In these lines taken from one of the verses in Saakshi Bhav, a book of poems in Hindi released in the capital on Monday, Narendra Modi could well have been writing about his current predicament a year since he took over as prime minister when the doubters and critics have all been silenced and the swell of expectations has risen high.
"The subject of my new responsibilities/ That had led to a storm in the outside world/ Has almost died down./ Everyone's surprise, questions, etc are now coming to an end/ Now the expectations will begin/ The extent and severity of the expectations will be great/ The creation of my new self is also at an end now."
In these lines taken from one of the verses in Saakshi Bhav, a book of poems in Hindi released in the capital on Monday, Narendra Modi could well have been writing about his current predicament a year since he took over as prime minister when the doubters and critics have all been silenced and the swell of expectations has risen high. But, no, these are lines refer to an earlier transformation, a no less momentous change in the life of the "common man" PM – when in December 1986, the RSS pracharak in Gujarat was deputed to its political arm, the BJP.
"Narendra wrote the poems in Saakshi Bhav as a form of diary, addressed to the goddess, in which he confided his inner thoughts, nationalist feelings, and social philosophy. But he did not want to reveal them to the world, and so he burnt them. Thankfully, some senior RSS functionaries saved some, and they have been compiled in this book," said BJP president Amit Shah at the release function. Saakshi Bhav, which has 19 poems, was published in the original Gujarat in 2014.
Three other books were also released by Shah, and home minister Rajnath Singh. Two of them Jyoti Punj, short biographies of RSS pracharaks, and Social Harmony, a compilation of his thoughts on the subject, are English translations of books that the prime minister had written in his native Gujarati some years ago, while the third, Modi: Common Man's PM, is a biography by Gujarati journalist Kishore Makwana. All four have been published by well-known Hindi publisher, Prabhat Prakashan, which has published books by several BJP and RSS leaders – VD Savarkar, Nanaji Deshmukh, Atal Behari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Dr Harshvardhan, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Bhairon Singh Sekhawat, et al. A book by Union urban development minister Nitin Gadkari on "India in the Future" is also due for release this Friday.
For Singh and Shah, the occasion was one to reaffirm the image of the man who had led the BJP to a stupendous win, and its first-ever single party majority in Parliament, as not just a politician but a man of letters, and vision. "I came to know Modiji well only after becoming BJP president and when he became prime ministerial candidate but I realised quickly that he had everything -- words, a sensitive mind, style and a message – that made him not just a good leader but also a man of literature," said Singh.
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