Will the real Modi please stand up?

The Prime Minister of India tells voters in an election speech in Bihar that the alliance that the BJP is fighting against is planning to take reservations away from various backward castes and hand them to a ldquoparticular communityrdquo But the BJP will not allow religionbased reservation he promisesDuring an election rally in Buxar on Monday PM Narendra Modi said the BJP was fighting those who wished to take away reservation from backward castes and hand them to a ldquoparticular communityrdquo PicPTIIs this the same prime minister of India who only a short while ago told us the people of India that we should listen to what the President of India said three times now on respecting Indiarsquos plurality and diversity Is this the same prime minister who said that Hindus and Muslims should fight poverty together and not each other Is this the same prime minister who said people should ignore controversial remarks made by politiciansOr is this Narendra Modi the Hindutva emperor of Gujarat and the holder of all Hindu hearts a title he appropriated from the late Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena Is this the Modi who fought an election on the development plank but allowed members of his party his government and his larger allegiance to run amok with comments and actions which have created new rifts and reopened old fissures in our religious and social fabricWe have been told over and over in the past two years that this Modi who will be prime minister of India is not the same Modi who was chief minister of Gujarat where one of independent Indiarsquos worst HinduMuslim riots took place This was a Modi who would develop India the way Gujarat has been developed We were told it was unfair to keep harping on riots that took place in 2002 We were accused of saying nothing when other terrible things happened in the countryUnfortunately for the development story it is now being overtaken by the Hindutva story The poor cow often neglected in its old age as it wanders the streets and countryside eating plastic is now the symbol of national and religious pride and violence lsquoCowkillersrsquo suspected lsquocowkillersrsquo and potential lsquocowkillersrsquo are killed and beaten up Members of the central government and the ruling party threaten the general public if a cow is harmed The prime minister remains silent on itA man was killed in his home based on a rumour of what meat he had eaten But if anyone expects the prime minister to speak about this think again It is a law and order issue which is a state subject he says Nothing though about the reason why the man was killed the inflamed passions by the cow protection lobby of the prime ministerrsquos own party and his larger ideological family A minister says the death was an accident And by just writing this I have left myself open to attack for not writing a column when Babar invaded India I am guilty I did notIf the man who spoke in Bihar about a ldquoparticular communityrdquo and the ldquosinful planrdquo of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav to steal reservations from the backward castes was the prime minister of India then I am confused and I am not the only one I knew the other man the Hindutva icon Which hat mdash and he is very fond of headgear as we have seen mdashwas he wearing at this rally in Buxar Which constituency was he talking to Was he the developmentoriented prime minister who said lsquoeverybodyrsquos progress with everybody togetherrsquo Or the electionwinning chief minister of Gujarat who mockingly talked of ldquohum paanch hamare pacheesrdquo referring to a high birth rate amongst Muslims Or maybe it is the Gujarat chief minister who always referred to the election commissioner of the time as ldquoJames Michael Lyngdohrdquo so that the fact that he was a Christian and not a Hindu sunk in with his proHindutva audienceWe have been told repeatedly by admirers of Narendra Modi that he is interested only in the development of India Sadly even those who believed that are beginning to wonder in which direction are we developing And which is the real Prime Minister of IndiaRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjona