Front Burner - Front Burner Presents: Modi's India, Episode 1

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

How did Narendra Modi, the son of a humble tea seller rise up the political ranks to become one of the most powerful leaders India has ever seen? And did bloody religious riots damage his political future, or turbocharge it? This is episode 1 of Modi's India: Understood. Hosted by Salimah Shivji.More episodes are available here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Jamie. Hope you're having a great long weekend. Today we've got the first episode of a new show we made for our spinoff feed, Understood. If you don't follow that feed, you really should. It's so great. The series is called Modi's India, and it's about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He's got approval ratings in the high 70s, and he's widely expected to win his third term. Voting is happening right now, but in India and beyond, many fear what his re-election will bring. Accusations of complicity and religious violence have dogged Modi. More recently, his government has been tied to alleged assassination plots in Canada and the U.S. I hope you like the show, and if you do, there's a second episode available right now in the Understood feed you can follow wherever you get your podcasts. I'm not comfortable in English. Oh, your English is fantastic.

So nice. Do you want to try? No, no, no. I want to sing a song for Ram. Oh, you want to sing a song? Sure. Go for it. Okay.

I'm in the city of Ayodhya in northern India, where many thousands of Hindu devotees, including this man singing, have flocked to celebrate the grand opening of a new temple, the Ram Mandir. It's late January 2024. A lot of the people here have waited their whole lives for this temple to be built. On the very spot, they believe an earthly incarnation of God, Lord Ram, was born. And so you can hear it.

The energy around the complex, it's exuberant. It's even jubilant. And you can feel it in the crowd. This is a really big deal. One woman here marked the occasion by breaking a 30-year vow of silence. Her first words? Jai Sri Ram. Hail Lord Ram.

And hospitals in the area actually reported an uptick in requests from pregnant women for cesarean sections, just so their children could be born on the auspicious day, January 22nd. This is the moment where India today brings you this divine darshan of the temple. Television networks across the country covered the whole thing breathlessly. This outpouring of emotion cannot be faked, cannot be forced. This comes from within. We're not just witnesses. We are the blessed custodians of these historic moments, I would say. Made possible by the time...

At the center of all this excitement... ...is a mild-looking man in his early 70s with a neatly trimmed white beard and professorial spectacles. India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Today, our Ram has come. You'd be forgiven for thinking he was some kind of religious leader, rather than a political one, as he broke an 11-day devotional fast

and presided over sacred consecration rituals in a pale gold kurta. When he emerged from the temple to address an exclusive audience, including Bollywood stars and billionaire industrialists, to address an exclusive audience, including Bollywood stars and billionaire industrialists. He became emotional as he asked Lord Ram for forgiveness, saying, there must have been something lacking in our collective effort,

sacrifice and penance that this important task took so many centuries to complete. took so many centuries to complete. But the people I spoke to didn't think their prime minister had anything to apologize for. They credit him with getting the temple open. Because while there's been a movement to build it for a long time now, its construction is the fulfillment of a promise

that Modi made when he first ran for the country's highest office more than a decade ago. They adore him for it. What do you think of his role? Modi is really a blessing to us. Not only to us, to the world. After Modi coming to India as a prime minister, he has changed everything, everything. Modi is really the heart of India. That's what I can convey in short. He's not even prime minister. He's just like the person of a god.

He's not a Hindu. He's a god like God. He's a god like God. To these devotees, Modi's opening of the Ram Temple is a triumph. For Hinduism, for India, for the direction that he's taken the country over the last 10 years. But not all Indians feel this way. On the site of the new Ram Temple, there once stood a mosque. And that mosque, the Babri Masjid, was destroyed in 1992. Torn down by a Hindu mob wielding hammers, shovels and stones,

who felt the holy site was theirs and who wanted it back. At the end of the assault, only rubble would be left of the Babri Mosque. The violence had just begun. The mosque's destruction sparked riots across the country. More than 2,000 people died, mostly Muslims. Like an atom bomb, the fallout of Ayodhya is likely to be more far-reaching than the actual demolition itself. The destruction of the Babri Masjid wasn't random. The crowd had been summoned there that day by Hindu hardliners, including the Bhartiya Janata Party, the BJP, the political party now headed up by Narendra Modi.

