A scholar from Germany’s Heidelberg University, Subrata K Mitra points out –“The more the ‘secularists’ of India and their foreign backers hit out at Modi as a tainted leader, the more Modi fell back on his identification with the people of Gujarat and his showcasing of Gujarat’s development as the raison d’e^tre of his leadership”.
Interview with the author: Nirendra Dev
“Communalism in any form makes me angry”
E.P: Nirendra, You seemed to have come a long way starting from Nagaland-based tabloids in early 1990s and now as many as four books.
Dev: When I look at the rear view of the mirror; I find it quite interesting. Through books, may be I want to keep memories intact. I write more for myself than posterity, as people say. My father served with Assam Rifles, as a military man prides about medals to wear on chest, I thought I will have these books to display in the book shelves.
E.P: From Journalism to fictional writing? You are writing short stories for Washington Bangla Radio?
Dev When a journalist decides to write a book, you ought to be sure that either he is excited about the subject. He likes it or he is annoyed with it, disturbed with it.
I am penning these short stories now for more than a year after Supratim Sanyal MD of Washington Bangla Radio encouraged me into this. My brother-in-law Mukesh, who had eloped with my sister, once mocked, why don’t you write some fiction about my love story. Today, I feel fictions can move not only readers but also the creators, the writers. I find many characters of my short stories leaving some changes in my life.
Dev: How much of Nagaland and northeastern experience works in your stories? Your father seemed to have made an interesting comment on Nagas?
E.P: Ha ha… My father made the comment about me. He disliked my joining journalism. When I did not listen to him; angrily he said, “you think like a Naga. This led me into thinking really…. Was I really thinking like a Naga? Today, I seek answers on all these through my short stories. I was deeply infatuated with Naga life, loving all things about Nagas – especially the pork rice.
Openness…the openness to invite friends straight into kitchen. All about urban and life in Delhi or Mumbai is artificial. The ways Nagas can laugh…. I can go on.
EP: ‘Modi to Moditva’ is your fourth book. Out of four, you have written two on Gujarat and one on Ayodhya dispute. Any special reason?
Dev: When a journalist decides to write a book, you ought to be sure that either he is excited about the subject. He likes it or he is annoyed with it, disturbed with it. In my case, the book on northeast ‘The Talking Guns: North East India’ comes under one category. I love northeast region, where I was born and brought up.
The communalism really disturbs me. I am not saying Hindu communalism only. It’s about all. The Godhra carnage, then post-Godhra riots all of it left me angry. So, came my first book on Gujarat and I was surprised that my first book was not on northeast India.
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| Saffron flavour: Indian Parliament |
Dimapur-based daily 'Nagaland Page' (report on Dec 17, 2018)
2014 Mandate had nothing to do with Modi’s pro-Hindutva image, says a new book
Staff Reporter
Dimapur, Dec 16 “That experience to see people killing people in Gujarat in 2002 became part of me” – says Nirendra Dev, who had his baptism into journalism in Nagaland in 1990s.
Journalism could be in a way described as an art – but, mistaken for a science. So, when a scribe pens a book, he perhaps speaks more as an artiste claiming to analyse things scientifically. Nirendra Dev, a journalist-turned-author narrates the tales of Gujarat since 2002 with a slice of reference to the historical and socio-political context.
Does he succeed? And more importantly, how does he feel about? ‘Nagaland Page’ quizzed him briefly.
“You can’t take away from me the fact that I spent over six months in 2002 during the peak of communal tension in Ahmedabad since the train was burnt at Godhra station. That was like an experience forever! That period marks the mega transformation in the career of Narendra Modi as well,” says Dev, who served in Nagaland in 1990s.
“That experience of people killing people became part of me. It perhaps also changed the way I looked at
communal issues. What is being a Hindu, what is being a radical Hindu? What difference does it make when
you see double standards from such a close range?,” he wonders.
The book ‘Godhra – Journey of a Prime Minister’ is precisely the second edition to the book ‘Godhra – A Journey to Mayhem’ (published in 2004).
It seeks to expose the ‘leadership crisis’ the state of Gujarat, Modi’s original political laboratory, apparently was faced with during the now infamous mayhem of 2002.
“...The study of emerging patterns of socio-political life in Gujarat shows that there is a ‘marked decline’ in the quality of leadership,” it says.
But it says, things had changed by 2014 – at least from the electorate’s point of view.
“The mandate of 2014 somehow had nothing or less to do with the Hindutva agenda even as a large number of Sadhus were deployed during electioneering in 2014,” the book notes.
In fact, amid the build up for a Ram Temple at Ayodhya by the Hindu groups, the book says that the Muslims and Christians are surely at political crossroads with “no easy choice before them”.
“The political policy of the Modi government on religious minorities from time to time seems unclear,” says the book.
However, the compendium says the onus is in effect on Narendra Modi himself to take all sections of people all along.
According to the book, “the onus is on him” to perform and deliver so that Modi does not “turn out to be Chief Minister Jyoti Basu in West Bengal – whose initial years have seen a time of great expectations but the end scandalously belied”.
According to Dev, however, the book does not please any particular section of people – the seculars or Hindu hardliners.
It is pure reportage, the author argues and also says that both the sides may actually ‘dislike’ most of the hard work.
In his Foreword to the book, a scholar from Germany’s Heidelberg University, Subrata K Mitra writes lucidly: “The impressive victory of the BJP under Narendra Modi raises a fundamental question about governance, leadership and the imperative of development and the making of popular will”.
Mr Mitra further points out –“The more the ‘secularists’ of India and their foreign backers hit out at Modi as a tainted leader, the more Modi fell back on his identification with the people of Gujarat and his showcasing of Gujarat’s development as the raison d’e^tre of his leadership”.
The German-based educationist further writes: “The combination of popular elections, institutionalised countervailing powers, power-sharing.....delivered the Gujarat model, and in turn, the national mandate to Prime Minister Modi.
Ends
‘Godhra – Journey of a Prime Minister’ written by Nirendra Dev
Published by Maya Publishers, New Delhi
Page: 294, Price – Rs 599
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