Modi before Modi: When Narendra Modi first appeared in news headlines

Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with students during the 79th Independence Day celebration at the Red Fort (File/PTI)

With Narendra Modi, at 75, entering his 12th year as prime minister and his 24th straight year in elected public office, since his election as Gujarat chief minister in 2001, there is little doubt that he remains India’s most towering political personality. While a great deal has been written about Modi’s trajectory as a politician and public figure, his early journey as an RSS pracharak and then as a BJP leader who was a prime architect of the party's rise in Gujarat has been relatively less written about.

Modi’s first appearance in newspapers as an anti-Emergency activist on Doordarshan

Narendra Modi’s name first appeared in an English newspaper soon after Indira Gandhi’s Emergency was lifted. Few could have imagined his future career as a prime minister at the time. Indira Gandhi and Congress had just been swept out of power after the Emergency. Morarji Desai was the prime minister at the helm of the united Janata Party in Delhi, and Babubhai Patel was the chief minister in Gujarat, leading the state’s first non-Congress government. The young Narendra Modi was invited for a TV discussion on the nascent state broadcaster Doordarshan for a programme called ‘Yuvadarshan’. The topic of the panel discussion was ‘The Youth Struggle During the Emergency’.

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The Doordarshan discussion was anchored by Gujarat-based social activist Alka Desai, and the panellists were Narendra Modi, Pravin Tank and Kirtida Mehta. In those days, English newspapers used to carry a daily listing of Doordarshan programming, then the only TV station in India. A notice on this TV discussion, broadcast at 830 pm on 23 May 1978, appeared in the ‘Television’ section of the English daily, The Times of India. It was the first time that Narendra Modi’s name appeared in a newspaper.

Modi’s second newspaper appearance as an RSS pracharak and flood relief worker 

The second time that Narendra Modi’s name appeared in a newspaper article was during relief operations in Gujarat’s Morbi after the collapse of the Machchu Dam. The Machchu-2 dam on the Machchu River failed on 11 August 1979, sending a wall of water through the town of Morbi. It submerged vast areas, leading to massive devastation and thousands of deaths.

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The tragic dam burst was one of India’s worst disasters, and Modi appeared in the pages of newspapers in his then role as an RSS pracharak. He was coordinating relief efforts for the Sangh. A month after the dam failed, The Times of India reported on 30 September 1979, that Narendra Modi of the RSS-formed Pur Pidit Sahayata Samiti (Committee to Help the Dam Afflicted) received a cheque of Rs 5 lakh from the RSS’s Maharashtra wing for carrying out flood relief work in Morbi and affected areas around it.

Speaking at the occasion, Ravibhai Shah, treasurer of the Modi-led RSS Samiti in Gujarat, outlined how it had, under Modi’s leadership, raised Rs 14 lakh for relief work. This included building  100 houses, adopting three villages, conducting free medical aid and distributing foodgrains and clothes for victims of the disaster.

Modi’s first appearance as a BJP politician in newspapers  

Narendra Modi’s name first appeared in a newspaper as a politician in 1988. At the time, he had just taken over as general secretary of the Gujarat BJP and was the organiser of an anti-Congress rasta-roko agitation on farmer demands in Gujarat.

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He had recently moved to the BJP from RSS, and his name appeared in newspapers in connection with a rasta-roko (stop the path) agitation which the party organised in Ahmedabad in support of farmer demands against the then Congress government of Amarsinh Chaudhary.

Not many outside the state had heard of Modi at the time. As Gujarat  BJP’s general secretary, Modi’s name featured in newspaper reports on the farmer agitation. He was cited as saying that over 50,000 BJP workers were arrested across the state as part of the protests.

Modi as ‘architect of Gujarat BJP’

The first wider national recognition for Narendra Modi as a political leader came when he became the key organiser of the Gujarat leg of the Somnath Yatra organised by LK Advani in 1990.

The BJP was yet to win power in Gujarat, but Modi’s role in the Somnath–Gandhinagar leg of the Yatra meant that by 1991, a newspaper report on the BJP's chances in the general election that year by Swapan Dasgupta was already referring to him as the 'architect of the BJP’s phenomenal growth in Gujarat.' As Modi said at the time, on 14 June 1991, Gujarat was uniquely suited for becoming the lynchpin of a saffron tide, given its influence and connections with Maharashtra and Rajasthan. ‘Whereas the rest of the country remains sceptical about the BJP’s claim of securing a majority in the general election, there is a definite feeling in Gujarat’ that a saffron era is about to dawn,’ wrote Dasgupta.

BJP first came to power in Gujarat in 1995. The party won 121 seats and Keshubhai Patel became its first chief minister in the state. Modi was the prime architect of that victory.

(Adapted from Nalin Mehta, The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party).