The political party now headed up by Narendra Modi. And so when Modi consecrated the Ram Temple this past January, on the site of the destroyed Babri Masjid, in a country where secularism is enshrined in the constitution, it was a moment his whole career, his whole Hindu nationalist movement had been building towards for decades. Modi declared it the dawn of a new era.

But what does that new era mean for religious minorities, for India as a whole, and for the rest of the world? Right now, hundreds of millions of Indians are heading to the polls. And they're almost certainly going to re-elect Modi, a man whose popularity ratings have got to be the envy of any leader in the democratic world. And that's despite religious violence at home and accusations of assassination plots abroad in Canada and the U.S. I'm Salima Shivji, and this is Modi's India Understood, episode one, The Emperor of Hindu Hearts. arts. Where are you from? From Canada, from Vancouver. OK.

Yeah, yeah. But we're based in Bombay. You're based in Bombay? Yeah, yeah. Are you Indian or? No, Canadian. Yeah, yeah. You look like Indian.

Yes, yes, I know. So I get that question a lot. Are you Indian? Canadian? Canadian of Indian origin, yes. And it is a little confusing, like identity in general, I guess. My family is several generations removed from India. My parents have never even been. I first came to Mumbai from Ottawa in 2020,

and it was to open CBC's India Bureau. And what a time to do it. Witnessing an India coming into its own, now the fifth largest economy in the world, surpassing that of its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. More people live in this country than anywhere else. 1.4 billion. And now I'm here at this moment of profound transition.

And a lot of people are feeling it in so many different ways. Like in Ayodhya, for example. I have very vivid memories of Ayodhya as a child when the train that I used to take to go to my grandparents in Varanasi would pass through Ayodhya station and, you know, That's Nilanjan Mokhopadhyay. He's a journalist and Modi biographer. The first memory which I had was essentially people pulling down their window shutters down because there were too many monkeys in Ayodhya station. And they would all get in and start grabbing your stuff, especially if there was some food. So from a very sleepy place, quite unbelievable that it has become what I call it, you know, the Hindu Vatican. I just simply can't believe and I've suddenly lost interest in trying to go and see that because it's totally unreal.

There is hardly any religion in that. The change goes beyond just this one place of worship in this one city. To understand it, it helps to know a bit about the founding of modern India. When the British finally left the Indian subcontinent in 1947, after nearly 200 years of colonial rule, the land was carved up into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority India, and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. An era has ended, a new epoch begins. A subcontinent larger than the whole of Europe becomes two self-governing dominions within the British Commonwealth of Nations. That split, known as partition, was bloody.

Sectarian violence erupted. The dreadful situation in India appears still to be deteriorating, as either community daily takes revenge for the excesses of the other. Fleeing from their looted, bloodstained towns comes a new exodus, a million displaced persons. Independence has not yet brought them peace. Rejoicing turned quickly into horror and mourning. People on both sides of the newly created borders were forced to move. About 15 million people were displaced in the chaos, and it's estimated that more than a million died.

This violence horrified India's founding fathers. Mohandas Gandhi, who most people know as Mahatma Gandhi, went on a hunger strike to stop the rioting. So you've probably heard a lot of quotes attributed or misattributed to Gandhi over the years, like an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, or be the change you want to see in the world. But here's one he actually did say that I think is relevant to his vision for an independent India. He said, our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization. And India is profoundly diverse, a country with at least 122 major languages, more than

2,000 ethnic groups, and the birthplace of four major world religions. That diversity was enshrined in India's constitution, with equal rights for all, and freedom of religion with no single faith reigning supreme. The man who was called Little Father by scores of millions of people is dead. Mr. Gandhi was shot as he walked to his daily prayer meeting in the gardens of a house in New Delhi. Gandhi would be assassinated before that constitution was put into effect. But his ideas and his values, among them the vision of a diverse and secular India, lived on, woven into the fabric of this nation. It was into this country that Narendra Modi was born in 1950, just two years after Gandhi's murder.

Modi came from a lower middle class family. His father had a small shop outside the train station in Vadnagar. That's a small town in the state of Gujarat. So Modi would go to school. He was a regular student in school. And after school, he would come and hang around near the father's shop, help out a bit. And that is how this entire story of him being a tea seller has really started. This story Nilayanjan's describing, it's Modi's preferred origin story. He's talked about growing up as a young chaiwala, or tea seller.

