Pedestrians
pass a New Delhi billboard for the Bharatiya Janta Party with a
photograph of Narendra Modi. Close. Pedestrians pass a New Delhi
billboard for the Bharatiya Janta Party with a photograph of Narendra
Modi.
Before heading to India’s snow-capped Himalayas to study Hinduism at age 17, Narendra Modi burned family photos, discarded most of his clothes and bent to touch his mother’s feet to receive a blessing.
“He
treated his departure like a monk would, as though he was leaving to
become an ascetic,” his brother, Prahalad Modi, 62, said in his
cement-block tire shop in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the western
state of Gujarat. “He had been told by his guru that he must shed all
material possessions to be devoted to the cause of Hindu nationalism.”
Almost
five decades later, India’s incoming prime minister still calls himself
a Hindu nationalist. He’s also a friend of billionaires and a champion
of business in Gujarat, where he’s served as chief minister since 2001.
Economic growth rates have outpaced the national average in all but one
year in that time and per-capita income has quadrupled.
Modi, 63, will take office armed with what may be the largest parliamentary mandate in 30 years after the Bharatiya Janata Party
obtained a majority in parliament, defeating the Congress party. The
country is waiting to see which Modi will emerge: the Hindu activist
faulted for failing to stop 2002 anti-Muslim riots or the
business-friendly son of a tea vendor who is focused on reviving Asia’s third-biggest economy.
Photographer: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Narendra Modi, prime ministerial candidate for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is... Read More
“I don’t see how the two are compatible,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor of political science at Indiana University
in Bloomington. Pursuing a Hindu nationalism agenda “is bound to
produce communal violence. If you can’t keep social peace in India, it’s
going to scare off investors, which will stump the entire Indian growth
story.”
Self-Restraint
The BJP trumpeted its win as a
vindication of Modi’s promises of economic development that cut across
India’s religious, caste and class divisions. Voters across the nation
expressed their disapproval of slowing growth and corruption. In Uttar
Pradesh, the country’s most populous state and home to more Muslims than
any other, Modi’s party was leading in 73 of 80 seats, up from the 10
it won in the 2009 election.
Hinduism, practiced by 80 percent
of Indians as of 2001, is entrenched in scriptures of mythology that
offer stories of various deities and a way of life. The faith offers no
method of conversion and encourages Hindus to follow values such as
purity and self-restraint. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the
Hindu nationalist group Modi belonged to, seeks to teach Hinduism in
schools and spread its values across the nation.
To many Muslims -- 13 percent
of India’s population -- that message is one of exclusion, intolerance
and fear. In 1990, Modi addressed a crowd of Hindu followers in Uttar Pradesh
days before a group there demolished a 16th-century mosque in a
cascading series of violence that ended in sectarian riots and 2,000
deaths.
Dividing Wall
Taxi driver Yasin Khan Pathan,
45, a Muslim who, like Modi’s brother, lives in Ahmedabad, won’t even
approach the local BJP office to ask for help with his neighborhood’s
crumbling streets and inadequate sewage system. It’s not far, just on
the other side of a 20-foot wall dividing Hindus from Muslims in his
community. But he’s afraid.
“We are a defeated community,” he
said as dust from the construction site of a luxury apartment complex
drifts over from the Hindu side of the wall. “Obviously, we are scared
of Modi becoming prime minister. Our greatest fear now is that Modi will
turn the rest of India into Gujarat. He won’t lift Muslims out of
poverty, he’ll lift Muslims out of India.”
Such BJP affiliates
as the RSS and the World Hindu Council have pinned their hopes on Modi
to deliver a Hindu nation, said Rajendra Singh Pankaj, national
secretary of the council. The party manifesto
pledges to impose a uniform civil code that would come into conflict
with Sharia, or Muslim, law, and try to build a temple named for Lord
Ram at the site of the demolished mosque.
All India
“The
kind of nationalist baggage Modi carries, it will be interesting to see
how he deals with those fringe Hindu groups,” said Sudha Pai, a
professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “If there’s even a hint of communal tensions in the country, all eyes will be on him to see which Modi emerges.”
BJP
spokesman Prakash Javadekar blamed concerns of rising nationalism under
Modi on “Congress propaganda.” Modi will represent all of India, not
just the Hindu majority, Javadekar said on May 14.
