Amit Shah to launch new book on PM Modi Dec 10

New Delhi: In 2012, a year before BJP declared him as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, believed that only he could bring about a “tectonic shift” to India’s political scenario.

While sharing his thoughts with the former editor of Organiser, an RSS mouthpiece, Mr Modi was not merely “aware of his immense popularity” but “expressed fear” that if the Sangh Parivar did not back his candidature, “a great opportunity may be lost.” These are some excerpts from the book on Mr Modi, Creative Disruptor — The Maker of New India by R. Balashankar, the former editor of Organiser.

The book will be released by BJP president Amit Shah on December 10.

While analysing Mr Modi — the politician — Mr Balashankar writes: “He was strikingly unlike most of his colleagues in his party and in other parties. He was clearly a man in a hurry.”

The author once asked the Prime Minister about the secret of his success.

“His reply was eloquent: Main swayam ko mitane ki kshamta rakhta hun (I possess the capacity to even destroy myself in pursuit of my aim). What he meant was that he works like a karmayogi without bothering about the outcome,” the author writes.

Talking about attacks and murders of free thinkers and writers, the author claimed that these are nothing new.

“Murders of writers, the so-called progressive thinkers, robberies in churches, killing of a man from the minority community, and burning of the hut of a dalit — these and much worse have happened during the six decades of Congress rule,” he writes.

Mr Balashankar gives examples of social activ-ists Narendra Dabholkar and M.M. Kalburgi, who were assassinated during the Congress regime.

In the chapter “Anti-Modi Front”, the writer claims that “with regular frequency, Hindu-Muslim riots have happened all over the country with the majority community taking the brunt of the attack. People have been butchered worse than cattle and yet none had spoken up.”

He then argues that “if one were to go into the details of each of these incidents, it would be clear that stray, concocted events were joined together to create a mirage, whose only purpose was to tarnish the image of the Modi government.”

Toeing a similar line, he writes: “Mob lynching and hate crimes are not new to India. We have been like this for years and lynch mobs are not Modi’s creation.”

On the contentious subject of beef ban and cow slaughter, the author writes: “There is a lot of misleading propaganda in the name of beef ban.

A ban on cow slaughter is not exactly a ban on eating other varieties of beef. Hence the fear that it will affect the livelihood of the butchers and meat sellers is wrong. Similarly, it will in no way affect the leather industry.”