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Publication: The Telegraph
Date: August 2, 2013
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130804/jsp/7days/17193416.jsp#.Uf3O2QTRKJo.facebook

Once known mostly for her firebrand feminism, Madhu Kishwar has now become one of Narendra Modi's most vocal supporters. She tells V. Kumara Swamy that the Gujarat chief minister is the best thing to have happened to independent India

Those who want to take Madhu Kishwar on, beware. When she was three, arguably the best known feminist in India was carrying a blade in her pocket. Just by chance, she says — but we know better. Kishwar's mother was trying to tie a ribbon on her with the help of a hefty cousin, and young Madhu was resisting. "On that day, per chance there was a blade in my pocket. As they tried to hold me down, we all got bloodied from it. But I still did not let them tie the girlie ribbon on me," Kishwar recalls.

She may not go around flashing a razor any more, but her claws are certainly out every time anyone criticises Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Some years ago, she was quite a critic of his — now she is an authority. A study that she undertook for over six months has resulted in Modinama, a series of long articles and videos based on interviews with a cross-section of people in Gujarat. Kiswhar is now convinced that Modi is the best thing to have happened to Independent India.

"I am saying with full confidence that never in history has any man been defamed and demonised for doing all the right things as Modi. I wouldn't be defending him if I hadn't found more than enough evidence that he is not guilty of all the charges levelled at him. I wouldn't be risking my own head if I had the slightest of doubts," she says.

She doesn't stop there. "If there is any politician who has not only understood and imbibed the message of Gandhi but is also implementing it with all sincerity, it is Modi."

Modi and Gandhi? Isn't she going too far, I ask.

"I am not going too far. I am saying with full confidence on the basis of what I have seen on the ground. I have checked out things for myself, spoken to people, including farmers, tribals, fishermen, artisans, teachers, traders, professionals and bureaucrats who have worked with Modi and I am convinced that he not only cares deeply for the antim jan — those at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid — with the same passion that Gandhi had, but also has creative solutions to their problems," Kishwar adds.

I am sitting in her office at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, where she is a faculty member. Like a typical academic's room, her desk is cluttered with books and papers. In a dark green salwar-kameez with her spectacles perched on her head, Kishwar is over 60, but doesn't look it.

And, certainly, you cannot docket her in the elder citizen category. I listen appreciatively as she berates a television producer of a news talk show hosted by a popular anchor on the telephone. No, she is not interested in giving sound bites on secularism, she says. Later, however, she appears on the programme.

Curiously, not many in Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have approached her for inputs on the Gujarat strongman, who leads the party's election campaign. But a few, mostly die-hard Modi supporters, are in touch with her. As I sit in her office, she interacts with two Modi admirers who volunteer to help her edit and provide English and Hindi subtitles for his Gujarati speeches in her videos.

When they are gone, I ask Kishwar if Modi's recent remarks on "puppies" and "burqas of secularism" are pushing her into a corner? "Me, in a corner? Who can do that," she scoffs, giving me a you-don't-know-me look.

She adds that there are similarities between Modi and her. "He is like me. He talks straight and he is spontaneous. I am glad that he is not a smooth-talking hypocrite."

Nine years ago, this was not what you heard from Kishwar. In fact, in her now defunct magazine Manushi, she had written after the 2004 general elections that Gujarat was to a large extent responsible for the BJP-led government's defeat. "The main factors that delegitimised the government were the Gujarat riots and the shamelessness with which several BJP leaders flaunted the violence perpetrated on the Muslim community as a badge of honour. Vajpayee's refusal to sack Narendra Modi, and Advani's mesmerised projection of Modi as the party's new strongman mascot, cost them dear," she wrote.

Kishwar has her defence ready.

"I actually believed all those who told us in 2002 that Modi was guilty. I was not on the ground to study the situation myself but over the years I became convinced that we were being fed partisan propaganda by the Congress and Left parties and NGOs on Congress's payroll," she says.

Kishwar points out that for six months she tried to understand Modi through his work, associates, officers and ordinary people's perception of his governance. And she appreciates the fact that despite her glowing accounts in Modinama, he made no attempts to contact her, even though her writings created a stir. "Any other politician would have called me and thanked me or would have made some overtures. Not Modi. I liked the fact that he never tried to influence or mollycoddle me," she says. She has, however, met him a few times since then.

These days, of course, anyone who criticises Modi is her personal enemy. Amartya Sen is at the head of the queue. She accuses Sen of being the "leading light" of the campaign initiated in the US to deny Modi an American visa and adds that she may move court on his remarks on Modi being unsuitable for the Prime Minister's chair.

"I would like to sue him for defamation and spreading ill will among Hindus and Muslims by painting a false picture of Muslim victimhood in Gujarat. But I have to see if it is legally possible," she says.

Sen, she says, is grossly misinformed. "He has never stepped into Gujarat, never tried finding out for himself what the facts are. As the patron saint of the National Advisory Council he has become the chief courtier of Sonia Gandhi's raj durbar and acts not as an academic but as the Congress Party's hatchet man."

Kiswhar also scoffs at those who say that behind her Modinama writings lurks a desire for a Rajya Sabha seat. "I don't have such low self-esteem that I would sell my conscience for this or that reward. Rajya Sabha was offered to me during V.P. Singh's regime. I was also asked if I would head the women's commission. I refused. If all I wanted was a Rajya Sabha seat, it would have been far easier to work through the Congress where I have many friends. I have hardly any friends in the BJP," she says.

Kishwar possibly doesn't have too many friends anywhere, for her outspoken views have often come in the way of camaraderie. This was true way back in the early Seventies, when, as a student of Miranda House in Delhi, and as president of its students' union, she led a campaign against the popular Miss Miranda House contest.

"My point was that a frivolous beauty cutie Barbie doll couldn't be honoured as Miss Miranda. The title should go to the best all-round student. Not many knew who the topper of physics was but everyone knew the beauty queen of Miranda House." Kishwar claims that people such as Urvashi Butalia (a feminist publisher) and Radha Kumar (Kashmir interlocutor) wanted the contest to continue.

''I mobilised the behenjis and the 'science types' and convinced them that this was not the Miss Miranda we wanted," she says. She was able to marginalise the "super anglicised coterie" of students belonging to the English, history and economics departments, she adds.

For a while, she was even a member of the CPI(M)-led Students Federation of India. She fought for a post in the Delhi University Students' Union as an SFI candidate and lost. "My romance with the Left was over after my brief stint with the SFI. By the time I joined JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) to study history, I began gravitating towards Mahatma Gandhi. He provided me with an intellectual and moral anchor whereas the Left only came up with rhetorical bombast."

Kishwar taught in a Delhi college for a while. In 1978, she decided to launch a magazine for women. There were other feminists involved in the project then, but she fell out with most of them. Kishwar, however, rejects the claim that she was not a team player — she just doesn't believe in bhed chaal (acting like sheep), she says.

The author of scores of articles and stories related to women won several awards because of her journalistic work, though she says she never saw herself as a journalist.

Over the last several years, however, she has been in the news for supporting steps that many consider regressive. She has, for instance, opposed the anti-Sati law, supported dowry and filed a petition in support of khap panchayats.

And now, of course, there is Modi. Kishwar — who decided to dedicate herself to Mother India years ago and vowed to remain unmarried — was recently quoted as saying that she would even "wipe the floor" for Modi. She has a different take now.

"I am only cleaning the muck that the Congress has viciously and undeservingly thrown at Modi and which the BJP surprisingly allowed to accumulate around Modi all these years. What I am doing is basically jhaadu pochha (sweeping and mopping) — not for Modi but for the good of India. I am okay with that."