AMIT SHAH, POLITICS, PARTY AND BIOGRAPHY

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Amit Shah and the March of the BJP
Anirban Ganguly 1 Shiwanand Dwivedi
New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Isac Deutcher, the famous biographer of Stalin and of Trotsky quotes the Florentine political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli who says "all armed phpphets conquer and unarmed prophets are vanquished". Biographers of politicians, diplomats and statesmen should remember this wise insight while writing biobraphies or rather manufacturing them. Anirban Ganguly, is a well known ideologue of the BJP and is the Director of the Syama Pradad Reseach Foundation, a well known think tank, in New Delhi. He is a good writer with an impressive educational credentials to his name.n However, Amit Shah and his political life though well documented, this book fails to address certain vital issues: the Goghra Incident, the Shorabbuddin Inncident and the encounter killings of Ishrat Jehan and her terrorist companions are just ignored. And this is a wrong rhetorical strategy. In fact as a biographer of Amit Shan, Anirban Ganguly should have discussed these three very imp[ortant events that in effect shaped Amit Shah's rise to the most poserful positionas the Home Minister of India. Before delving into the details of the biography I want to discuss precisely the issues evaded by Dr Ganguly.

Both the Hon'ble Prime Minister and the Hon'ble Home Minister of India have been accused by the Congress and other opposition parties of being complicit in the massacres that took place after the killing of the 59 passengers at Godhra station in Febuary 2002. Andy Marino in his biography of Narendra Modi which I have reviewed in this blog, has clearly brought out the facts that Narendra Modi was elected to the Gujarat Assemby just a day before the Godhra inncident and he was 200 kilometers away. Telephone records clearly show thst the then Chief Minister anf his MoS Home Department, noene other than the subject of this biography were on the phone directing the police to use maximum force to bring the riots under control. The Army was called out from Ahemdabad on the same day and this is in direct contrat to the conduct of Rajiv Gandhi who refused to call out the Army even as Congressmen went aon a killing spree after his mother died. Shoot at sight orders were given and more people were killed in the police firing than in the riots inself. Rampaging mobs were brought under control. The UPA Government tried to implicate Narendra Modi in the Gujarat Riots by saying that the state Governemnt did not take steps to control the situation. In fact, there were insinuations to the effect by Congressmen that Modi and Shah were directing the mobs and a discredited police officer, Sanjeev Bhat made statements to the effect that he was present in the room when such orders were given. This satement of Sanjeev Bhat was proved to be false on the basis of his own mobile phone data which showed his presence elsewhere. Based on such propaganda the Supreme Court ordered a Special Investigating Team and the SIT after interogationg both Modi and Shah gave a clean chit. In other words, exonerated both of any involvement in the post Godhra riots. This allegation was used both by the Congress party and Pakistan to demonixde Modi leading to the denial of US visa for nearly a decade. These facts are important and Anirban Ganguly has erred by ignoring them.

Amit Shah was the Minister of State for the Home Department and reported directly to the Chief Minister. Amit Shah hailed from a rich Gujarati business family and was educated in a traditional way and this explains both the analytical skill and the vigour of his public persona. Remarkably, Amit Shah was externed from Gujarat on the orders of the High Court and this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The killing of Shorabbuddin, a criminal who was into extortion and ransom from rich marble traders from Rajastan and Gujarat was wanrted for henious crimes in 9 states of India and he was arrested by the Andhra Pradesh police and was taken to Ahmedabad. His killing seems to have been a fall out of rivalries with other extortionist gangs and Vanjara, the Director General of Police was given the goahead for the encounter. Amit Shan was in no way involved in the execution style killing of Kousar Bi who was a witness to the killing of Shorabbudin and the telephonic conversations produced in court clearly show that the context of the exchange was limited to Shorabbudin, a criminal wanted in 9 states. The then UPA regime wanted to foist the case of wilful murder on Amit Shah by arguing that the encounter in which Ishrat Jehan was killed was a "fake encouter" and the three men and the girl ws killed in cold blood. This false allegation was mounted by suppressing two vital pieces of information. First, the Indian IB itself provided an affadavit stating that Ishrat and her companions were LeT terrorits. Second, David Coleman Headley in his custodial interrogation had stated clearly that Ishrat was given training in becoming a suicide bomber. The lengths to which the Congress under Sonia, Chidambaram and Shinde went to hide these facts and proscecute Amit Shah suggets that they were part of the conspiracy to carry out an assasination.

All these controversies swirling around Amit Shah led his to be arrested and he spent four months in Sabarmathi Jail before he was ordered out of Gujarat. These events shaped the political future of Amit Shah and in a way the rst of the country. Shah took up residence in Delhi and started planning for the 2014 General Election. His reorganization of the Party as the National Secretary was the turning point in the political fortunes of the BJP. While Narendra Modi is undoubtedly the tallest and the best Prime Minister India has had, ever, Amit Shah's role as the strategist cannot be gain said. Amit Shah made the BJP into a well oiled electoral machine and sought to involve people from the level of the booth right up to the Central Committee of the Party. He may not know, but Amit Shah took a leaf straight out of Lenin's advice to his parttment on the eve of the October Revolution of 1919. Organize the party at the level of the soviets. Another every important contibution of Amit Shah lay in collecting the documents relating to the Pary and making it availble on public domain. The BJP e Library is one of the finest and no political party can boast of such a fine line up of reseach and scholarly material. And Amit Shan was one of the first to understand the importance of "Big Data" in planning for the National Elections. BJP has one of the most sohisticated data cntres in which GIS enabled data for all the main Lok Sabha constituencies is available at the click of a mouse. The creation of this data base was due to the concerted efforts of computer savvy men and women who worked as volunteers for years on end.

