India's Rising Hindu Nationalist

India's Rising Hindu Nationalist
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323527004579077630952869144.html
Narendra Modi, a politician who started off as a tea seller, is beloved and despised.
By SADANAND DHUME
OPINION | September 16, 2013, 7:11 p.m. ET

To gauge the political prospects of Narendra Modi, you don't need to know his views on the fiscal deficit, relations with China or the death penalty. But it is important to understand why the man announced Friday as the prime ministerial candidate of India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party for next year's general election evokes deeper devotion and fiercer opposition than any other politician in India.

Fans and foes alike view the 62-year-old, who has served for 12 years as chief minister of the northwest state of Gujarat, in starkly moral terms. For his legion of admirers, Mr. Modi's elevation represents the triumph of merit and hard work. To his equally numerous detractors, he stands for self-aggrandizement and antipathy toward Muslims.

The chord Mr. Modi strikes in core Hindu nationalist supporters, as well as much of the middle class, explains the inevitability of the party's decision to make him its standard-bearer. The equally strong antipathy Mr. Modi evokes—especially among Muslims, a section of liberal Hindus and many foreigners—suggests his path to the prime minister's office will be anything but easy.

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Part of Mr. Modi's national appeal rests on his record as the business-savvy administrator of India's most economically vibrant state. For Mr. Modi's fans, he represents a profound departure from politics as usual. In a nation where leaders often hand down parliamentary constituencies to their children like a family heirloom, Mr. Modi is self-made. His first job: helping an uncle run a tea stall in a small Gujarat town.

Mr. Modi toiled for years in obscurity as a backroom organizer for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist group whose volunteers power the BJP at the grass roots. He didn't hold elected office before the party parachuted him into the chief minister's chair in 2001.

As a bachelor, Mr. Modi lacks the usual baggage of sticky-fingered children or their spouses out to make a quick buck. Over the years, he has acquired a reputation for a punishing work schedule and frugal habits, which Indians tend to equate with probity in public life. Despite belonging to a so-called lower caste himself, Mr. Modi has resisted the temptation to use it for political gain. And though an undercurrent of anti-Muslim sentiment ran through his first successful state election campaign in 2002, these days his speeches tend to focus on crop yields, cattle care and fashion exports.

The moral case against Mr. Modi hinges on anti-Muslim riots that swept Gujarat 11 years ago, after a Muslim mob torched 58 Hindu pilgrims on a train. More than 1,000 people died in the violence, about three-fourths of them Muslim. Mr. Modi says he tried to stem the riots, and a Supreme Court-ordered investigation cleared him of wrongdoing.

But many Indians continue to see his failure to stop the violence as evidence of culpability at worst and criminal negligence at best. It didn't help when, in 2005, the U.S. denied Mr. Modi a visa to address businesses and Indian-American groups on account of the 2002 riots. For Mr. Modi's critics, his repackaging as an icon of development merely masks an unsavory agenda: to marginalize India's 176 million Muslims.

What do these contrasting narratives mean for the BJP and India? For one, Mr. Modi's moral stature makes him the unquestioned BJP leader. Nobody else in the party can generate a crowd of thousands, some wearing masks in his likeness, chanting "PM, PM, PM." Or inspire software engineers and management consultants to quit high-paid jobs to work for his campaign. Or ensure that even the most mundane speech attracts wall-to-wall coverage.

But the nature of Mr. Modi's appeal also carries its own limitations. Under a less polarizing figure, the BJP could have focused on highlighting the corruption and economic mismanagement that have plagued an unpopular government. Instead, the election will now become as much a national referendum on Mr. Modi as on the incumbent Manmohan Singh government.

Many fence-sitters will doubtless be drawn to the new BJP leader's compelling biography and promise of a strong India brimming with economic opportunity. But many others will recoil from electing someone synonymous with 21st-century India's worst bout of religious violence. In choosing to frame India's next election in moral rather than policy terms, the BJP has opted for a high-stakes gamble.

Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com.

A version of this article appeared September 17, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: India's Rising Hindu Nationalist.