Unraveling the mystery of the white beard, the black beard and the bespectacled clean shaved

Unraveling the mystery of the white beard, the black beard and the bespectacled clean shaved An interviewer asked Amit Shah: “What is the mystery behind your strong relationship with Modi? “That is your job to find out. “The relationship between me and the prime minister is as normal as it should be. There is no mystery between us.”[1] No one has bothered to unearth it because the wind of victory has swept like a whirlpool. When the dust settles down it would naturally make the terrain that Amit Shah and Narendra Modi have traversed clear. Modi did prevent the truth of the carnage from full exposure. If he threatened the journalists with the fate of Daniel Pearl his hoodlums also stopped Rajdeep Sardesai to pass the test: “I was asked to remove my trousers to prove whether I was a Hindu or Muslim.” [2]The chief minister was not so naïve because he was already much more experienced and therefore Sardesai is not straightforward when he asserts: “I’ve realised it was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who was in control of Gujarat in 2002. Modi had been in power for only four-five months. I don’t think he had a hold over administration that he should’ve had. That I believe is something I have understood over these years.” How could such a senior journalist say this half truth? Sardesai was the anchor when Modi debated ‘Islamic terrorism’ with Dr Rafiq Zikaria and others a couple of days after 9/11. Ashish Nandi’s observation regarding Modi is also of the same circa. “It left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one’s ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology. “Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence—all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist”. [3] Modi has since grayed and as a white bearded man he has also acquired the sobriquet ‘safed dadi’in his bureaucratic set up and his junior MoS for home Amit Shah is black bearded. Sardesai’s first book 2014:The Election That Changed India cannot change the fact that Modi was and still is the demagogue and his demagoguery has acquired more finesse over the years. He has held his tongue after becoming PM lest the truth would be out in his words if he speaks more of 2002 pogroms and the fake encounters he often justified even criminally. Hence the proverbial truth: “The speck in the beard shows up who has stolen.” chor ki dadi meyn tinka. He has been dehydrated once [2007 interview by Karan Thapar] over the mass killings, a tip of the ice berg being exposed on the screen. Another metaphor is the little hand of Lady Macbeth which the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten. What Modi unleashed in Gujarat 2002 to win the election he replicated in Muzaffarnagar and therefore he did not channel negativism to positivism as Sardesai says: “In normal times we would’ve thought Modi is a polarising figure and dividing people, etc. In fact L K Advani was apparently telling the BJP this, don’t make Modi a PM candidate because that’ll polarise Hindus and Muslims. But actually, in the times we were living in, Modi became a unifier. You know, Modi stands for governance, the same person who stood for polarising elections was now being projected as a governance icon and it worked because there was this anger.” The most cogent fact that militates against this is the track record of the new PM in office. He won the election on May 16, 2014 when the Supreme Court also acquitted six people who were imprisoned for 11 years on the false charges that they had taken part in the attack on Akshardham temple. Even prior to the election his lieutenant Shah exhorted the Jats to take revenge for their honour, hence an innuendo of ‘honor killing.’ Adding the tag ‘in the polls’, would be fig leaf that cannot hide the subject matter. Modi had succeeded in polarizing in Gujarat which his lieutenant continued in Muzaffarnagar 2013. This does not diminish the fact that PraveenTogadia was very active and thereby it implies that VHP was behind the genocide. But it is equally true that it was Jaideep Patel, VHP boss in Ahmadabad to whom Modi personally had given charge of the dead bodies of the Hindu karsevaks killed at Godhra. Modi also joined the strike called by VHP. If anyone says that it was a government officer at the railway station who handed over the corpses it is still challengeable how he could do so and why did not Modi prevent it. The act of omission in preventing genocide was complicity in itself. Modi as well as Togadia were actively engaged. The chief minister toured Naroda Patiya and encouraged the mass murderers to continue