There is level-headedness on the part of Modi and a careful weighing of words. This needs to be inculcated down the line in the government and the ruling party.
Shrewd and politically savvy as he is, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made the leaders of rival political parties look like upstarts by proving wrong their predictions that his speech on Dussehra day at Lucknow would be laced with opportunistic statements to appropriate credit for the ‘surgical strikes’ by the Indian army on terror-training camps in Pak-occupied Kashmir.
By choosing to speak of the triumph of good over evil in the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics and equating the vanquishing of Ravana with the war on terror, Modi exhorted people to be like the mythological Jatayu (the vulture) in fighting terror. As the popular epic says, Jatayu became a martyr fighting Ravana in an attempt to free the abducted Sita from his clutches. The analogy instantly touched the heart of the participative crowd that had gathered in massive numbers to hear him speak.
It is small wonder then that opposition leaders who were speculating on how the prime minister would, in a sense, launch the BJP campaign for next year’s Assembly elections have been rendered speechless. Contrary to expectations, Mr Modi did not mention the army even once and even desisted from naming Pakistan though his references to the recalcitrant neighbour were unmistakable.
Declaring terrorism to be the enemy of humanity and warning that countries sheltering terrorists would not go unpunished, Modi warned that at times war became inevitable because of the sheer nature of circumstances. The prime minister even took a veiled dig at China whose President, Xi Jinping, is soon to have parleys with him on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Goa. Calling upon all countries to unite in the war against terror, he warned that those who thought they were immune to terrorism were grossly mistaken. The indirect reference was apparently to the surfacing of terrorism in China’s backyard.
Characteristically, whenever a Chinese dignitary visits India, Beijing unfailingly precedes the visit with some subtle warning or lure on a contentious issue. This time the deputy foreign minister, Li Baodong, held out the carrot of China being open to a discussion on India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group which it has been stonewalling. Evidently, what was left unsaid was what China would want in return — India going easy on support to countries affected by Chinese territorial or maritime claims on South China Sea and/or no Indian hindrance, overt or covert, to construction of the China-Pak Economic Corridor.
Modi’s subtle word of caution to China in his Lucknow speech must be seen in this context.
All said and done, Modi’s speech at the Lucknow rally has doubtlessly dented for now the swords of Congress heir-apparent Rahul Gandhi, U.P. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, BSP supremo Mayawati and RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav in one stroke. While Rahul had accused Modi of doing ‘khoon ki dalali’ or playing with the blood of martyred jawans in a statement that was regarded as bizarre and in poor taste, Akhilesh had endorsed that statement to curry favour with the Congress to outsmart the BSP in forging an alliance with it. Mayawati and Lalu too had accused the prime minister of making political capital out of the martyrdom of our soldiers.
Significantly, while Modi has done his bit, there is no doubt that there are elements within the BJP which are playing to the galleries with vote-catching gimmicks. Even before the Lucknow rally there were posters put up which were credited to BJP local leaders and which sought to capitalise on the army’s ‘surgical strikes’ for political gains.
Ironically, Modi’s right-hand man, party president Amit Shah is not completely above board. When the ‘surgical strikes’ controversy was at its peak, Amit had hinted in a Press conference that he was not averse to using the army’s precision strikes as an election plank.
But there is a school of thought which questions why the BJP should not take pride in the fact that its government gave the right direction to the army without which the strikes at terror camps would not have been possible. It was this direction that was missing during UPA rule, the protagonists of this view contend.
The Congress claim that such strikes did take place at that time but they were kept under wraps is not believed by most people because it is widely felt that the Manmohan Singh government was spineless and utterly ineffective and that the Modi government is by comparison decisive and strong.
Prime Minister Modi’s initiative in reaching out to the people of Pakistan in his recent Kozhikode speech, exhorting them to wage a war jointly with India on poverty and unemployment and to steer clear of the terror structure in their country is also a powerful message which makes a distinction between the people and the ‘terror structure’ propped up by the government in Islamabad.
But there is another related issue on which Modi has not commented. If this implies a level of continuing trust in people to people contacts why are Pakistani actors, writers, singers and academics being shunned? Why are the likes of BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi not being pulled up by the BJP leadership when they make statements like “to hell with the Pakistani people” in the context of being asked why evidence of surgical strikes is not being released.
All in all, there is level-headedness on the part of Modi and a careful weighing of words. This needs to be inculcated down the line in the government and the ruling party.
