By S A H Rizvi
Bureau Chief, New Delhi
The Times Kuwait
In 2003, when Narendra Modi announced his government would hold the first edition of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, the decision surprised many. At that time the state was slowly returning to normalcy after the bloody rots it witnessed a year ago and there were enough domestic and international pressures looming upon the state government and its role during the riots.
Undaunted, Modi deputed a two-member team led by his Minister for NRI late Ashok Bhatt and Industry secretary Manchanda to showcase the festival being organized in Ahmedabad and Surat across the globe. I met Ashok Bhatt in Kuwait and during discussions he told me Gujarat is normal and even girls can walk back home late at night without any fear. “You come to Gujarat and see for yourself; a confident Bhatt told me.
The Vibrant Gujarat virtually laid the foundation for what was later famously called as Gujarat Model of Development and in a few years’ time found support from the top Indian corporate giants. If businessmen had their way, Modi would have become prime minister a long time back. Telecom czar Sunil Mittal had found him fit for the job way back in January 2009: He is running a state and can also run the nation. Anil Ambani had called Modi “lord of men, leader amongst leaders and king amongst kings”, while Anand Mahindra has prophesied the day is not far when people will talk about the Gujarat model of growth in China.
But how did Modi turn adversity into an opportunity has been beautifully encapsulated by senior journalist Ajay Singh in his book. “The Architect of the new BJP”. A painstaking four and half years of exhaustive research, travels, meeting those still surviving who saw the events unfolding before their eyes and then cross checking with the Prime Minister himself at various sessions he could garner has gone in the writing of this book. It faced two spells of Corona pandemic and that delayed the project too.
The book does not deal with platitudes like his childhood as tea vendor, but as a writer who has observed Modi’s emergence into politics closely and have had interactions with him from time to time.
In journalism for well over four and half decades, Ajay Singh first met Modi in 1995, the year when his skill surfaced in getting Keshubhai Patel anointed as Chief Minister of Gujarat and since then for 27 years now he has closely followed Modi Written in a simple and lucid style, Ajay Singh who is currently serving as Press Secretary to President Draupadi Murmu and had earlier served former President Ram Nath Kovind as well, said his focus on the book was very clear. “I have seen PM Modi taking decisions boldly, independently in the interest of the party; and facing the political crisis singlehandedly.”
Ajay Singh told The Times Kuwait that it was while he was reading a book by the American political scientist Myron Weiner, who has written exhaustively about the making of a political organization about the Congress Party of India, the idea to write a book took its form.
“With BJP expanding its organizational network exponentially in Eastern and North-eastern India, I thought that I should attempt to write on methods, conventional or unconventional, of party building in the BJP particularly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi helming the government and the party both. That was the background in which I undertook this work,” Ajay Singh recalled.
As far as critical moments, the writer regards the Machchu dam break in 1979, farmers agitation in 1983 and Ahmedabad municipality polls in 1986 were critical moments in Modi’s life in the initial years.
Although Modi had made his impression in the BJP as an organizer of Advani Rath Yatra in 1989, and then that of Murli Manohar Joshi in 1991-92, it was during his stint as organizational general secretary of the BJP in Gujarat, Modi had made the party so strong that it could come to power in the state on its own.
In 1995, Modi who was summoned to Delhi by the party, was made organizational secretary in the central unit of the BJP and, in 2001, he became the chief minister of Gujarat and then the Prime Minister in 2014. Ajay Singh has been witnessing Modi’s rise all through these years and he was continuously in touch with Modi and conversed with him on important developments.
‘The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed The Party’, gives a glimpse of the book’s content. Certainly, to know the organizational journey of Modi, this book is not just for those who love Modi or are BJP supporters but for those global intellectuals, and academics who also want to understand Modi.
When Modi had joined the BJP in 1986 as a Pracharak from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the party had only two seats in the Lok Sabha — one from Mehsana, his home district, and the other from Andhra Pradesh. In the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, all the heavyweights of the party had lost. The country was in the grip of a sympathy wave for the Congress following the assassination of Indira Gandhi that year.
Ajay Singh has managed to solve many puzzles with his book, from Modi’s rise to CM and then to PM . He has given space to Modi’s thoughts, contacts, and normal organizational tradition of meetings, along with techniques, models, experiments, courage, dialogues, and cooperation, which made him unparalleled in this journey to the highest political post in the country. Ajay Singh’s book has documented all this.
The book has been introduced by Walter Andersen who was the first person to have written an authentic book on the BJP’s precursor Jana Sangh’s organizational structure and its development.
Contrary to the belief that Advani saved Modi after the 2002 communal riots, Ajay Singh reveals it was rather two young emerging leaders Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley, both dead now, convinced Prime Minister Vajpayee not to sack Modi as it would not be in the interest of the party. Vajpayee yielded and Goa conclave did not discuss the issue at all,
Ajay Singh’s book will surely become a referral for some of the major political events as they unfolded during the Modi years. If someone wants to know how the BJP achieved this transformation from being a party with just 2 MPs in 1985 to controlling the Central government for two consecutive terms and to understand the organizational skills of Modi, Ajay Singh book ‘The Architect of the New BJP’ published by Penguin is the best bet.