Fast turnaround

Though the legal resolution to the Gujarat riots,and to charges of complicity against him,is still to come,Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has declared himself de facto absolved by the Supreme Court,and announced a sadbhavana mission and three-day fast in the name of peace and harmony. While it may sound like the worst kind of cynical and cheeky stunt to those who hold him accountable for the 2002 communal slaughter,the sadbhavana fast is clearly an attempt to wipe the slate clean for himself. Modi is both despised and admired with ferocious intensity,and this is his first attempt to address the past at least obliquely,with mentions of unity in diversity and peace and harmony.

In all the years since 2002,Modi has never expressed remorse for the riots and perhaps he cannot disavow that episode given how he has also exploited it,to craft an image of himself as a flag-bearer of aggressive Hindutva and of Gujarat as a proud and misunderstood state,demonised by those who cannot keep up with its success. Rather,he has tried to focus the conversation on Gujarats glory,and sell his own prodigious administrative capacities. Gujarat is a dynamo of industry and commerce with its highways and private railroads and ports,its entrepreneurial citizens and diaspora,it is a reformist exemplar for the rest of India. And Modi has tried to make over his own brand,hitching his own wagon tight to Gujarats runaway success. However,there are clear limits to that reinvention. At least,as long as the long and terrible shadow of the riots looms over his administrative record. He is the BJPs mojo as well as its liability,a factor that repeatedly gets in the way of coalition-building. He remains confined to Gujarat,his outside campaigning is mostly limited to rabble-rousing purposes.

Whether Modis sadbhavana fast is motivated by a belated desire for reconciliation,as unspoken penance,whether it is a pitch for a larger national arena or simply an attempt to consolidate Gujarat,interpretations of the act are bound to be polarised. For those who remember his every action has an equal and opposite reaction attitude in 2002,the sight of Narendra Modi undertaking a peace fast may only salt the wounds of the past.