[And the tea stall campaign is an effort to draw a contrast between Mr. Modi’s humble beginnings as the son of a tea vendor in the western state of Gujarat, which he has governed as chief minister since 2001, and Rahul Gandhi, his Congress Party rival who is the son and grandson of previous Indian prime ministers. In his youth, Mr. Modi carried tea in a kettle from his father’s shop to customers waiting for trains at the Vadnagar train station.]
By Zach Marks
 |
| Resham GellatlyMunna, a worker at the NaMo tea stall who uses only one name, pouring tea in Patna, Bihar, on Sunday. |
Last month, a new face
showed up at the stall – the printed visage of Indian opposition leader
Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to unseat the governing
Congress Party in national elections next spring. In a bid to increase
publicity before the massive rally held in Patna, the capital of the eastern
state of Bihar, local B.J.P. officials asked tea vendors to brand their
businesses “NaMo tea stalls” by putting up promotional posters using Mr. Modi’s
nickname.
Mr. Pathak and his friends
have continued to gather at the same shop despite its recent branding as a NaMo
tea stall. “We are all Congress supporters, but we don’t mind them putting up
this poster,” he said, pointing to the image of Mr. Modi. “It’s a democracy.
Everyone has the right to speak his mind. We come here and pull out the
newspaper and say whatever we feel. It doesn’t matter if Modi’s face is right
there.”
“This is the one place in
politics where caste doesn’t matter. People all vote on caste lines, but over a
cup of tea we’re all secular,” Mr. Pathak said, pointing out the diversity of
the customers gathered. “This is where you find the real pulse of Patna.”
Mr. Modi’s rally on
Sunday, marred by a series of low-intensity bomb blasts, was seen as an
important opportunity for Mr. Modi to woo voters in Bihar, a state with over
100 million people considered crucial to his party’s chances of taking power
from the long-dominant Congress Party, which faces growing unpopularity amid
corruption scandals and weak economic growth.
And the tea stall campaign
is an effort to draw a contrast between Mr. Modi’s humble beginnings as
the son of a tea vendor in the western state of Gujarat, which he has
governed as chief minister since 2001, and Rahul Gandhi, his Congress Party
rival who is the son and grandson of previous Indian prime ministers. In his
youth, Mr. Modi carried tea in a kettle from his father’s shop to customers
waiting for trains at the Vadnagar train station.
“Here is a man born into a
simple, poor family who worked hard to rise up,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad,
deputy opposition leader in the upper house of Parliament. “Compare that to the
Nehru-Gandhi Congress Party dynasty. They have been passing down power from one
generation to the next, but after 60 years of this rule, the people have had
enough. Modi’s rise from a chai wallah to the prime minister’s chair will show
the great power of Indian democracy,” Mr. Prasad said, using the Hindi term for
tea seller.
On Saturday, B.J. P.
leaders took a break from rally preparations to make tea for reporters at a
mobile stall, mimicking the elaborate movements for which India’s chai wallahs
are famous, pouring sugary milk tea from one cup to another. “This is our way
of saying we are with the common people,” said Mukesh Nandan, a local party
worker administering the NaMo tea stall program.
Over two hundred tea
vendors had signed up to participate, according to Mr. Nandan, although local
residents said they had not seen more than a handful of NaMo tea stalls.
On Fraser Road, a main
thoroughfare where thousands marched to the rally waving B.J.P. flags and
singing songs dedicated to Mr. Modi, Gopi Tiwari, a tea vendor, said he was
proud to show his support through his stand, a wooden cart which he had draped
in the signature saffron-orange of the B.J.P.
“It is time for a change.
Modi ‘Ji’ was a chai wallah like me so he understands the poor,” Mr. Tiwari
said, using a Hindi title of respect.
“Manmohan Singh just sits
on his hands,” he said in reference to the current prime minister. “Modi Ji
will solve our problems. He will attack Pakistan and bring development like he
has in Gujarat.” The customers around Mr. Tiwari’s stand shouted in agreement
as a pot of tea began to boil over.
