Free 2014: The Election That Changed India by Rajdeep Sardesai Page A

Once a fierce critic of Modi—he claims to
have suffered financial losses during the 2002 riots—he had become Modi’s Muslim
‘face’ on television. Whenever he came to Delhi, he’d bring me Ahmedabad’s
famous mutton samosas and insist that Modi had evolved into a new persona. ‘Trust me, Modi is
genuine about his desire to reach out to Muslims and has even met several ulemas in private. Even
the VHP and the BJP cadres were opposed to the yatra, but Modi did not buckle. He wants to forget
the past and only look to the future,’ Sareshwala would tell me.
    On the streets of Gujarat, opinion was more divided
among minority groups. If you met someone who had been personally affected by the riots, like Baroda
university professor Dr J.S. Bandukwala, he would tell you that Modi needed to at least show some
remorse for failing to stop the violence. ‘My home was destroyed by the rioters. Not once did
Modi even try and contact me to express any sense of solidarity for our loss,’ says the
professor with quiet dignity.
    In February 2012, I did a programme on the tenth
anniversary of the riots. My journey took me to Gulberg Society where sixty-nine people had been
killed, with several in the list of those missing. Among the missing was a teenage boy Azhar, son of
Dara and Rupa Mody, a devout Parsi couple. Along with my school friend, film-maker Rahul Dholakia, I
had met the Modys just after the riot flames had been doused. On the wall of their tiny house was a
picture of young Azhar with the Indian tricolour at the school Republic Day parade just a month
before the riots. Rahul had decided to make a film on the Mody family’s struggle to locate
their son. The film
Parzania
would go on to win a slew of national awards, but
couldn’t be released in Gujarat because the theatre owners feared a backlash.
    I had stayed in touch with the Modys and was
shooting with them at Sabarmati Ashram. No one from the Gujarat government had even tried to help
them all these years. Their only support had come from human rights activists, such as Teesta
Setalvad, who were branded as anti-national by Modi’s men. ‘Couldn’t such a big
man like Modi come even once and speak to us?’ Rupa Mody asked me tearfully. As a father of a
lanky teenage son myself, I couldn’t hold back my tears.
    For the same news documentary I also travelled to a
slum colony, Citizen Nagar, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Here, the riot-affected families had been
literally ‘dumped’ in subhuman conditions near a large garbage mound into which the
city’s waste flowed. ‘Modi talks of Vibrant Gujarat, but for whom is this Vibrant
Gujarat, only for the rich?’ one of the locals asked me angrily. In Juhapura, a Muslim ghetto
in the heart of Ahmedabad—sometimes referred to as the city’s Gaza Strip—the mood
was equally unforgiving. ‘Modi goes everywhere marketing himself, why doesn’t he come to
Juhapura?’ was a question posed by many out there.
    Interestingly, the more affluent Muslims had made
their peace with Modi. Many Gujarati Bohra Muslims are traders and businessmen—they were ready
to break bread with Modi so long as he could assure them a return to communal harmony and rapid
economic growth. In my grandmother’s building in the walled city, there were many Muslim
middle-class families who had reconciled themselves to a Modi-led Gujarat. ‘We have no problem
with Modiji so long as we get security,’ one of them told me. Many younger, educated Muslims
too seemed ready to give him a chance. ‘It’s ten years now since the riots, it’s
time to move on,’ was how a young management graduate explained his position.
    And yet, how do you move on when your house has been
razed and your relatives killed? Modi has claimed that his government’s track record in
prosecuting the guilty was much better than the Congress’s in 1984. One of his ministers, Maya
Kodnani, was among those who had received a life sentence. And that Gujarat had seen no