Narendra Modi

From Freepedia

Narendra Damodardas Modi (born September 17, 1950, Gujarat, India) is the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat in India since October 7, 2001. He was born in Vadnagar town of Mehsana district of Gujarat.


Contents

Early Political Career

Narendra Modi was a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Pracharak, or a high-level regional organizer of the RSS. Joining the BJP in the mid-1980s, Modi has worked to organize election campaigns in many states. Together with Praveen Togadia, a Hindu extremist and major leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, he masterminded the political takeover of Gujarat by the BJP in the mid-1990s. He held the office of BJP General Secretary twice.

He became Gujarat's Chief Minister in 2001, when his predecessor Keshubhai Patel resigned from office following the loss of 2 Assembly and 1 Lok Sabha seat.

Gujarat Riots of 2002

Main Article: 2002 Gujarat violence

Modi's first months in office were lack-lustre, matched with declining BJP popularity and scrambled party efforts to get him officially elected within the six-month constitutional deadline for a non-elected person holding power.

Soon after the sheela daan standoff between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Government in [[Ayodhya], in an outbreak of violence in Gujarat in February 2002, 59 Hindu VHP activists were killed in a train fire at the Godhra station. While the cause of the fire is still disputed, the Hindu right wing leaders blame it on a muslim mob.

The main conflagration flared up when the 59 bodies were carried across the town to a hospital for post-mortem examinations. The terrible imagery of horribly charred human remains, with protestors chanting vicious slogans provoked thousands of Hindus across Gujarat. Mobs spilled out on the streets, shutting down shops, offices and roads, and attacking Muslims on a wide scale. The worst violence occurred in Godhra, Naroda Patia, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and the capital Gandhinagar.

Riots continued over Gujarat for over two months. With inter-state traffic perilized, mobs killed, burned and looted en masse. This is same kind of situation when Rodney king incident happen in LA as africian americian think that they are not getting justice properly.

Official estimates state that 259 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed, with 200 more missing. Many human rights groups put the figure of total killed at beyond 2,000. This is not first time riots in this Gujarat State. History tells us that there are lot of riots between hindu and muslim since last 200 years in Gujarat state of India. Also riots between hindu and muslim are very common in India.

After the vicious events continued and continued unhindered, the Union government, also led by the BJP, appointed Punjab's ex-police chief K.P.S. Gill to act as a point-man and supervisor to the Gujarat police (in effect, by-pass Gujarat's top officers and Modi's ministers). Gill's efforts and the calling out of the Army helped stem the violence in a couple of weeks.

During the bloodshed, Modi and his supporters often publicly called the riots "a natural response" of Hindus to the Godhra attacks by Muslim fundamentalists. Some left-wing circles claimed that Modi and his ministers instructed Gujarat's police officers not to obstruct the mobs. Many subsequent witnesses and press reports claimed that VHP leaders, BJP leaders, MLAs and Ministers themselves organized the attacks on Muslim neighborhoods. Modi's lowest point was when the Prime Minister himself criticized his government.

But Modi soon exposed a strong fibre of support from the Hindu hard-right VHP and the BJP's philosophical Godfather, the RSS. He undertook a statewide "Gaurav Yatra," or "Pilgrimage of Pride," to rally the Gujarati conscience and pride against the widespread media attack against the state itself. When the Assembly was dissolved late that year, Modi's BJP came out winning 126 seats out of 182 in the fresh elections conducted.

Victory and Political Future

Modi continues to have a strong base of support with the hard Hindu right-wing in the VHP and the RSS, and he is developing credentials as a pro-reform, pro-business leader by his expansion of pro-business policies in his state, establishing IT parks and industrial parks and lowering taxes. Modi policies on electricity sector reform and industrial reform in petro-chemical sector has have been seen as a new benchmark for reform by other states in India.

But following his triumphant victory, Modi's star has only fallen. The BJP's defeat in the 2004 national elections included more than two-thirds of the seats from Gujarat. Losing his home state has strongly reduced Modi's political capital and star. Despite an active campaign to court Muslims, it lost that community's votes on a large scale. Modi was kept out of campaigning for most of the election process, but when the panic button was pressed, even he could not stem the loss of votes. Modi remains a widely criticized and despised figure in many parts of the country, and the world. His 2003 visit to the UK was actively protested against, and in 2005, his US visa was revoked under US Section 212 (a)(2)(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act which makes any foreign government official who was responsible or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religions freedom, ineligible for the visa.([1])

In October 2005, Modi had almost single-handedly led an intensive campaign for the civic poll in Ahmedabad City through his 'Jansampark Yatra'. The BJP won 96 of the 129 AMC seats, including the three seats of Danilimda ward, considered to be a traditional Congress strong-hold. Also of the 208 taluka panchayats for which results were declared, the party won in 135. Of the 49 nagarpalikas, the BJP won in 30 and the Congress in seven. In 12 nagarpalikas, the Congress backed independents.

The BJP has recaptured the entire eastern tribal belt of the state, winning most of the local bodies from Sabarkantha in the north to Navsari down south. Even in the Saurashtra region, a rebel bastion, Modi’s campaign brought good results: barring Rajkot panchayat, almost all others have been won by the BJP.



External links

http://www.narendramodi.org/ http://www.gujaratindia.com/government/govt2.htm

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