Landslide Win For Indian Opposition Party
On the stump, Modi promised a new India, with an efficient government free of corruption. He pledged to build bullet trains , hydroelectric power plants, manufacturing hubs and dozens of cities, enabling India to rival China, the economic powerhouse next door. A lover of technology, Modi even addressed several rallies as a holographic image.
What they narrated to me showed that the media, particularly, English-language media were lapping up one-sided news portraying Modi as the Demon and all his opponents angels. They told us about the earlier riots in which the Hindus were mostly at the receiving end. There were several instances of stone-throwing on Hindus passing through Muslim dominated areas of Ahmedabad. The governments of the day kept a blind eye to all this. All the suppressed passions broke loose at the Godhra carnage, and no government, Modi or no Modi, could have stopped what followed—despicable and condemnable as both the Godhra and post-Godhra killings were.
In fact, the larger danger in a possible Modi policy toward Pakistan is that he will choose to ignore Islamabad, either because of his concentration on economic renewal at home or because he views Pakistan, with its myriad problems, as marginal to India’s destiny. That decision would create incentives for the “deep state” in Pakistan to rely even more heavily on jihadi groups. It would also cost India the opportunity to accelerate regional economic integration, which would increase Indian prosperity and provide Islamabad with incentives for constructive engagement with New Delhi, thereby enhancing India’s safety.
If the words he used were strong, the reasons are obvious. The “Snoopgate” case involves allegations of the massive abuse of police power by the Gujarat government in placing a young woman under constant surveillance for weeks. Jaitley suggested the judges approached so far all refused to serve on the Snoopgate panel because the case was “political”. But their reluctance could also reflect their unwillingness to be on the wrong side of a man who might become prime minister. How the judiciary would respond to petitions and cases if Modi were actually to become prime minister is anybody’s guess.
In 1995 Modi was made the secretary of the BJP’s national organization in New Delhi , and three years later he was appointed its general secretary. He remained in that office for another three years, but in October 2001 he replaced the incumbent Gujarat chief minister, fellow BJP member Keshubhai Patel, after Patel had been held responsible for the state government’s poor response in the aftermath of the massive Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat earlier that year that killed more than 20,000 people. Modi entered his first-ever electoral contest in a February 2002 by-election that won him a seat in the Gujarat state assembly.
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