Editor’s note, Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat, 9 April 2013

So if Mr. Modi is not politician, then what he is?

This question was in bulletin-by-bulletin discussion on various news channels throughout Tuesday.

It started after Mr. Modi’s reply to a gentleman during the morning event in Kolkata.

This gentleman Mr. N. G. Khaitan of Khaitan & Co asked Mr. Modi, “for every politician, to lead the country and occupy the top post, that’s Prime Minister’s post, sir what would be your desire on this?” To this Mr. Modi replied: “I’ m not politician, politicians may have but I’m apolitical person.”

In a discussion on Star News, BJP leader Smriti Irani in her reply to a question related to this said that Mr. Modi said he is a political person. Mr. Modi didn’t say he is apolitical person.

On NDTV, Swapan DasGupta described Modi’s reply as hypocrisy. He said such hypocrisy is legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in this country.

Now at DeshGujarat, based on our experience of observing Mr. Modi for last many years, we can say, yes Modi was right when he said he is not a politician.

The right word of his choice would be perhaps ‘a statesman’. We have seen material created by Modi’s office which describes Modi as a statesman and not politician.

Mr. Modi is very selective about his words when it comes to describe self. It is well known that Mr. Modi is the Chief Minister, but he never fails to describe CM as Common Man.

Once there was a trend to describe Modi as CEO of Gujarat state. But in couple of public functions, Modi told the audience that he is not CEO of the state. At a function in IIM Ahmedabd in year 2008 Modi said, “I am not ‘CEO’ of any state. I have problem with this term ‘CEO’ because any ‘CEO’ will just look after his company’s interest, but I don’t look just at my government’s interest, but peoples interest. I believe in participation of common man’s strength in government work.”

So this is Mr. Modi. You don’t know he would disown which title, and in what regard, but so far as we know him, we can safely assume that by saying “I am not a politician,” statesman Modi in his own style was attempting to disconnect himself from all those typical negative notions attached to this word/term ‘politician,’ in reference to a question that was asked to him.

Anyway, but Mr. Modi assigned good job to all. From Digvijay Singh to goody goody TV studio tribe – all spent good time in thinking what Mr. Modi actually said and why!