Book Review: War room- The people, tactics and the technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 win

Book: War room: The people, tactics and the technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 win
Author: Ullekh NP
Publisher: Roli Books
Pages: 176
Price: 295

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Modi worked with the RSS in Gujarat, as well as outside. Having become an active member of the RSS after the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, he was in charge of recruiting cadres from among the colleges and schools of Gujarat. When then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of Emergency in the country in 1975, suspending elections and curbing civil liberties, he became an active participant of the resistance movement in the state.

That was a period when Modi went underground and travelled incognito, disguising himself as a Sikh, a saint, and so on. He was instrumental in distributing leaflets and publicity material exposing the government's atrocities during the Emergency, a period which lasted until 1977. Like most RSS workers, he was active in the "total revolution" movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan. Modi would later write about his Emergency days in a book titled Sangharsh ma Gujarat (Gujarat's Struggle). While he was active in the RSS, he also went on to pursue studies at Delhi University and Gujarat University.

After the Emergency, Modi rose rapidly in the RSS. His uncanny ability to connect with people won him many friends, including BJP heavyweight LK Advani who was later instrumental in co-opting him to the BJP. In 1987, he joined the BJP under instructions from Advani and the late RSS leader Kushabhau Thakre. By then, Modi had succeeding in denting the Congress's dominance in several local and municipal bodies in Gujarat. He travelled the length and breadth of the state many times on foot, familiarising himself with its fields, hills and valleys, and befriending party cadres. In January 1992, Modi rose to prominence outside of Gujarat as an intrepid party leader by accompanying Murli Manohar Joshi in his Ekta Yatra.

Many Delhi-based political observers remember coming across Modi's name from a picture that was taken in the New Year of 1992 in Srinagar when Joshi hoisted the national flag in a finale to the 47-day march from Kanyakumari that Kashmiri militants had threatened to disrupt. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao's army helped Joshi and his team hoist the flag amid tight security arrangements. The ceremony was over within twelve minutes and the 58-year-old Joshi looked nervous and overwrought. The man who stood next to Joshi, unswerving, defiant and undeterred by the winter chill of Srinagar helping the BJP veteran hoist the flag, was the 42-year-old Modi.

By the time Modi returned to Gujarat, amid talk that he had refused to wear the mandatory body armour while he was in Srinagar for the Ekta Yatra, there was a surge of envy and dislike for Modi's autocratic tendencies and self-promotion among the likes of Shankersinh Vaghela, then the powerful president of the state unit of the BJP. Vaghela and Modi had known each other even before the Emergency. Modi had once sneaked into a jail in Bhavnagar where Vaghela was lodged during the period. But by the 1990s, Vaghela was a staunch rival, who twice ensured that Modi could not step foot in Gujarat for long stretches of time. Notably, it was Advani who would play a very crucial role at this time in Modi's ascent in the organisation despite stiff opposition from the likes of Vaghela. Modi would later describe those years when he was forced by BJP rivals to work outside Gujarat, first as BJP secretary and later as its general secretary, as the most productive years in his life. Such adversities are opportunities too, he would tell his confidant Amit Shah when the Supreme Court imposed a restriction on the latter's entry to the state.

For Modi, such intervals away from the thick of action in Gujarat meant honing his organisational skills elsewhere. In 1992, facing snubs from the Vaghela camp, he didn't go into a total sulk. He told author (and his biographer Andy) Marino that one of the big things he did in this period was to build a school named Sanskardham in Allahabad as homage to his earliest mentor in the RSS, 'Vakil Sahib' Lakshmanrao Inamdar, with whom he had stayed in Ahmedabad's Hedgewar Bhavan. Back then, Modi used to make tea and cook for RSS campaigners, besides mopping the nine rooms in the Bhavan and washing his and Vakil Sahib's clothes.

Once back in Gujarat, Modi grew into an astute politician and a resolute organiser, campaigning extensively in Gujarat in the 1995 assembly polls that elected BJP to power in the western state. But he was soon caught on the wrong side of the power struggle between Vaghela and Keshubhai Patel, the then chief minister and Modi's close ally. Vaghela plotted the exit of Patel along with Sanjay Joshi, who also floated rumours that strained Modi's ties with Patel. Patel was away in the US when Vaghela flew forty-seven MLAs to a luxury hotel in the Madhya Pradesh town of Khajuraho and staked his claim to the chief minister's post with their backing. After Vaghela's revolt, it emerged that Patel didn't enjoy the support of the majority in the BJP legislature party in the Gujarat assembly. A crisis erupted and as soon as Patel returned from the US, the central leadership had to step in to firefight.

Senior BJP leader AB Vajpayee suggested a resolution: Vaghela could not replace Patel. Instead, they would have a compromise chief minister: Suresh Mehta. But Vaghela and Patel wanted something more: they demanded that the BJP expel Modi from Gujarat because he was the one fanning discontent.

Of course, though Modi left, the warring factions were at it again after a lull and Vaghela's honeymoon in the BJP didn't last long. Fidgety about not being made chief minister, he quit the
BJP, floated his own party, Rashtriya Janta Party, secured enough numbers by engineering defections and assumed the post of CM for two years from 1996. In 1998, in a reversal of fortunes that is typical of democratic politics, BJP once again won in Gujarat by a clear margin, marking the return of Keshubhai Patel as CM. Sanjay Joshi, an opportunist to the core who had by then won back Patel's trust, earned plaudits for being a key architect of that victory in Modi's absence. Vaghela later joined the Congress.

In the meantime, outside of Gujarat, Modi grew in the ranks of the party. By 1998, he was elevated to the crucial post of general secretary. Under Modi's watch, the BJP's tally rose to eleven in 1996 from just two in the 1991 Haryana assembly polls. In the Himachal assembly, where BJP had just eight seats when Modi assumed charge, the tally reached thirty-one seats in 1998. As the party's general secretary, Modi also built a wide network in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. All the while he also bonded with local party workers, leaders and bureaucrats. Party leaders he had befriended would prove to be extremely helpful later in his race to become the prime ministerial candidate of his party.

Over the next decade he would also ensure that Sanjay Joshi would be forced to resign as member of the BJP national executive. Modi's hostilities with Joshi had only exacerbated over the years with the former rising rapidly to become the party's poster boy. Never one to plot revenge in the conventional way, Modi bade his time before he could get back at Joshi. According to party insiders, the rivalry between Modi and Joshi even resulted in souring of ties between Modi and former BJP President Nitin Gadkari, who had inducted Joshi in his team in 2011 and named him poll manager for Uttar Pradesh. Ahead of the BJP national executive committee meeting in Mumbai in 2012, Modi had reportedly told Gadkari that he would not attend the meeting unless Joshi, who had become a bee in Modi's bonnet, was sacked from the executive committee. Under pressure, Joshi had agreed to resign and Gadkari publicly hailed the decision as "an act of sacrifice" in the interest of the party.

(Excerpted with permission from Roli Books)