I/III. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1020912/asp/nation/story_1191889.asp
Fernandes held the stick BJP wielded on Modi OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT *New Delhi, Sept. 11:* BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu was forced to tick off Narendra Modi more because of pressure from the Samata Party and less to “save” Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee from embarrassment when he interacts with Muslims of Gujarati origin during his US trip. A day after Naidu asked the Gujarat chief minister to refrain from making objectionable remarks, it emerged that defence minister and NDA convenor George Fernandes was reportedly upset on reading reports of Modi describing the relief camps as “baby-manufacturing factories”. During his Gaurav Yatra, Modi had also asked Muslims to stop “breeding” in large numbers. Sources in the NDA said Fernandes instructed one of his close associates to call up Naidu and urge him to tell Modi to put an end to his offensive comments. The BJP chief was also warned that if he did not “act”, the Samata would be forced to react publicly. The party, however, is unfazed by Modi reportedly referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi as a “*gor chamadi walli* (that fair-skinned woman)”. “That bit doesn’t concern us, but when he starts abusing the minorities we refuse to keep quiet,” said sources close to Fernandes. The Congress today demanded criminal prosecution of Modi for his hate campaign against the minorities. “He is continuing with his hate campaign of minorities which has no place in the civilised society. He has a single point agenda to create social conflict. He should be prosecuted under criminal law of the land,” party spokesperson Anand Sharma said. Accusing Modi of dividing people on communal lines to get political mileage in the next Assembly polls, he said deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani was answerable whether his government respects the law or supports “a violator of the Constitution”. “Silence on Advani’s part would be a confirmation that what has happened in Gujarat, or whatever Modi is doing, is in accordance with the central leadership” of the party, he said. Avoiding a direct reply on whether the party would file a criminal case against Modi for his minority bashing, Sharma said as long as the communal threat persists, the party would continue to raise its voice against such forces to “expose them and confront them”. The Samata, too, plans to closely monitor the chief minister’s speeches to check if its intervention had chastened him. BJP sources, however, claim that going by the “excellent” response Modi got in the first leg of his campaign, it seemed unlikely he would pipe down. “The English-speaking media has been after Modi’s life after the Godhra incident. He has realised it is futile to take them on directly. So his strategy is to reach out to people directly and answer the charges hurtled on him by the English-speaking press,” said a party functionary. According to the BJP, the “elitist” media did not influence the people of Gujarat, whose responses have been shaped by the views of the regional media. “That (local) media reflects the feelings on the ground and is closer to what people think. They are in a sense supportive of the chief minister,” said sources. For the record, BJP spokesperson Arun Jaitley continued to defend Modi to the hilt. “I have also tried to ascertain facts (about Modi’s controversial speeches) and seen the statements of our Gujarat leaders who were present in the meetings. There are inaccuracies in some of the press reports,” he said. He remarked that the “inaccuracies” might have crept in because it was “not possible” for a correspondent to catch up with the yatra — travelling at break-neck speed — and cover every meeting Modi addressed. Jaitley also insisted that the statement on “population explosion” were not made in the context of Muslims. The BJP spokesperson said if the National Commission of Minorities wished to see the videotapes of the yatra and verify Modi’s remarks, the Gujarat government would have them sent. The commission has asked the government for a full text of Modi’s speech. II/III. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVBwUtwalWc III. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130713/jsp/frontpage/story_17112818.jsp#.Ur5_U9IW33E | Saturday , July 13 , 2013 | ‘Decisive’ words: Kutte ka bachcha- Modi’s analogy splits open riot woundsOUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT *New Delhi, July 12: *Narendra Modi today projected his “decisiveness” as an imperative in the season of policy paralysis but the message, probably meant for an English-reading audience, was drowned by a “*kutte ka bachcha*” reference made in the context of the Gujarat riots. The BJP’s presumptive candidate for Prime Minister made the comments during an interview to Reuters, the international news agency, which uploaded edited excerpts on its website today and said that the replies had been translated from Hindi. The interview was given on June 25 at Modi’s official residence in Gandhinagar. In the interview, Modi asserted that he was “decisive” but not “authoritarian”, agreed he was a polarising figure but strictly in a political sense and not a communal one, said he was a “human being” besides being a chief minister