Profile: Narendra Modi

BBC, Kathmandu, May 17. India’s next prime minister, Narendra Modi, is a divisive politician – loved and loathed in equal measure.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, who has been chief minister of the western state of Gujarat since 2001, is regarded as a dynamic and efficient politician who has helped to make his state an economic powerhouse. But he also is accused of doing little to stop the 2002 religious riots when more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed – allegations he has consistently denied.

Mr Modi became an international pariah after the riots – the US denied him visas and the UK cut off all ties with him. But a decade later, the controversial politician has been reintegrated into the political mainstream. Last year, US ambassador to India Nancy J. Powell met Mr Modi to discuss the US-India relationship, regional security issues, human rights, and American trade and investment in India.
And in October 2012, the UK’s high commissioner in India met Mr Modi and invited him to address MPs in the House of Commons. Tory and Labour MPs defended their decision to invite Mr Modi to speak, saying his voice needed to be heard.

Mr Modi led the BJP’s campaign for the April-May general election from the front – he says he addressed 440 rallies across India.

At his packed election meetings, supporters wore his face masks and tea was offered at more than 1,000 stalls across India in paper cups with Mr Mod’s pictures on them.

He also used social media effectively, even resorting to 3D holograms to communicate directly to voters.

A brilliant speaker, the Hindu hardline party’s poster boy is often called the BJP’s brightest star, and his supporters began a spirited “Modi-for-PM” campaign long before the party overcame some stiff internal differences to anoint him as its candidate.

Many Indians, however, say they cannot accept Mr Modi as prime minister because of his alleged role in the Gujarat riots.

When he was named as the head of the BJP’s campaign last June, the Janata Dal United (JD-U), a key ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, pulled out fearing that it would lose the support of Muslims in the state of Bihar, where it ran a coalition government.

Although he has escaped censure so far, his close aide, Maya Kodnani, was convicted and sent to jail for 28 years. Ms Kodnani was not a minister at the time of the riots, but was appointed junior minister for women and child development by Mr Modi in 2007.

His critics have accused him of “rewarding her with the ministership” for her role in the riots.

Unapologetic
An Indian worker poses with masks bearing the face of BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi at a printing press near Ahmedabad on March 31, 2014. At Narendra Modi’s election rallies, hundreds turn up wearing his face masks Mr Modi may polarise public opinion in India and abroad, but he has also been credited for bringing prosperity and development to Gujarat and enjoys support from some of India’s top industrialists.

The state’s economy has been growing steadily, and Mr Modi’s image is that of a clean and efficient administrator who is corruption-free.

As a result, he has been re-elected three times as chief minister.

When he was first re-elected in December 2002, a few months after the riots, his biggest gains were in the areas of inter-communal violence; he campaigned openly on a platform of hardline Hinduism.

But in the state elections held in 2007 and 2012, he talked mostly about growth.

While those who benefited during his time as chief minister applauded his return to power, for the victims of the 2002 riots, his victory was just one more symbol of injustice.

He has never expressed any remorse or offered any apologies for the riots, and many Muslims displaced by the violence continue to live in ghettos near Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city and commercial capital.

Mr Modi’s personal life has also been under scrutiny, with critics accusing him of deserting his wife Jashodaben.

He was 17 when the arranged marriage took place but the couple barely lived together. Mr Modi himself has always avoided questions about his personal life amid suggestions he wished to appear celibate for Hindu nationalist reasons.

In the run-up to the election, for the first time he publicly admitted that he was married.

RSS support
Analysts say the reason Mr Modi remains unscathed is the strong support he enjoys among senior leaders in the right-wing Hindu organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The RSS, founded in the 1920s with a clear objective to make India a Hindu nation, functions as an ideological fountainhead to a host of hardline Hindu groups – including Mr Modi’s BJP with which it has close ties.

Supporters of Narendra Modi, PM candidate for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Gujarat’s chief minister, attend a rally in Amroha, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh March 29, 2014
Mr Modi is known as a brilliant speaker
The RSS has a particularly strong base in Gujarat, and Mr Modi’s ties to it were seen as a strength the organisation could tap into when he joined the state unit of the BJP in the 1980s.

Mr Modi has a formidable reputation as a party organiser, along with an ability for secrecy, which comes from years of training as an RSS “pracharak” or propagandist, analysts say.

He got his big break in the public arena when his predecessor in the state was forced to step down in the fallout from the earthquake in January 2001 that killed nearly 20,000 people.

And Mr Modi’s colourful website beckons users in with more than a nod to his muscular nationalist campaign: “India First!” it proclaims to visitors.