It's a humble, salt-of-the-earth job. And as far as political narratives go, it's served him well, even if some claim it's a bit exaggerated. It illustrates the modest beginnings he'd rise from to become the chief minister of his home province and eventually the prime minister of the country. He uses this background to connect with the common man, saying recently,

to connect with the common man, saying recently, I know the pain of hunger and self-respect of the poor. I'm a member of your family, and I don't need to look into books to understand your pain. Modi gets his first taste of politics early. At eight years old, he joined the RSS. The RSS is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It's a right-wing Hindu nationalist group.

And there are branches across the country. It recruits volunteers of all ages. I had long conversations with him when I was researching on his biography. So he said that he got attracted to what is called the Balsakhas. Balsakha basically translates to youth branch. Actually, there was hardly any political indoctrination in these things. Essentially, they got hold of youngsters and got them to do some physical drills and play some games and learn discipline to obey orders. Stand up. So you have to stand up. Attention. You have to be attention.

Those are the kind of things that were taught to the children at that point. Still, Modi stood out from the crowd and apparently he had a flair for the dramatic. He used to like acting. I interviewed one of his school teachers who said that Modi liked to act, but he always wanted the lead role. If he did not get the lead role, he would not act. He would drop out. So he had this drive of being the leader all the time.

I had this drive of being the leader all the time. When he was 17, Modi embarked on a sort of spiritual journey. Now the details are vague, but the story goes that he leaves his family home to pursue the life of a Hindu monk. He visits ashrams, monasteries, and meditates in the Himalayas. According to Modi's lore, a monk he meets along the way actually tells him that despite his devotion, his place is not in spiritual solitude. It's among the people. And so, after a full two years of self-discovery,

Modi returns to his home state, Gujarat. And this time, it's to the capital, Ahmedabad. One of his uncles used to run a canteen. He started work there as a canteen boy. And this canteen was actually also servicing the local RSS headquarter. It's here that Modi's political career begins in earnest. He returns to the RSS. And this time, it's nothing like the after-school programs he took part in as a kid.

He becomes a pracharak, an activist for the organization. And it's worth understanding a bit more about the RSS. It was founded in the 1920s. Its early leaders took inspiration from European fascists. Its mission is Hindutva, establishing India as a Hindu country above all else, where all other religious minorities come second, the opposite of Gandhi's vision of India. And actually, it was a former member of the RSS who assassinated Gandhi.

Through the 70s and 80s, Modi moves up the ranks of the RSS. He gets a reputation as an ambitious organizer and as a guy with a knack for managing both publicity and people. He commanded leadership. It was very instinctive that he would take the leader's position all the time. take the leader's position all the time. Later on, it turned out that he would always try to move ahead of even his seniors. By 1985, Modi attracts the attention of the BJP,

at the time a relatively fringe political party. Its aim, to bring Hindutva ideology into mainstream electoral politics. Modi travels much of the country, organizing campaigns for BJP leaders. And one of those pilgrimages was to Ayodhya in 1992, the same year the Babri Masjid was torn down. The BJP continues to rise to national prominence. Welcome back. Welcome to India Votes 96. The situation is gradually becoming clearer, and it now seems that the BJP will be the single largest party,

but we are not very clear about how many seats they'll get. By the late 90s, India has its first BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Modi works for the party in the capital Delhi, but always with an eye on his home state of Gujarat. 2001 January, January 26th, 2001 is this terrible earthquake in Gujarat. Properties were damaged all across Gujarat. So because of the then chief minister of Gujarat, a former mentor of Modi's, and appoints Modi in his place in the fall of 2001. And then Godhra happens and then Mr. Modi becomes a superstar. Godhra is a city in Gujarat state.

In February 2002, just five months after Modi is appointed chief minister, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims pulls into the Godhra railway station. They had just come from Ayodhya, where they'd been rallying at the site of the destroyed Babri Masjid. For the past few weeks, large numbers of Hindus have been congregating in Ayodhya. That's where they want to start constructing a temple. They want to start constructing this temple at the site of a mosque, which was torn down by Hindu fanatics some 10 years ago. On the platform, an argument breaks out between the Hindu pilgrims on the train and local Muslims. And things escalate.

