Gujarat elections are due. The whole world is waiting to see what miracles the BJP will create in the State, which is home to Prime Minister Modi and party boss Amit Shah. Interestingly, Modi keeps screaming to the crowds that congregate at election rallies and meetings that he is one of the rarest ready-to-drink tea sellers who sold only tea and never his country, as if some of the other party leaders have sold away India or waiting for an opportunity to sell away the greatest democracy on the planet to greedy colony-crazy ‘political commodity buyers’.
The tea-seller tag is rampantly used by BJP strategists to draw attention of simple gullible voters, who keep imagining that an ordinary tea seller is only one of them and shall not ever betray them in any cause. But the thinking Indian is plain curious for the ‘tea stall’ history is not clearly known to any. The history goes thus:
Believably at Vadnagar, Modi’s little home town, his father and elder brother ran tea stalls at the tiny bus-stand and railway station. Modi used to help them sell tea whenever they required extra ‘man help’. All this was in the Sixties of the last century. Further according to the Indian Railways department that handles vendors at railway platforms, no ‘Narendra Modi’ ever had any registered tea stall in recorded railway history. This has come by way of response to an RTI query filed by someone on the issue. But as per small time local historians, the Vadnagar railway station had not come into existence before 1973. And Modi had left home in 1967 at the age of seventeen to pursue his private career.
But Modi has been to his hometown in poll-bound Gujarat and launched a slew of welfare projects, the spotlight focused specifically on Vadnagar. TV news reporters covering Modi’s visit to his hometown for the first time since taking over as Prime Minister in 2014 showed visuals of the rundown tea stall near the railway station. Reporters spoke about how residents of Vadnagar were proud of Modi’s meteoric rise from his humble beginning as a tea seller helping his father in the 1960s. Some of them have located the spot, where Modi stood and sold tea. The smart ones among his blind admirers have identified remnants of a rundown, torn shop as having belonged to Modi, the shopkeeper. They are now seriously at work to make Vadnagar a tourist location of India where a tea selling Prime Minister was born.
If history has been recorded correctly, the whole drama seems to be based on bizarre falsehood. So, the ‘once-a-Chaiwala’ story is only make-believe and crap. In fact, Modi couldn’t have been a tea seller anywhere in India since 1985 when he got assigned to the BJP by the RSS fold. The ‘tea seller’ claim thus remains a mystery to many who dig into history but have no way of spilling the truth. Interestingly, not even the outspoken many among the political opponents do seem to know the falsehood aspects of the ‘tea seller of Vadnagar’ fairytale.
Now, a bit about the BJP boss Amit Shah: Justice BH loya of the Bombay High Court, who was to decide whether Amit Shah should be tried for murder, died suddenly in December 2014. One of the most eminent judicial luminaries, Justice AP Shah, is extremely keen that the mysterious sudden death be investigated thoroughly. It’s on record that that there was blood on Justice loya’s clothes. The medical report the BJP administration had organised did mention that cardiac arrest was the cause of Justice loya’s death, which had occurred just five months after taking up Amit Shah’s case quite in earnest. Just before his death, Justice loya had reportedly confided to his family members that a bribe of one hundred crore rupees was offered to him by Mohit Shah, the then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, to let go of the accused somehow or the other. leading magazine ‘Caravan’ has already quoted the loya family members as saying ‘they suspect conspiracy of murder as loya was a very healthy and fit person’ in one of the recent investigative articles. Justice AP Shah has categorically demanded that Justice Mohit Shah, now retired, must come forward and spill the beans to clear his name and prove the grave allegations against him are false. All this anxiety because, just after two weeks of loya’s death, the judge who replaced him in the CBI case, lost no time in exonerating Amit Shah and ruling strongly that no trial ever be taken thereafter.
The CBI had alleged that as Home Minister of Gujarat, Amit Shah had ordered the extra-judicial killing of Sorabuddin Sheikh, a petty criminal of Gujarat, his wife and their friend who was a witness to the merciless gunning down act in 2005. The Supreme Court had, therefore, shifted the case from Gujarat to Bombay High Court to ensure Amit Shah was not able to influence or intimidate witnesses in his State. Even NDTV, which had tried to verify the allegations, had failed to get any response from Justice Mohit Shah despite repeated requests for his comments. The mystery remains unsolved even today.
At last, back to ‘selling a country away or part of it’ as Modi keeps claiming:
In 1867, Russia sold the territory of Alaska to the US for $7.2 million. A mere 50 years later, the Americans had earned that amount back 100 times over. Many people still think that the Americans either stole Alaska from the Russians or leased it and did not return it. Despite the widespread myths, the deal was an honest one, and both sides had valid reasons to make it. How could the imperial officials have given up such a choice parcelIJ The muddled story is being slowly sorted out. A petition calling for Russia’s annexation of Alaska that was posted on the White House website gathered more than 35,000 signatures before it was cancelled. Russian merchants were drawn to Alaska for the walrus ivory (it was as expensive as elephant ivory) and the valuable sea otter fur, which could be procured by trading with the indigenous peoples of the region. Trading was done by the Russian-American Company (RAC), which was started by adventurers -- 18th-century Russian businessmen, courageous travellers and entrepreneurs. The company controlled all of Alaska’s mines and minerals; it could independently enter into trade agreements with other countries; and it had its own flag and currency -- leather “marks”. These privileges were granted to the company by the imperial government. The government not only collected massive taxes from the company, it also owned a large part of it -- the tsars and their family members were among the RAC’s shareholders. Thus, the ‘Alaska sale’ is the only one of its kind, wherein a sovereign head of state has sold a part of the country or kingdom to another entity.
So, Modi saying that he only sold tea and never intended selling the country is all humbug and loud talk. The Gujarat model of administration installed by Modi is only a poor copy of the Kerala model. Even Odisha, which was in a terrible State until the turn of the millennium, is rushing ahead of Gujarat on many development counts. There is no reason why Modi should talk like an immature child. He is of course so popular and likely to grab Gujarat yet again. But caution be taken lest BJP strategists should witness the debacle as experienced in Goa and Manipur!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)
