He speaks of himself in the third person. He breaks his speech several times to ask questions of his audience, exhorting them to respond. And they do, especially the young men in the not-so-large crowd gathered in the dusty marketing yard of Lathi town in district Amreli.The day after he was served a notice by the Election Commission for his Sohrabuddin speech, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, for the most part of his 30-minute speech, was talking directly to “Soniaben”.“Soniaben,” he said, “you have a right to talk, to ask for votes, but don’t spread falsehood”. Or, “Soniaben, you call Modi a ‘maut ka saudagar’, you have insulted the very earth of Gujarat. It is a sin”.And, “Soniaben, we Gujaratis don’t trouble anyone, but if anyone should trouble us, we give it right back — when one Gujarati was thrown out of a railway compartment in South Africa, he overthrew the British government, Soniaben.”After each question, he paused, as if waiting for “Soniaben” to reply, letting the question hang in the air for a just that one moment.Modi spoke of POTA, the terror law that the UPA government repealed soon after it came to power. “When governments all over the world are coming out with tough laws to tackle terrorism, you (Soniaben) removed Pota — and they burst crackers in Pakistan”. He asked his audience: “Did you distribute sweets? Did you burst crackers here?” They shouted back: “No, no.”He spoke of the Parliament attack and Afzal Guru on Death Row. “Afzal Guru was to be hanged, but you (Soniaben) are protecting him”. To the audience again: “You tell me, should he be hanged?” And again, “Should he be hanged?”He mentioned the UPA government’s affidavit on the Ram Sethu. “They said to the court that there was no evidence of the birth of Lord Ram.” To his audience: “You tell me, was Lord Ram born? Was Sita born? Did Lord Ram have to go into wilderness for 14 years? Did not Ravan carry Sita away? Was not the Ram Setu built?. Even a child knows this, but the Congress doesn’t.” And the punch line after the pause: “If they can lie about Lord Ram, who is Modi?”Modi didn’t mention his government. He personified it. “At one time, Gujarat was full of taporis.Then I came and ended their game.Now there is no tapori in Gujarat, only peace and calm”. He had a reason for Gujarat being drought-free for the last five years: “I have been working with sincerity, God has been kind to me”. And he was the outsider: “I was never a sarpanch, never a zilla parishad head.I only knew how to work hard when I suddenly became Chief Minister”.Amreli is said to be the epicentre of the dissidence that has racked the BJP this time before the elections. In as many as three of the six seats in this Leuva Patel-dominated district, BJP rebels, all Leuva Patels, have been given tickets by the Congress. The Lathi-Lillia seat is one of them. But Modi did not deign to take note of the storm that is being worked up around Amreli. Clearly, Modi sees the BJP election campaign as of him, by him and for him — he mentioned the BJP only once, at the very end of his 30-minute speech, and other BJP leaders not at all.