This is not the first time
a politician has used tea to curry favor with voters in Bihar. When Lalu Prasad
Yadav, a former chief minister of Bihar, became national railways minister in
2004, he mandated that in trains and on station platforms tea be served
in kulhars, handmade clay cups, to provide employment for local potters
and show his respect for tradition. The effort largely failed and today India’s
train tracks are littered with used plastic cups.
“It makes sense that these
leaders use tea as a promotional stunt,” said Abhay Singh, a political analyst
at The Times of India based in Patna. “Tea stalls are where people gather to
discuss politics, and of course candidates want people to talk about them when
they are taking tea.”
Not all tea vendors have
been eager to participate in the promotion of Mr. Modi. Manoj Rai, a tea vendor
who was approached by the B.J.P. but declined to brand his stand a NaMo tea
stall, said he did not want to offend potential customers. “I like Congress,
B.J.P., J.D. (U), R.J.D., all of them,” Mr. Rai said, listing the abbreviations
of major political parties in Bihar. “If my customers like them, I like them.”
While Mr. Modi is trying to
use his humble origins to electoral advantage, he does remain the prisoner of
his failure to stop the anti-Muslim riots in 2002 in which over 1,000
people were killed. Many of the riots occurred in neighborhoods where poor
people lived, including many tea vendors.
Memories of this tragedy
still lingered with some of Patna’s tea vendors, who said they would never
consider branding their shops as NaMo tea stalls. “Muslims cannot trust this
man,” said Mohammad Phul, who runs a teashop in Phulwari Sharif, a
predominantly Muslim neighborhood with narrow alleys dotted with mosques. “If
Modi wins there will be riots in the streets,” Mr. Phul said.
Zach Marks is a journalist
based in India. He is researching roadside tea vendors around the country with
Resham Gellatly. Read more of their work at chaiwallahsofindia.com
[Mr. Modi, a star of India’s main opposition
party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, would become
prime minister if the party won enough seats in parliamentary
elections next summer with support from its political allies. His rise to power
is deeply troubling to many Indians, especially the country’s 138 million
Muslims and its many other minorities. They worry he would exacerbate sectarian
tensions that have subsided somewhat in the last decade.]
In
2002, rioters in the western Indian state of Gujarat savagely killed
nearly 1,000 people, most of whom were part of the Muslim minority. Now, barely
a decade later, Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat at the
time and still holds the office, is a leading
candidate to become prime minister of India.
Mr. Modi, a star of India’s main opposition
party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, would become
prime minister if the party won enough seats in parliamentary
elections next summer with support from its political allies. His rise to power
is deeply troubling to many Indians, especially the country’s 138 million
Muslims and its many other minorities. They worry he would exacerbate sectarian
tensions that have subsided somewhat in the last decade.
Supporters of Mr. Modi argue that an
investigation commissioned by India’s Supreme Court cleared him of wrongdoing
in the riots. And they insist that Mr. Modi, who is widely admired by
middle-class Indians for making Gujarat one of India’s fastest-growing states,
can revive the economy, which has been weakened by a decade of mismanagement by
the coalition government headed by the Indian National Congress Party.
There is no question that the Congress Party
has failed to
capitalize on the economic growth of recent years to invest in infrastructure,
education and public institutions like the judiciary. And instead of trying to
revive itself with new ideas and leaders, it is likely to be led in
the coming election by Rahul Gandhi, the inexperienced
scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
But Mr. Modi’s strident Hindu nationalism has
fueled public outrage. When Reuters asked him earlier this year if he regretted
the killings in 2002, he said,
if “someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a
puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is.” That
incendiary response created a political uproar and demands for an apology.
Mr. Modi has shown no ability to work with
opposition parties or tolerate dissent. And he has already alienated political
partners; this summer, an important regional partybroke off its
17-year alliance with the B.J.P. because it found Mr. Modi unacceptable.
His economic record in Gujarat is not entirely
admirable, either. Muslims in Gujarat, for instance, are much more likely to
be poor than Muslims in India as a whole, even though the state has a lower
poverty rate than the country.
India is a country with multiple religions, more
than a dozen major languages and numerous ethnic groups and tribes. Mr. Modi
cannot hope to lead it effectively if he inspires fear and antipathy among many
of its people.
