How Modi’s Art of Politics Is Propelling His Party

The book gives an insight into how PM Modi reinvented BJP without compromising the home-grown way of party-building.

By Shadab Hassan

WHEN Narendra Modi arrived in Jammu at the fag-end of 2013 to address his ‘Lalkar‘ rally, he brought home the sweeping political change that would propel his parent party to ascent on the Delhi throne in a matter of months.

Behind his nationalist party’s sharp gains, reveals a new treatise, was the man who wooed massive investments in his hometown Gujarat despite bad press and cutting activism.

Much of what premier Modi has achieved as the Bharatiya Janata Party leader has now become a new political tome—The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party. 

Authored by veteran political scribe Ajay Singh, the book was released this June by Penguin Random House India.

The paperback is inked with the insightful details about the BJP’s top gun and his strategies to sweep some tough political battles of recent times.

Before his political advent in 2014, the author argues, the political reality of India was different. Hindus would vote on caste lines, while minorities lined up enbloc. At the same time, coalition politics was ruling the roost.

In this political backdrop, the party which had just two seats in 1984, came to power twice since 2014. Behind the massive mandate, the author argues, were the organisational skills of Narendra Modi.

“It’s naively assumed that Modi’s rise has solely to do with Hindutva plus economic development — often called ‘Moditva’,” Singh argues in the new Modi biography.

“But this view ignores the methods he deployed to broaden the base of his organisation, the BJP, and helped to connect it with more and more people. His ways are often old textbook methods, applied with more tenacity and conviction, and even his rivals have started imitating his innovations, albeit unwittingly.”

With 35 years of reporting experience, Singh has deep insights about Modi and his methods. He constructs the chronology of how BJP as an organisation and party grew under Modi’s leadership.

Singh details the grassroots and ground politics that Modi touched in the states other than Gujarat.

The thread of the political profile remains riveting as the scribe details Modi’s growth from his home state to a national level on the basis of his decision-making skills and cadre-creation.

Singh writes about Modi’s organisational feats resulting into a paradigm shift for the BJP—the party that began to look at politics as the art of the possible. “He [Modi] realised the efficacy of trained cadre, sustained positive narratives of change and of charting new territories,” Singh writes. “Because he looks at electoral demographics with a bold new standpoint and shakes up traditional structures and processes, Modi had made the BJP as a huge machine at granular levels.”

Apart from giving an interesting account of a party’s rise from piggybacking on the socialist group, the architect of the New BJP offers excellent details about the social psychology and political events.

Among other things, Modi’s tactical feats forged an alliance—the watershed event in contemporary Kashmir politics—with the valley-based party in the early 2015.

The fractured mandate that the post-2014 flood politics of Jammu and Kashmir threw on the political chessboard saw some shrewd dices being tried in a long-drawn political drama driven by parleys. The thumping majority in Jammu majorly being credited to his Lalkar rally rhetoric simply checkmated the shrewd politician like Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and forced him to sign the pact for the so-called “unholy” alliance.

“Because he looks at electoral demographics with a bold new standpoint and shakes up traditional structures and processes, Modi had made the BJP as a huge machine at granular levels.”

Despite offers of grand-grouping from his Kashmir nemesis, the former home minister of India chose BJP to respect “people’s mandate and sentiments”. The move was dismissed as a “political suicide”, but it eventually proved a win-win situation for the top BJP man who not only forced the rigid regional party on the table, but later walked away with the cake of Article 370.

The fractured mandate that the post-2014 flood politics of Jammu and Kashmir threw on the political chessboard saw some shrewd dices being tried in a long-drawn political drama driven by parleys. The thumping majority in Jammu majorly being credited to his Lalkar rally rhetoric simply checkmated the shrewd politician like Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and forced him to sign the pact for the so-called “unholy” alliance.

But how did this Modi-led BJP achieve its 70-year-long Mission Kashmir? 

Singh credits PM Modi’s strategic acumen for influencing thoughts and actions of people to achieve the tough political task.

He heavily relied on a superstructure of the party that he built to forge the internal unity and external influence. The biographer details how the man charmed “outsiders” to join the caravan and went on to challenge the established norms.

Singh mentions his first meeting with Modi in 1996, when the premier was BJP’s National General Secretary. While deconstructing Modi’s Gujarat years and the 2014 political methods, Singh argues that a flurry of poll wins that the party achieved under his leadership essentially required an institution-creation ability, than a mere charisma.

While covering 40 years of Modi’s political journey, Singh gives some rare insights into the work and manner of India’s prime minister from a reporter’s angle.

The scribe started working on this book in 2017 and went on to examine the past and the future of the party based on extensive interviews with workers, leaders and observers.

Giving a detailed account of Modi’s courage to experiment and innovate, Singh dishes out a simple and interesting story, leaving the analytical depths for the readers who choose to look at them.

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