That's when police say a mob of Muslims attacked and burnt parts of her train. There are conflicting reports about what happens next. Whether it was deliberate or a deadly accident isn't clear. But the train catches fire, killing 59 people aboard. The general sense is that Godhra happened, and while the state government should have immediately taken preventive steps, it did not. People in the state were livid, and the threat of an outbreak of further violence loomed he allowed they did not stop allowed is not the right word to you they did not stop

these dead bodies being taken out in processions it obviously created a lot of excitement and people got angered and joined the positions and started shouting, we must take revenge. Who do you take revenge on? Because it was the Muslims who had attacked Godhra. So any Muslim that you could find was the proxy who was penalized for what had happened in Godhra. According to Modi, he instructed police to tamp down on any sort of sectarian backlash. But one senior police official has alleged Modi told authorities that Hindus should be left to vent their anger. Modi says he in fact told me also that he did whatever he could as early as he could, even get the army out. But there is an alternative narrative which says that the state government should have acted more promptly,

that they allowed things to deteriorate, to reach a certain stage where nothing could be done. Riots explode across the state. Throughout the day, mobs of youth seeking revenge for the train attack have been targeting Muslim properties and setting them on fire. Violence continues to spread throughout villages in India's Gujarat state. In one town, at least seven Muslims were burned to death inside the bakery where they worked.

In another village, Hindus set houses and shops ablaze by lighting fires near cooking gas containers, killing 27. For example, street-side vendors stood here till 48 hours ago. Now these charred remains is all that is left of their telas. And there's no one here

to tell us whether the men who manned these telas are dead or alive. The violence goes on for more than two months. It captures the attention of the nation and of a young aspiring journalist. People were scared to come out on the streets and do the routine stuff. It was tough.

Like they would tell their children that when you go out, don't say stuff like Assalamualaikum. Like they removed their skullcaps. They removed their visible markers from their identity. That was what was happening in Gujarat. Rana Ayyub was 19 when she traveled from Mumbai to Gujarat to witness the after-effects of the riots.

But as a Muslim, she was nervous. And this time when I went to Gujarat, I wore a bindi, like a thing on my forehead to just say that I'm a Hindu. And because my name is Rana, a lot of people in India are not called Rana. It's not a Muslim name. It's like a very, so they all thought I'm a Hindu girl. Something like 200,000 people were forced to flee their homes amidst all the violence. Many had to live in relief camps. And what Rana saw there was so much worse than what she'd seen on TV. There was no censorship. I was watching them with my own eyes. So there

were children with their mothers whose fathers were dead, who were killed in the riots. There were women who were gang-raped, brutalized. It was like some of the women were just numb about what had happened to them. The stories were tormenting. More than a thousand people died in the Gujarat riots. The majority of them were Muslims. And more importantly, I saw the communal nature of people. People were okay with it happening, that this was bound to happen to them, that they had asked for it. And they deserved to meet this treatment.

Like the common man had so much hatred within him. But honestly, this raw hatred for the Muslim Adar, I think it came from a culture of impunity. As the violence settled, public focus turned to who could have fostered that culture of impunity. And some were pointing the finger at the BJP and at Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples,

I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. The accusations of complicity were mounting. A senior police official told the New York Times The accusations of complicity were mounting. A senior police official told the New York Times that the riots were actually, quote, a state-sponsored pogrom. Members of the Gujarat BJP were accused of stoking, even taking part in the violence. A close aide to Modi, Maya Kudnani, was convicted for orchestrating one of the bloodiest massacres of the riots, where 97 Muslims were killed. Witnesses at her trial testified that she'd handed out swords and incited a mob to, quote, kill those bastards.

A court later deemed those witnesses unreliable and acquitted her. Victims told Human Rights Watch that their calls for help went unanswered. In some cases, police allegedly told them they didn't have orders to save them. A citizen's tribunal indicted Modi's government for the violence. There seems to me to be a state in turmoil. We're seeing repeated violence. Still, Modi vehemently denied the allegations. This is from a rare English-language interview with the BBC in 2002, the year of the riots. We're seeing people living in fear.

