The only political analysis anyone in India is going to read today is that which relates to Gujarat. So it’s Gujarat we have to talk about even if I am in the difficult position of having to write this piece before knowing what is going to happen. By the time you read this, the results of the Gujarat election will have started to appear on a television screen near you and the fate of Narendra Modi will be known. Even those who would like to see him lose concede that it would be a miracle if he did. Even those who fear the kind of politics he embodies, and I am among them, concede that he has become larger than the Gujarat election.

If he wins, he becomes a potential prime minister and if he loses he becomes the hero of those who believe that ‘pseudo-secularism’ is once more a serious Indian problem. Narendra Modi is seen as the one politician who is not prepared to put up with what Professor Arvind Sharma called ‘asymmetric secularism’ at my book launch last week. The book is called ‘Political & Incorrect’ and if you like this column buy the book. Forgive me this moment of self-promotion, but when a book comes out no amount of publicity is too much.

To return to the subject of asymmetric secularism. At the National Development Council meeting in Delhi last week, Modi spoke out against ‘communal budgeting’. He was referring to an attempt by the prime minister and his boss, Sonia Gandhi, to woo the lost Muslim vote bank by giving 15 per cent of the Eleventh Five Year Plan’s budget for Muslims. Modi spoke for many when he said, “The new 15-point programme focuses on earmarking certain outlays of area development schemes and programmes on their minority status, which should be reviewed in the interest of maintaining the social fabric of the nation.”

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