Modi learned
the damaging effect of sectarian violence first-hand shortly after he
became Gujarat’s chief minister, said Pravin Ratilal Maniar, who’s been
general secretary for the RSS in Gujarat for 13 years. After
Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002 that left about 1,000 people dead, investment proposals in the state fell almost 7 percent the next year.
Riot Prevention
To
rebut accusations that he failed to prevent the riots from spreading,
Modi began promoting the state’s economy, Maniar said in his office in
the city of Rajkot. Modi was influential, for instance, in luring
investment from such companies as Tata Motors (TTMT) Ltd. and Adani Enterprises (ADE) Ltd., as he reminds participants at his biennial investor summit in Gujarat.
Since
2001, the state’s per-capita income has almost quadrupled to 61,220
rupees ($1,042). It rose at a faster pace than the national average,
which doubled to 38,856 rupees. Economic growth has topped India’s in 11
of the last 12 years for which data is available.
Gujarat drew
1.3 trillion rupees of planned foreign and domestic investment -- about
22 percent of India’s total -- in the year ending March 31, 2012.
“He
provided Gujarat with India’s first real free-market economy that led
to new infrastructure and job creation,” said Subrata Mukherjee, a
retired professor of political science at Delhi University. “That’s what
India has to look forward to. Everything else is interference.”
Two Sides
To
Ghanshyam Shah, a retired professor of political science at Jawaharlal
Nehru University and the author of “Development and Deprivation in
Gujarat,” the two issues can’t be separated.
“There really are
two sides to the same Modi,” Shah said in his Ahmedabad home. “There’s
the right-wing, Hindu nationalist whom followers see as a savior. And
there’s the frugal, capitalist Modi credited with Gujarat’s growth. He
genuinely believes the two can co-exist.”
Born in the village of
Vadnagar, almost 50 miles north of Gujarat’s capital of Gandhinagar,
Modi was raised in a lower-middle income home by his tea-seller father
and devout Hindu mother. When he wasn’t at school or at the local RSS
unit, he was at the train station helping run the tea stand, said
childhood friend Sudhir Joshi, a general physician who still lives
within a mile of Modi’s old neighborhood.
Child Husband
Modi
left home for the Himalayas after he had married the woman he’d become
engaged to as a child. It wasn’t until Modi filed an affidavit as part
of his candidacy for parliament that he acknowledged the wife he’d left
behind. Almost half of Indian women age 20 to 24 say they were wed
before the age of 18, according to data from the United Nations Population Fund, among the highest rates in the world.
By
1971, Modi was back in Gujarat playing a key role in the RSS’s
opposition movement against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Within a
decade, he was running RSS missions in Gujarat and on his way to
becoming a leader within the organization.
Although his father’s
forest-green stall has been chained shut, Vadnagar residents have come
to support him by spray painting “vote for Narendrabhai” in Gujarati
across the cemented rear panel of the stall, said Sanjaybhai Patel, one
of the station administrators.
“He’s like a god to these people,” said physician Joshi, who declined to share whom he voted for when Gujarat went to the polls. “For the people who live in these narrow streets, it’s empowering just to know that one of them could be prime minister.”
Muslim Support
Modi’s
supporters include some Muslims, especially across northern India, who
have partnered with the BJP to ensure the party wins the absolute
mandate needed to overhaul the economy, said Zafar Sareshwala, a Muslim
businessman in Gujarat. He had prepared to press charges against Modi for the 2002 riots before a private meeting with the chief minister in 2003.
“Modi
is the best chance for progress in this country, and that includes
Muslims,” said Sareshwala, who said his family business has been set on
fire in every state sectarian riot since 1969. “He’s not the Hindu
dictator which he’s been painted as. I see business, I see wealth and I
see growth in Gujarat. I don’t see violence and hate. That’s what Modi
will bring to India.”
Hindu nationalism remains part of Modi’s
agenda as he prepares to lead India to 2019. On April 23, a 3D hologram
of Modi appeared in front of millions of voters at rallies occurring
simultaneously across India.
“Give me your blessings,” Modi
said. “There are some people who are picked to go through the tough
times and god favors such people. I feel that maybe god has picked me
for this task and now I only need your blessings.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in New Delhi at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net Anne Swardson
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