What has gone wrong with this breakdown in law and order here? I think you have to correct your information first. The state is very, very peaceful. So the Muslims who would say that they are still terrified, they are still frightened to go back to their homes, they still feel that the people who murdered their relatives have not been brought to justice, what would you say to them? I'm not agree with your analysis.

I'm not agree with your information. I'm not agree with your information. This absolutely misguided information to you from where you have picked up this type of garbage, I do not know. Some people have been accusing your government of not doing enough to stop this, of not protecting Muslims even now. These are also false propaganda made by our opponents, and you are also a captive of this false propaganda. When you look back over the last month, you've been the leader of this state through a very

difficult period. Do you think there's anything that you should have done differently? Yes. One area where I was very, very weak, and that was how to handle the media. Ten years later, a special investigation team appointed by India's Supreme Court cleared Modi of any complicity in the violence. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2022.

But still, at the time in India, there was pressure on then Prime Minister Vajpayee to oust Modi from office. He didn't do that. Outside the country, Modi was barred from entering the US, denied a visa on the grounds of severe violations of religious freedom, and the U.K. imposed a decade-long diplomatic boycott. In international news coverage, he was explicitly referred to as an extremist. The BJP controls the state government, and their present chief minister is a Hindu zealot who helped organize the pilgrimage which led eventually to the destruction of the Ayodhya Mosque.

Modi was now inextricably tied to the Gujarat riots, and that was about to have a surprising effect on his political career. Even though these riots damage Modi's reputation internationally and in other parts of India, in his home state of Gujarat, they boost his credibility. Instead of hurting him, the upheaval actually seems to help Modi politically. State elections are called early in a move one opposition party claims is an attempt to, quote, make political capital out of human tragedy. On the campaign trail, Modi makes several inflammatory comments about Muslims. He refers to the post-riot relief camps housing Muslims as baby-making factories. And at a Hindu pride rally, he says, if we raise the self-respect

and morale of 50 million Gujaratis, the schemes of Alis, Malis and Jamalis will not be able to do us any harm. And he uses the negative attention he'd received because of the riots to his advantage. Modi said that it is also we have to restore the dignity of Gujarat. All these Western countries, including their agents in India, have given a bad name to Gujarat and the Gujarati people. And by Gujarati people, he means the Hindu Gujarati people. So the only way you can actually restore the honour and dignity of all of us is by voting for me. In the 2002 election, there was nothing else. That was the primary appeal he made. Essentially, the pitch was of restoring honor and dignity of Gujarati people,

which was actually telling the Muslims, enough is enough. You have done Godhra. Now you have to come to terms to live on our terms. Ten months after the fire that sparked the riots, Gujaratis go to the polls. The pot had been kept boiling for a sufficiently long period of time. And it was essentially a polarized vote against the Muslims, which actually consolidated in favor of Modi and the BJP. That is why he won a huge two-third majority out of about 182 seats in the state assembly.

Modi's message pays off. By the end of 2002, he's cemented his place as an extremely popular leader, no matter how divisive. Despite this, I say that Modi is a creation of the Ayodhya agitation. My explanation is that Modi wouldn't have become what he is today had it not been for the Gujarat riots 2002. He earned notoriety

and thereby he became the leader of the Hindu masses. He was called the emperor of Hindu hearts, the savior of Hindus. With this support behind him, he'll come to rule the country and reshape it as he sees fit. Coming up on Modi's India Understood.

He opened a red carpet welcome for those who are ready to invest in Gujarat. People like him because the work he does. Everyone is getting employment. Everyone is happy in the country. In all my decades as a journalist, I had not heard of this category of violence, which was referred to as the beef lynching. referred to as the beef lynching. You've been listening to Modi's India Understood from CBC Podcasts and CBC News.

The show was written by producer Joyta Sengupta and showrunner Imogen Burchard, with me, Salima Shivji. Sound design by Julia Whitman. Story editing by Damon Fairless. Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez, Chris Oak and Nick McCabe-Locos.

In order of appearance, audio from the YouTube channels of India Today, Didi India, Business Standard Hindi, Associated Press, British Pathé, NDTV and the BBC.