Modi, still a dirty word

Narendra Modi is still a dirty word.
A word of praise for him, and the media and the political fraternity put on their hate glares to see the riot-tainted images of the 2002 riots and the Gujarat Chief Minister’s alleged role in it.
Yesterday, Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi was removed from the post of vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom, Deoband, by the Majlis-e-Shoora, the powerful governing body of the institution seven months after he praised Modi. The Maulana had said at a function in his home state of Gujarat that like all other communities, “Muslims too had progressed under the Narendra Modi government, and that the Muslims should look beyond the post-Godhra communal riots and press ahead”.
All hell broke loose. The Maulana’s statement was seen as an attempt at giving a clean chit to Modi, triggering violence on the Darul Uloom campus, with deafening demands for his ouster.
So why is Modi still a dirty word? In April, Gandhian and activist Anna Hazare came in for sharp criticism for praising Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for their efforts on rural development. “The Chief Ministers of other states should also work like this,” the 73-year-old activist had said.
Again, his statement drew flak, with a number of Left and civil rights organisations wanting to distance themselves from Hazare in his campaign against corruption. The Congress MP Rashid Alvi had even said: “No secular person in the country can support Modi.”
Early this year, former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was all praise for the high economic growth Gujarat had achieved under Modi during the past six years. He cited the state’s agricultural growth that had been steady at 7 to 9 per cent for the past six years. He said Modi had created a dedicated power grid for uninterrupted supply to rural areas and improved irrigation systems, turning 20,000 hectares of unirrigated land into a rich agricultural area.
So here is the debate between the ghost and growth.
On the other hand, we have errant and corrupt chief ministers ruling over our states. While one has been holidaying in Mauritius even as his state’s Lokayukta report has indicted him of having amassed wealth in exchange for granting illegal mining licenses, we have another one building statues and amassing diamonds. While a political patriarch lost his chief ministership in a state after having bred ministers who had embroiled themselves in one of the biggest telecom scams ever, we had another political leader who had lost his chief ministerial chair after having been involved in a housing scam meant for Kargil widows.
What I am trying to think is that on the one hand we have our unscrupulous leaders continuously draining the state exchequer, while filling up their personal coffers, and we have a Chief Minister who has been drawing praises for his agricultural and other development work, but has the ghost of 2002 handing like an albatross round his neck.
What is the greater evil? A Chief Minister with a riot-tainted past? By the way, there are stray evidences and multiple allegations of the government machinery involved in the gory, “cleansing” act of 2002.
Or is it the unscrupulosity of our leaders who see political power as a short-term personal fixed deposit scheme, in which they would have to park as much wealth as possible.
So what is the dirtier word: Modi or Corruption?
I haven’t got an answer to it.