The vibes were just right, the words carefully chosen. “Nobody,” said Narendra Modi, “called me or sent me to Varanasi. My coming to Varanasi is like a child going to his Mother.”
And then came the clincher: “Maa Ganga has invited me. May she bless me. May God give me the strength to serve (Varanasi’s) Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (composite culture).” Words, smooth as velvet, which hit all the right notes in the world’s oldest living city.
But he didn’t stop at that. Modi, who has positioned himself as strong and decisive, as a doer and with a solution to most of the country’s problems, said he would clean up the Ganga too. And backed that up by pointing out how he had breathed new life into the Sabarmati in Gujarat.
Accompanied by close aide Amit Shah and party leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Laxmikant Bajpayi, Modi filed his nomination at the collectorate. Sitting MP Murli Manohar Joshi, however, was absent.
Party workers claimed more than 4 lakh people turned out for the road show, but it was hard to tell whether it was spontaneous. Modi’s cavalcade took more than two hours to cover the 2-km stretch. He started off by garlanding the statue of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel at the Maldahiya Crossing. From there, the BJP leaders proceeded to the collectorate on a flower-bedecked mini-truck.
“The Modi wave sweeping the country has turned into a tsunami,” said Shah after Modi filed papers. “So far, there was a wave of Modi and BJP in Uttar Pradesh. But now, because of this tsunami, the trio of Congress, SP and BSP will be whitewashed from the state. We will further benefit from this wave in Bihar and adjoining states.”
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