Do not threaten to open riot cases, if you have the guts, arrest me now: Modi to PM

Speaking today to huge, cheering crowds at rally after rally in Sabarkantha district — one of the worst-affected areas during the riots — Modi kept repeating that the Prime Minister, during his recent visit to the state, had “threatened” to reopen the Godhra cases.

“Do you think Gujarat will be cowed down by your threats?” he asked. “Please do not talk in the language of threat. We Gujaratis never bother anyone but if someone bothers us, we never spare him,” said Modi in Himmatnagar. “Brothers and sisters, Gujarat is not going to be frightened. Gujaratis are proud people. I am requesting Congressmen not to keep coming here to threaten us.”

Asked at a press conference in Ahmedabad yesterday whether the Congress, if it came to power, would take a relook at the riot cases, the Prime Minister had said: “I do not believe in the politics of vindictiveness but if there are justified grievances that some cases were not attended to, we will have a second look into them.”

“The Prime Minister visited Gujarat recently,” Modi said today, this time in Bhilada, a small tribal town in Sabarkantha. “He came here and threatened us. He has said that what happened here after Godhra will be reviewed. Who are you (Singh) threatening? Your Government is in New Delhi for four years. If I would have been doing anything wrong here, do you think I would have been spared?”

He then dared the Prime Minister to arrest him. “If you have the guts, Manmohan Singh, arrest me tomorrow morning; arrest anyone you want.” Modi went on to say that the Prime Minister should, “stop playing vote bank politics”.

The Godhra riot cases are the latest salvo in Modi’s arsenal. He has cleverly turned the table on the Congress by making Sonia Gandhi’s “merchants of death” remark into a slogan of “protector of merchants of death” by accusing New Delhi of shielding those accused in the Parliament attack. He also used AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh’s “Hindu terrorism” remark by working up his audience into believing that Singh had insulted them by describing them as terrorists. At a rally in Idar today, he asked the audience:

“Are you Gujaratis?”

“Yes,” roared the crowd.

“Are you terrorists?”

“No.”

“Then how will you avenge this insult?”

He reminded the audience that a Gujarati called Mohandas (Gandhi) had avenged his insult in South Africa by driving away the white-skinned rulers from this country. Despite the EC — and now the Supreme Court’s — notice on his reference to Sohrabuddin’s death in a fake encounter, Modi was unfazed. “Sohrabuddin, Sohrabuddin, encounter, encounter, the Congress keeps chanting,” Modi said at the rally in Bhilada. “I don’t know what its (Congress’s) relation with Sohrabuddin is. If they have so much love for him they should take a pledge: if they regain their seats, they should offer chadar on Sohrabuddin’s grave.”