NAME: Narendra Damodardas Modi
AGE: 52
NATIONALITY: Indian
CLAIM TO FAME: The shameful face of Indian secularism

AS expected, the BJP got through once again in the Indian state of Gujarat even though the hawkish chief minister, Narendra Modi, was roundly blamed on a global scale for the bloodbath in Gujarat. The vote, which followed months of communal violence in which up to 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, died, was held under unprecedented security that put 170,000 armed police and troops out patrolling the streets.

Even the findings of an independent tribunal headed by a retired supreme court judge failed to dampen the spirits of the so-called secular India, which went out of its way to vote for the hindutva agenda. The tribunal had categorically indicted Modi and his state government for planning the violence. The nine-member tribunal comprised retired supreme and high court judges and civil rights lawyers who recorded a total of 2,094 statements by survivors of what the report called “a genocide” carried out with “military planning and precision”. The 600-page report concluded that there was irrefutable evidence to suggest that the state-sponsored violence against Muslims was part of “a well thought-out scheme to extract political capital” out of the riots.

The report also blamed New Delhi for condoning Modi’s actions after the Godhra train burning incident, allegedly carried out by an angry Muslim mob on February 27 this year, in which 58 Hindu activists were burnt alive. It went on to say that “a diabolical plan was drawn and disseminated to the top 50 leaders of the BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP on the method and the manner in which the 72-hour carnage that followed was to be carried out”. The independent nature of the report could be ascertained by the fact that the central and Gujarat state government officials abstained from appearing before the tribunal to answer the charges brought against them in the hearings conducted by the tribunal!

But, during the election rallies, Modi, who is described by friends as a political strategist, a firebrand agitator, an able administrator, and an extraordinary orator, instead chose to accuse the Congress of “playing politics over the dead bodies of human beings”. According to him, the Congress always remained silent on the issue of “violence against the Hindus”.

It is believed that Modi has remained in power in the state despite some of the harshest criticism of his rule because senior RSS leaders have persuaded Prime Minister Vajpayee to let him continue. According to some reports, former BJP President Kushabhau Thakre, a senior RSS member, made it clear to the prime minister that Modi would have to be defended, even at the cost of the survival of the central government. Modi is also known to be one of the favourite proteges of ultra-hawkish L.K. Advani. The acts of Modis and Advanis, however, have exposed in front of the entire world the ugly face of Indian secularism.