Will Modi Ever Come Out of the Shadow of the Riots?

The case against Modi is not just about the killing of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and others, it, in a larger sense, targets the accused, mainly Modi, for the violence in nine districts of Gujarat soon after the Godhra train carnage. Modi would have been pictured as chief patron of the riots if he had to be convicted in the case.

The legal battle over this case is seen as very crucial for Modi’s future political journey, in fact his survival, by his opponents and civil society activists like Teesta Setalvad. A negative verdict on the case before Assembly elections later this year, as his opponents fought for, would have murdered his last hopes of entering the national politics to place himself as the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister. “But the dilemma that confronts Modi is that even a ‘clean chit’ such as the one that the SIT has given him, may not give him the political liftoff that he is likely looking for in order to go national,” a Firstpost article says.

Modi’s efforts at gaining an image makeover - to outgrow his hardline Hindutva image – was quiet evident in promoting his track record of good governance and development and in his recent string of ‘sadbhavana missions’ to reconnect with the estranged Muslims. Modi, caught in an image trap, wouldn’t be able to cash in on the support of the core group of his very vocal supporters, to reach the top post. Rather, BJP, with the current state of disarray in the party, will need the consensus of its coalition allies to form a government. “A legal ‘clean chit’ of the sort that the SIT has given Modi counts for little in the political plane. He and his supporters can claim justifiably that he has exorcised the ghost of the 2002 riots, but it won’t take him far.  In that sense, it’s a lose-lose proposition for Modi,” the article concludes.