Narendra Modi was not on the minds of Mumbaikars as much as he was in the electronic media. Mumbaikars continue to be in sort of a State of Siege, enveloped by fear psychosis and driven by rumours rather than by ministerial assurances. On the surface there is calm which has now aquired a fabled misnomer — The Spirit of Mumbai!

There was no grand welcome of Modi by Mumbaikars or even by the BJP cadre. Indeed there was shrill media hype, orchestrated by a section of the BJP, highlighting his arrival as some kind of a messiah, and some, like Abu Asim Azmi, protesting his visit. Some well-meaning liberals too wanted Modi’s entry in Mumbai banned. Many Mumbaikars perceive Azmi as the other side of the Modi coin: Both of them thrive on rabid communal rhetoric. Most of the middle class Hindus feel disgusted by their self-serving, and highly provocative language. Almost all Muslims in Mumbai today are in a state of panic, which they tend to conceal.

Modi chose to visit this vulnerable city at a time when the city is in desperate search for some tranquility, at least respite. But the media still continues to televise the gore and chaos on the railway tracks, further traumatising the already ‘mayhemed’ minds. Modi came not to heal the wound but to inflame it by politics of hate. The audience that heard him in hypnotic attention was the same in its mental make-up that heard him in Gujarat in 2002 or the one which paid rapt attention to LK Advani during Rathyatra of 1990.

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