their action with vigour and not slacken in their work. This is active complicity. Any court anywhere in the world would have taken the sting operation of Tehelka to its logical end. The Charra community members averred that Modi did encourage them. The RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and other saffron affiliates are multi headed Hydra and have participated in the genocide equally. VHP chief Ashok Singhal often taunted that post Godhra violence would be replicated elsewhere in India. It was. Sardesai praises Modi for delegating power to the young which he calls empowering the youth. But he forgets that Modi also delegated power to Amit Shah in the most serious situation of liquidating people in the fake encounters for the obvious reason that he was shrewd enough to know that chain of command principle in court would throw him in prison. For example it was the black bearded Shah who told DG Vanzara to take away Kauser Bi along with her husband when the bus was stopped near Sangli. She had thrown her arms to prevent the police from snatching her husband Sohrabuddin. This fake encounter case is one of the two in which Shah is charge sheeted. He also played equally serious criminal role in eliminating the only eye witness of the murder of Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram Prajapati. When Sanjiv Bhatt senior officer in charge of intelligence and security of even Modi confronted Shah with truth he became nervous and started fidgeting. Such serious charges as conspiracy, extortion, kidnapping, murder and destroying evidence are leveled against Shah. It lowered the moral standard as AAP believes but it is also a tactic that Modi and Shah would brazen it out by veneering the crimes against humanity with focusing exclusively on development and good governance.[4] That has paid off dividends in the polls but the judiciary has still to decide hundreds of cases. One way to skirt it was what I wrote in my book Narendra Modi and his pack, the terror streak (2013): “The Sangh [RSS] chose Modi to fight ten years later because his charisma was so enchanting that the Hindutva group felt that by winning the election they would get another clean chit for what had happened then. Thousands of cases are still pending in Gujarat or in the Supreme Court or in Bombay high court. By having Modi at the helms of affair of the country only he could sweep all the cases under the carpet of the mania for development.”[Chapter 1] The man with real record of attempting to shield Modi is the clean shaved Arun Jaitley. He has even written letters to Prime Minister when Modi was most vulnerable. He wove such legal arguments with great pains and drawing on his legal acumen that the genocide cases have been either prolonged or the recommendations of the amicus curiae have not been followed up. It is understatement that “Despite being party president, Shah remains chargesheeted in two cases of murder on which he is said to be informally advised by Jaitley.” [5] There has been a whole battery of legal experts employed to tackle the numerous cases including such ones as Tushar Mehta (Advocate General), S Gurumuthy, S Ram, Ram Jethmalani, etc. Shah served time in prison and was given bail plus freedom to canvas even when he was involved in murders and was capable of destroying evidence and obstructing justice from outside his state as well. More than a dozen police officers accused in serious charges are now reinstated in their posts are most probably doing what is logically possible, saving their necks as well as their seniors and political bosses. Modi was so agitated at times that he would let truth slip out of his tighter control over cover up. He was attending a grand function of inauguration of the Police University when he abruptly left the function and went in a huddle. Jaitley had 400 journalists dine with him. He had contacts with many more. If media played a major role in the victory it is balanced by the saffrom groups. No one would like him or his leader come to any harm. Are there still enough independent free lance journalists to reveal the mystery? [1]http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/exclusive-amit-shah-we-are-pro-india/20141103.htm?pos=2&src=NL20141104&trackid=7MGeiBNRiOgHpjiU22XIw0UhYgsPCBFedrAsNDfdS8Q=&isnlp=0&isnlsp=0 [2]http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/rajdeep-sardesai-i-have-never-been-anti-modi/20141105.htm?pos=2&src=NL20141106&trackid=7MGeiBNRiOgHpjiU22XIw0UhYgsPCBFedrAsNDfdS8Q=&isnlp=0&isnlsp=0 [3]Seminar 2002. [4]http://www.aamaadmiparty.org/amit-shah-becomes-bjp-president-inspite-of-facing-serious-criminal-charges [5] India Today November 10, 2014. .