and defined the “real Modi” as a “nationalist”, a “born Hindu” and a “patriot”. He saw no contradiction in dovetailing the classic RSS template of “Hindu nationalism” with being “progressive, development-oriented and a workaholic”. The message that Modi, who mostly spoke in Hindi, wanted to send to an international audience was clear. “If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides of the same coin… People want him (a leader) to make decisions. Only then they accept the person as a leader. That is a quality, it’s not a negative,” he said. The emphasis on “decisiveness” as a hallmark of “leadership” is a thought-through BJP strategy to show up the Manmohan Singh government as limp and indecisive. Modi is expected to be projected as a leader with little or no patience to look over his shoulders before clinching a decision. But the decisiveness was in danger of being seen as recklessness by the evening. Asked if he regretted what happened in the riots of 2002, Modi said: “India’s Supreme Court is considered a good court today in the world. The Supreme Court created a special investigative team (SIT) and top-most, very bright officers who oversee the SIT. That report came. In that report, I was given a thoroughly clean chit, a thoroughly clean chit.” Then Reuters’ translated version quoted Modi as saying: “Another thing, any person if we are driving a car, we are a driver, and someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course, it is. If I’m a chief minister or not, I’m a human being. If something bad happens anywhere, it is natural to be sad.” The word “puppy” drew a firestorm of protests on Twitter and elsewhere amid allegations that a despicable comparison was being made to the riot victims. Later it emerged that the full sentence was, barring five words, in Hindi and many found the choice of metaphor more offensive and insensitive than the translated “puppy”. The footage of the interview shows Modi as saying: *“Hum agar *car* chala rahen hain… aur koi *drive* kar raha hai aur hum peechhe baithe hain, phir bhi ek chhota kutte ka bachcha bhi *car* ke neeche aa jata hai, toh humein * pain feel* hota hai ki nahin? Hota hai.”* This evening, Modi tweeted: “In our culture every form of life is valued & worshipped. My original interview with Reuters http://nm4.in/ 138jss0.… People are best judge.” The tweet did not explain why he had referred to the back seat though Modi was at the decision-maker’s wheel in Gujarat as chief minister when the riots took place. The BJP, sections of which felt that Modi should have articulated his views in a less controversial manner, said it was “despicable” to say he was drawing any comparisons with a community. The tone of the other comments in the interview was in line with the idea of propelling Modi on the stump as a “no-nonsense” head. The objective appeared to be to turn apolitical fence-sitters around and reassure his traditional support base. Some heard in the intemperate remarks an undeclared assessment that Modi’s attempt to cast himself as a moderate had not made much headway among the minorities and that he had decided to focus on those frustrated with the state of affairs, including the economy, and his core constituency. On the 2002 riots, Modi claimed he had “absolutely” done the “right thing” that year. “Absolutely,” he declared, adding: “However much brainpower the Supreme Being has given us, however much experience I’ve got and whatever I had available in that situation and this is what the SIT had investigated.” Modi addressed a concern among his party colleagues that he has an authoritarian streak. “If someone was an authoritarian, then would he be able to run a government for so many years? Without a team effort, how can you get success? And that’s why I say Gujarat’s success is not Modi’s success. This is the success of Team Gujarat.” Modi claimed he never “dreams of becoming anything”, quizzed on who he would emulate if he became Prime Minister, but humility did not appear a forte. “I can say that since 2003, in however many polls have been done, people have selected me as the best CM,” he said, adding that many of those polled were from outside Gujarat. He said there came a time when he wrote to Aroon Purie, chief editor of the India Today Group, to keep him out of the competition (for best-run states) and “give someone else a shot at it”. On the perception that he was “too polarising a figure”, Modi said: “If in America, if there was no polarisation between Democrats and Republicans, then how would democracy work? …If everyone moved in one direction, would you call that a democracy?” Modi restated his definition of secularism as “India first” and said that while seeking votes, he would not divide the electorate into Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. “Religion should not be an instrument in your democratic process,” he said, less than a week after his political aide Amit Shah had emphasised he would like to see a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Modi denied the suggestion that his evolution as a “brand” was the result of a public relations strategy. He claimed that he had never employed a PR agency. Maintaining that there was a “huge difference” between the West and India, he said neither a PR agency nor the media could “make anything of a person” here. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
