The Lessons of Gujarat Under Modi

Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India is a new book by the scholar Christophe Jaffrelot but one that has an old backstory.
It is the definitive account of Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. And it helps place into context the changes we’ve seen in national politics, economic policy, and society over the past ten years under Prime Minister Modi. It is a book that the author started researching twenty years ago and is finally out in the world.
To talk more about the book, Christophe joins Milan on the show this week. He is the Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute. He teaches at Sciences Po and is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Milan and Christophe discuss the tortuous backstory to the book, what attracted Christophe to the Gujarat story in 2001, and how the BJP established total hegemony in the western state. Plus, the two discuss the “Gujarat model” under Modi, the idea of a “deeper state,” and the often-tense relations between Modi and the Sangh Parivar.
Episode notes:
1. “Christophe Jaffrelot on India’s First Dictatorship,” Grand Tamasha, April 14, 2021.
2. Sudha Ramachandran, “Christophe Jaffrelot on What Makes Brand Modi Successful,” The Diplomat, April 8, 2024.
3. Christophe Jaffrelot, “A Deeper State,” The Caravan, February 13, 2024.
4. Christophe Jaffrelot, “The enduring personality cult of Narendra Modi,” February 13, 2024Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India is a new book by the scholar Christophe Jaffrelot but one that has an old backstory.
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[@jovianjollity5244]

Jaffrelot’s views on Modi and the Gujarat “pogrom” as he puts it, are so biased that he completely omits any mention of the horrific Godhra train carriage burning that occurred a few days before the riots in 2002, when 59 innocent Hindu women, children and the elderly, who were returning from the city of Ayodhya, were incinerated in their train carriage, at the Godhra station in Gujarat, by arsonists who poured kerosene on the carriage, set it on fire, and most heinous of all, would not let the trapped passengers escape the flames. Those 59 passengers were charred to death. That diabolical act sparked the riots in Gujarat. Surprising that even the host, Milan Vaishnav, did not raise this question with Jaffrelot! The 'cancel' culture of leftists seems all-pervasive: ignore events that don't suit their biased narrative, however important they may be to the facts on the case.
Those arsonists were from that ‘minority’ whose tale of woe Jaffrelot weaves with the skill of a morally bankrupt leftist political analyst, with an allegiance only to his ideology. Not a word about the terrible deaths of those innocent train passengers! He does not mention that it was the Congress Party that initiated an inquiry by the Supreme Court of India, setting up a Special Investigation Team ( SIT), that conducted a thorough 10-year investigation into the riots and came to the conclusion that Modi neither caused the riots, nor abetted it. The victims of the riots were both Hindus and Muslims. One therefore wonders how it fits Jaffrelot’s sensationalized description as a “pogrom”. The SIT discarded a lot of false testimony made by false ‘victims’ who were paid by Congress Party-linked NGOs.
In fact, it’s the Congress Party that has a record of such ‘pogroms’ against real minorities in India, like the Sikhs, who were subjected to a brutal ethnic cleansing in 1984 by Congress Party goons, following the assassination of former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of innocent Sikhs were killed in retribution. The Congress Party did not investigate that “pogrom”. It was unconscionably dusted off by the dynastic Congress Party scion, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ( Indira Gandhi’s son) who callously said, “When a big tree falls, the ground shakes”. But that terrible event doesn’t seem to have stirred Jaffrelot’s conscience, perhaps because it wasn’t the ‘minority’ that falsely claims victimhood.
Neither did Jaffrelot express any horror over the brutal ethnic cleansing and forced exile of of 500,000 of the indigenous Hindu Kashmiri minority in Muslim-majority Kashmir, by Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorists in 1990, when the Congress Party was in power at the center. Had Sardar Vallabhai Patel prevailed over Nehru in 1948, the political blunder in the form of Article 370 could have been completely avoided and the entire former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, that acceded to India, would have been completely within Indian control.
Jaffrelot also conveniently does not mention that the false bogey of “saffron terror” was raised by the Congress Party (in the words of Rahul Gandhi) to arrest innocent Hindus in 2008 ( in the state of Maharashtra) and subject them to severe police torture in an attempt to force a false confession from them that they were Hindu ‘terrorists’. A female Hindu ascetic, known as Sadhvi Pragya, who later became a Member of Parliament, described her torture in police custody that left her paralyzed in the legs and confined to a wheelchair thereafter.
In fact the worst terrorist attack on India in 2008-the Mumbai 28/11 assault- plotted and perpetrated by the Pakistani intelligence wing-ISI- and its 'trained' terrorists, raised a lot of questions as to who provided them logistical support during their attack. There was also a cunning attempt to portray the gunmen as Hindu ‘terrorists’. The sole terrorist caught alive at the time, Ajmal Kasab ( the other 9 Pakistani terrorists were killed in the firefight with police and security personnel) was wearing an orange thread-bracelet that many pious Hindus wear ( as were the 9 other Islamic terrorists killed). Many indications have pointed to a shocking and shameful collusion with the attackers, by people in the Congress Party. Hopefully, the truth about 28/11 will be unraveled over time.
It is the Congress Party that has tried to illegally use the reservations in government institutions and jobs for certain socially disadvantaged populations, including Other Backward Castes ( OBC’s), to be given to Muslims, instead. Faith-based reservations in India are unconstitutional, with the country having gone through a bloody partition based on religion, in 1947, after the subcontinent’s Muslims, during the colonial era, decided that they wanted their own Islamic country carved out of undivided India.
Prime Minister Modi himself belongs to the OBC. Surprising that a leftist like Jaffrelot had a problem with Modi being the “high priest” at the new Ram temple inauguration, as a member of a less-privileged community.
Jaffrelot seems to conveniently ignore the very close strategic relationship that India and France currently enjoy, particularly under the leadership of Modi, whose own personal relationship with Macron, has never been closer between the leaders of the two countries.
One wonders if Jaffrelot would be so forthcoming with criticisms of his country's government (France), with regard to its own Muslim minority, that is certainly not as large as the Indian Muslim population of 200 million. Whether Islamist extremists beheaded a school teacher, murdered Catholic priests, or when riots broke out in Paris, sparked by the fatal police shooting of a minor Muslim driver of a car, France used its police force on the rioters to restore law and order. Why demonize Modi (or the RSS) when the situation happens in India? The RSS is a grass-roots voluntary organization that is often one of the first organizations to provide relief regardless of religion, during crises, such as natural disasters. They also keep a low profile, staying out of political issues and are not the sort of organization that deliberately stirs up trouble. Surely Jaffrelot knows that several RSS volunteers ( among many other Hindus ) have actually been victims of violence and murderous lynchings by Islamic extremist groups, particularly in southern India?
Perhaps Jaffrelot’s compatriot, the long-time India-based journalist and writer, Francois Gautier is right: Jaffrelot misleads/ misinforms the French public about India. But to a large majority of Indians ( whether in India or the diaspora), leftist analysts like Jaffrelot completely lack credibility and spin conspiracy theories that are removed from reality, about Modi and the BJP.

[@dabasisdutta]

Who is the Audience for this Podcast. Is it people who understand India and want to understand further
or People who do not understand at all.
Confused as the Podcast is a rehash of all things negative, nothing different.
I am putting this Channel on Notice

[@praveenkaurwar3188]

Read "The New BJP" by Nalin Mehta to find out why this man is a fraud. He doesn't even know that Jats have been classified as OBCs since 2000 in UP and publishes outright lies but surely will act as an expert on Indian Politics.

[@someguy2707]

😂😂 Ayega to Modi hi… 💪🏾🥊