Correcting Ramachandra Guha, because newsprint comes out of sacrifice of trees

Mr. Ramachandra Guha in his article published in The Telegraph on March 26 titled ‘The curious transformation of Narendra Modi’ presented some misinformation that needs to be corrected. Usually biased and prejudiced authors don’t deserve attention, but because Guha has placed a para from DeshGujarat in his article with completely novel context and wrong reference, he needs to be corrected.

-Signs of ‘Mahatma Mandir’ were erected on the road to Gandhinagar to facilitate and guide the guests and participants of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit who were to arrive here from various countries in January this year. Those sings are still there. When earlier Vibrant Gujarat summit was held at Ahmedabad’s Science city, similar signs, aimed at guiding the guests to Science city venue were erected on major roads of Ahmedabad. Those signs are also still there. The signs Guha refers to present Mahatma Gandhi’s graphic and not Modi’s photo, therefore Guha should not have any objection in this.

-Parliament seat of Gandhinagar is not Modi’s gift to Advani. Gandhinagar was represented by Advani much before Modi became Gujarat’s Chief Minister. Guha perhaps has only superficial knowledge about Gujarat’s politics. The real fact is that Gujarat’s Chief Ministership is Advani’s gift to Modi. It was Advani who convinced Keshubhai to step down and sent Modi to Gujarat from New Delhi to become Chief Minister.

-If Modi gives example of Mahatma Gandhi and says he(Modi) is inspired by Gandhi’s style of converting an idea into mass movement, that doesn’t show that Modi compared himself with Gandhi. Yes Gandhi turned freedom struggle into mass movement, and if Modi wants to turn development into mass movement, it doesn’t mean Modi is comparing himself with Gandhi. Strange are the ways of Guha’s logic and interpretations. One just can’t help him.

-Guha’s assumption that “Modi merely thinks he is Gujarat” is not understandable. Has he invented some novel product that goes into person’s thinking process? At least some sense is expected from authors. Editors listening?

-Guha refers to a non-resident Gujarati, who visited the site( of Mahatma Mandir) and blogged later that “there’s too much police everywhere. So the place would look like a business summit for few hours, but for rest of the time, the venue typically looks like the police summit”. Interestingly this was not blogged by a non-resident Gujarati, but was authored by Ahmedabad based journalist Japan Pathak of DeshGujarat.Com on 9 January.God knows on what basis Guha narrates JP as non-resident Gujarati. There is nothing like that mentioned in the original article from where a para has been lifted. Guha has placed JP’s observation completely out of context to convince the readers that Mahatma Mandir is always a place occupied by too much cops and it is like a Police summit forever. The fact is that the author(Japan Pathak) visited Mahatma Mandir site just a day before the inauguration of Vibrant Gujarat global summit’s exhibition was scheduled. The summit was to be attended by thousands of dignitaries including business tycoons and political leaders from number of countries, hence presence of police was obvious.

Article gives clear impression that Guha has penned down his piece on Mahatma Mandir without visiting it, therefore he has no idea about what’s actual situation on ground. If he had visited the site today, he could see construction workers there instead of policemen(‘construction workers summit’) as there’s no Vibrant summit these days! