faieza Khan" who no one has heard of into a talking point. Who is she, BTW?

Most probably will be an RSS owned account paid by BJP

[Sachin=GOD]

A very baseless and biased article' date= they do not understand the idea of a leader especially someone who have started from the grassroots. They talk about opinion as facts. Wonder what will they say about the Gandhis who till today have just "dictated" the country.

I guess you haven't heard/read the story of why Keshubhai Patel and Shankar Singh Vaghela hate Modi - it wasn't simply because he became the CM even though both of them were senior, it was because of the way he back stabbed both of them and then set up his one-man rule in Gujarat and set out to show how every kind of development had happened in Gujarat only under him even though Gujarat had been doing pretty well even in KeshuBhai and Vaghela's times. Almost all the persons who have raised a voice against him in Gujarat have seen their career being finished or their reputations tainted. He is extremely vindictive and thus, a very dangerous man to lead the country. Modi has developed a "my way or the highway" attitude and it is simply impossible for someone with that attitude to run a coalition Govt at the centre - the sooner his bhakts realize this, the better for India.

[jiggo]

I guess you haven't heard/read the story of why Keshubhai Patel and Shankar Singh Vaghela hate Modi - it wasn't simply because he became the CM even though both of them were senior, it was because of the way he back stabbed both of them and then set up his one-man rule in Gujarat and set out to show how every kind of development had happened in Gujarat only under him even though Gujarat had been doing pretty well even in KeshuBhai and Vaghela's times. Almost all the persons who have raised a voice against him in Gujarat have seen their career being finished or their reputations tainted. He is extremely vindictive and thus, a very dangerous man to lead the country. Modi has developed a "my way or the highway" attitude and it is simply impossible for someone with that attitude to run a coalition Govt at the centre - the sooner his bhakts realize this, the better for India.

It's not like the current option of being hostage to coalition government is working. And as for Congress, show me a major state run by Congress only majority that has done well in anything in the last 5 years?

[panther]

Why so much of Indian politics between congress and bjp revolve around muslims? do most of them even vote?

[The Outsider]

The question still stares us in the face - who is Faiza Khan that Modi bhakts are quoting?

[CSK Fan]

Looks like Modi magic didn't work in Karnataka

[Sachin=GOD]

“I am Narendra Modi’s Wife” In a poor village, the woman who is believed to be the estranged wife of the most powerful man in Gujarat lives in a one-room home

She is clad in an ill-fitting blouse and a mod*est printed sari. Somewhat stooped, her face is wrinkled, her hands have obviously seen hard times and her hair is pulled back in a tight bun, making her look severe. Dirt grips the cracks of her slipper-clad feet. She could have been any woman in Rajosana village, Gujarat. But then, she is Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi. Everyone in this village knows her as Narendra Modi’s wife. After the post-Godhra Gujarat riots, Modi’s po*litical foes in Banaskantha district discovered her in this dusty village. Since then, Jashodaben has lived her life under intense scrutiny. Few among the 2,500 villagers, predominantly Muslim, dis*believe her story. Even Modi has neither con*firmed nor denied her muted claim. At the time of going to press, a faxed request for a comment was not returned by Modi’s office. People close to her say that she was married to Modi in his native village, Vadnagar, in Mehsana district, when she was 18. At the time of her mar*riage, she had studied only up to Class VII. That is believed to have put a strain on their marriage. (Also, according to a villager, Jashodaben does not like to be photographed as she believes she is not good looking.) A few days after the mar*riage, Jashodaben was sent back to her father Chimanlal’s house to complete her education. As those who know her say, in a bid to please her husband and measure up to his exacting stand*ards, she started studying in Dholaka and com*pleted her SSC (old pattern) in 1972. Then she completed a primary teachers course and worked in Ahmedabad for three months. Subsequently, on 23 March 1978, Jashodaben joined a primary school in Dekwali village in Banaskantha district. She was later transferred to the District Panchayat School in Roopal village where she worked for 12 years. On 2 December 1991, she came to Rajosana village, where she currently lives. Villagers say that though she has been to Ahmedabad occasionally, she was never asked to stay on by her husband. Jashodaben, a first standard teacher at the Rajosana Primary School, is very popular among her Muslim students. Muslim women in the vil*lage, none of whom were willing to be quoted, say that Modi’s estranged wife is shaping the per*sonalities of Muslim children through her dili*gence as a teacher. They seem to like her. But the 57-year-old will be retiring in October. “Narendrabhai Modi is a national leader. He is intelligent and good looking. Jashodaben may not be able to match him. But she is his wife; he has married her. He must take her back to live with him,” says a village elder. When I met her at the school, Jashodaben was as excited as a child and could not stop smiling. She expressed a desire to talk and tell her tale. But the principal of the school, Pravinkumar P Vyas, admonished her for talking to a journalist. “You will only talk to them after school hours. Now go back to your class,” Vyas told her. She pleaded, “Can I talk to her during the break? It will only take a few minutes.” But the principal was unrelenting. She left the room meekly, only to come back soon. She said,“I will not say anything against my husband. He is very powerful. This job is all I have to survive. I am afraid of the consequences.” She then went back to her classroom. Meanwhile, the principal had made a call from his mobile phone to inform somebody that Jashodaben had visitors. He then went to meet her in her classroom. After that, she became a dif*ferent person. She smiled no more, her excite*ment was gone and she looked nervous. She kept wringing her hands. When I approached her again, she screamed, asking to be left alone. But as she walked away, she gestured to suggest that she would talk later. Later, some men visited the school, one after the other, in different vehicles. They parked their vehicles within the school premises, and looked directly into the principal’s office. After a while, they left. When the school day came to an end, Jashodaben almost ran out to a waiting autorick*shaw. She pointed at me and told some villagers that I was harassing her. Hiding her face in her hands, she went to her brother’s house in her maternal village in Brahamanwada, about 20 km away. A few min*utes later, a young man who identified himself as Prakashbhai, a reporter from Ram Setu (a two-page government-run newspaper printed with inconsistent frequency), approached me and asked me to leave the village. By then a sizeable crowd had gathered around us. Though Jashodaben earns a monthly salary of Rs 10,000, she lives in a one-room tenement in the Panchalvas area in the village, and pays a rent of Rs 150 every month. The 100 sq ft room has a tin roof, no toilets, and not even a bathroom. The tap is located outside the house. According to the vil*lagers, Jashodaben wakes up very early and takes a bath outside the house. Despite the fact that she can afford a better life, she has chosen to stay in a somewhat im*poverished village, in a sympathetic and help*ful neighbourhood. Here, her story is known to all. Even the children of her school refer to her as ‘Narendrabhai Modi’s wife’. But for all practical purposes, that means lit*tle. Jashodaben does not enjoy any privileges. She has to sweep and clean her house, fill water, use a public toilet, cook her meals and wash her own clothes. She does not have any domestic help. The moment a car is spotted in the village, those living in the bylane leading to Jashodaben’s house gather outside their homes and maintain a close watch on her. Everyone I met claimed to be close to her. In fact, some even asked for money to ensure good access to her. Every Sunday, she takes the 20 km ride to Brahmanwada in an autorick*shaw to spend the day with her brother’s family. Her brother runs a provision store. People close to her say that she longs for that phone call from her husband, the call asking her to come and live with him forever. Jashodaben has consulted numerous astrologers for this rea*son. Interestingly, the verdict of all the astrolo*gers is that one day she will definitely live with her husband. The war between the BJP and Congress in Gujarat, particularly in Rajosana, works in Jashodaben’s favour. Her story will be retold over and over again. For many years, the Congress had an upper hand in the Panchayat elections, but of late, the BJP is emerging stronger here. So, while Modi’s supporters maintain a close watch on Jashodaben’s activities to ensure that her dis*closures do not embarrass the Chief Minister of Gujarat, his opponents are keen to reveal her to the nation. Meanwhile, Jashodaben is noticed to be turning increasingly religious.

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/i-am-narendra-modi-s-wife

[1983-2011]

Anna supporters switch loyalties, to back Modi for PM

It seems anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare is losing numbers in the city. And Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is the unlikely beneficiary. People here, who once enthusiastically participated in the rallies and meetings inspiring by the activist, are now openly supporting Modi as a prime ministerial candidate. City-based Anna supporters yesterday arranged a meeting, dubbed ‘Narendra Modi Army’ of all like-minded people in support of the BJP leader. Former India Against Corruption (IAC) volunteer BB Somani, who had organised the meeting, said that although Anna showed the path to fight corruption, people are now in no mood to support him due to his frequent change of views about political developments across the country. “We still trust Anna’s ability to fight with increasing dishonesty and sleaze in the nation. But, nowadays he criticises each and every political party, and therefore we decided to support a person who can strongly, collectively take our country towards progress and development, like in Gujarat,†said Somani. Nana Patil, who partook in each and every IAC event held in the city last year, said that in the past year Anna hasn’t taken any concrete steps to ensure progress and development of the country. “We noticed the advancement of our neighbouring state, which compelled us to change our view about the entire political situation in the country and that’s the precise reason we are now supporting Modi as a prime ministerial candidate,†said Patil. He added that supporters yesterday discussed future plans and strategies towards backing Modi. Meanwhile, IAC coordinator for Pune Deepak Bharadia said that people losing faith in Anna could only be a temporary phase, as the crusader had successfully awakened the nation. However, he also added that Anna and Aam Aadmi Party founder Arvind Kejriwal going their separate ways has also disillusioned some followers, who are now searching for other politicians who can lead the country. “The problems of the nation are very complex and people want quick solutions. Therefore, Modi is being seen as the only option for it. However, the citizens should know what commitments are coming from the Gujarat CM towards the betterment of the nation,†added Bharadia.

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2013/may/060513-pune-anna-supporters-switch-loyalties-to-back-modi-for-pm.htm

[1983-2011]

declare him PM candidate already and let him campaign all around the country from now