In holy city of Varanasi, Modi’s vision fused development, politics, faith

{ 2014 GAMBIT

- Sudhir Kumar and Brajendra Parashar

It was Saturday, March 14, 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) named then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as its candidate from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

The incumbent United Progressive Alliance was in doldrums but the BJP was looking to maximise its haul from the heartland. The sitting MP, Murli Manohar Joshi, who had narrowly won the seat in 2009, was moved to Kanpur, and Modi landed in the holy city on April 24, 2014.

In his first election speech, he said, "Na kisi ne mujhe bheja hai, na main yaha aaya hu, mujhe to maa Ganga ne Bulaya hai ... aur ek balak jaise apni maa ki god me wapas aata hai waisi main anubhuti kar raha hun ... (Nobody has sent me, nor have I come here, Mother Ganga has invited me to Kashi, and how a child feels when he returns to his mother's lap, I am experiencing the same.)"

Modi has since won the parliamentary seat thrice, helped the BJP trounce regional opposition in Uttar Pradesh, and build a new paradigm of Hindutva with Varanasi as a fulcrum. He built infra projects such as the Varanasi city-Airport road, a trade facilitation centre, a perishable cargo centre, a port, underground cabling to make Kashi free from the web of hanging wires, and the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor. He also changed the face of the ancient city by leading a revamp of the Ganga aarti ceremony.

"Kashi adopted PM Modi and Modi made Kashi his home ... " said Shashi Mishra, a local resident.

The Varanasi gamble