Amit Shah is now the Hom,e Minister. He won from the Gandhinagar seat. What will be his main thrust. He will be ruthless in the pursuit of Indian polical objective and hence he will be in Machivalli's sense a prophet armed. He will be tough on naxalite violence and will not hesitate to use his immense political capital to strengthen the BJP in parts of India where it is weak. As far as terrorist viloence is concerned, there will be tough measures without too much though for collateral damage. Being honest to the core, Amit Shan can afford to be ruthless. And India demands ruthless action in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

The book under review makes good reading. But it leaves the reader unsatisfied as important issues are ignored. I reccomend this book.

Professor Martha C Nussbaum's tirade against Hon'ble Narendar Modi

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books We have always known that American academics are servitors of the state and Martha has just demonstrated the truth of the statement by releasing a statement criticizing Hon'ble Narendar Modi, the newly reelected Chief Minister of Gujarat, saying that his election is a "blot" on Gujarat. As a recent convert to Judaism, Martha perhaps does not want to even refer to the atrocities against the Palestinians by her coreligionists armed and supported by the weapons supplied by her very own US of A. Of course she does not have a word of criticism against USA for the genocide it has done in Iraq on the patently fraudulent WMD argument. I feel that Professor Noam Chomsky, and I differ from him on political issues, has intellectual honesty and integrity which this distinguished Professor of Ethics sorely lacks. Martha Nussbaum, a white woman with a highly privileged upbringing in Hew York and an exclusive education in the Classics with a doctorate from Harvard, is no mean academic. She is a distinguished scholar in her own right and I am not questioning her scholarship. I am questioning her academic integrity in pointing out some blatant falsehoods in her tirade against the Chief Minister of Gujarat. A philosopher cannot be selective in his or her gaze. If Martha is concerned about the plight of Muslims in Gujarat and I do not doubt her interest, then she must take a public stand against the humiliations imposed on people travelling to the USA having moslem names. Of course as a convert to Judaism she has no real interest in Muslims or their plight. Her concern is in the Aristotelian sense purely rhetorical: Liberal ideology demands an anti Modi posture and Martha adopts it. Further, the US lawmakers too have written to their Secretary of State and so Martha joins in the chorus of clowns,whistling in the dark about the Hon'ble Chief Minister. I am surprised at the passionate intensity with which these liberal anti India Modi baiters jump almost at cue. We will not find the Martha of the world talking about American war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently the drone attacks on civilians all over the world. But she is filled with rage at Modi and what for? The 2002 Riots have been investigated by the highest judiciary of the land. Martha is supposed to be a Professor of Law and as such I expect her to have respect for judicial process. But No. If Modi is found innocent then the judges are at fault. What Martha wants is a Wild West type of hanging judge who will play to the gallery. I do not know what kind of law youn have learnt ot r teach. In my understanding this is not law: it is inquisition and a liberal inquisition always portrays itself in the rainments of moral superiority. And we in India know far too much about the USA and its black deeds to be taken in by the pretenses of the Marthas of the world. A philosopher is not an ideologue. He or she searches after truth, elusive though it may be. Martha Nussbaum has not bothered to keep abreast of the developments on the judicial front. Her source perhps is Teesta Setelvad who was convicted for perjury in the Best Bakery case for bribing the witness. The Courts have not found an iota of evidence against the Hon'ble Narendar Modi. But as Karl Popper stated so many decades back, ideologues are not interested in truth or facts. They are only interested in projecting lies, half truths and distortions which are repeated so many times that they end up appearing as truth to the non discerning mind. Martha has been saying things that are purely speculative to put it mildly or she is lying in the interest of her ideological allies. Martha Nussbaum has done splendid work inthe field of Human Capability building and if she applies her own theories to Gujarat she will find that (1) the quality of life has improved over the past 10 years (2) schools drop out rate has gone down and girl children enrollment in very high in Gujarat (3) health care even for heart and kidney ailments is availble to the poor and needy. Unlike USA where the unseemly debate over health care is still raging. at least the Hon'ble Narendar MOdi has done one better that Barack Obama, And in a democracy the will of the people must be respected. Even in Muslim areas the Hon'ble Chief Minister has registered resounding victories. Professor Martha Nussbaum has gone completely off the deep end on this issue. Many of us who respected her views and taught her ideas will now rethink our positions. A woman who is so blatantly racist in making damning comments about a tall national leader on the basis of propaganda and lies does not need to be taken seriously. Her position on Narendar Modi is akin to the Holocaust deniers- refuse historical facts which are empirically verifiable for woolly ideologically charged rhetoric. Martha you have shown yourself to be a cheap white supremist who does not dare criticize his or her own countey for all its crimes but become fashionably outrages at a non existent crime. If you are all that concerned, Martha, why do you keep quiet on Why are you quiet about the human rights record of Israel? Is it because you are a recent convvert to Judaism? Really how does one convert to Judais mwhat the Congress Party did in 1984 when its workerrs killed more than 15,000 Sikhs all over northern India.