The Architect of the New BJP: Gandhi in the Peasant Movement and Rath’s Entry in the Election Campaign, a book full of such tales

Presidential elections are very near in the country. Who will be the Presidential candidate of BJP, the market of speculation was hot. After the brainstorming, the name of Draupadi Murmu, the former governor of Jharkhand, was decided. All speculations destroyed. The same thing happened last time too, no one even thought of Ramnath Kovind’s name. Choking is part of PM Narendra Modi’s work.

Who in Uttarakhand thought that Pushkar Dhami would be the CM. All this is not pointless. The current PM is part of the narrow strategy of Narendra Modi. From a simple Sangh worker to a responsible organizer and then later joining BJP, Modi did many such things in a strategic manner and took decisions which were surprising not only to the opposition but also to the people of the party.

After all, what was Modi doing in the last 40 years, due to which he was paving the way for success not only for the organization but for himself? A book answering all these questions through interesting anecdotes has recently come out called The Architect of the New BJP – How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party.

Ajay Singh, Press Secretary to the President has written this book. However, the book is yet to be officially released.

Rath Yatra’s entry in politics
The book reveals that it was Modi who was confident that the BJP alone would fight and win the elections in Gujarat. It was Modi who adopted the path of campaigning for unconventional elections like Rath Yatra in Gujarat elections. And then on this concept, Advani’s chariot from Somnath to Ayodhya was decorated. Murli Manohar Joshi’s Ekta Yatra started from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. At the end of the yatra, when terrorism was at its peak in Kashmir, it was Modi’s plan to hoist the flag at Lal Chowk.

Gandhi and the entry of crowdfunding into the farmers’ movement in 1984
There is an anecdote from 1984 related to the strategic capability of Modi. In fact, in 1984, farmers in Gujarat were demanding cross border trade for better profits. The state government was not ready to bow down. What should we do now? At that time, Narendra Modi took command of this movement from behind the scenes.

On October 2, 1 lakh farmers gathered in Ahmedabad. The message was given to the government, Gandhi broke the rules of the government by making salt, farmers would also break the ban on cross-border trade for their rights. Gandhi’s entry was part of Modi’s strategy. Actually, till that time the stain of the charge of Gandhi’s assassination on the Sangh was very deep, but after this movement it started to fade.

On the other hand, many farmers were killed when shots were fired on the movement. Modi thought of making the movement bigger. He started the campaign asking the common people to help the families of the dead. This was the first time that any movement was being funded in the country.

The book mentions Modi’s ‘political experiments’
Not one but in many such occasions, the ability of efficient leadership of Narendra Modi made everyone prove his mettle. His every step was taking BJP and Sangh several steps forward. The use of chariots for the first time in elections, Gandhi’s use in the peasant movement, all this is an example of his skilled strategist and organizer.

In 1987, the Jagannath Rath Yatra of Ahmedabad became a self-styled yatra, or whether it was winning the hearts of the voters by creating out-of-the-box slogans, Modi was involved in any work from macro to micro level. In the Gujarat elections of 1990, the slogan ‘Ab toh bas BJP’ became the voice of the people stricken by corruption.

Modi emerged as an expert organizer in the 1987 municipal corporation elections held in Ahmedabad. No one believed that such a big victory could happen in these elections, but Modi achieved such a big victory in these elections by restructuring the party and through the best strategy, which no leader of the party could have imagined.

The book also mentions the infamous Gujarat gangster Abdul Latif in an interesting way. The jailed Latif Ward was contesting the election, with the symbol of a roaring lion in a cage. And Modi and his army were taking on him.

The tales recorded in the book, while on the one hand cleaning the image of the Sangh tainted by the charge of Gandhi’s assassination, and on the other hand, bring the BJP out of the traditional shell and build a new BJP. The book is published under the banner of Penguin Publications. Forward of this book has been written by noted author and former head of South Asia Studies Walter Anderson.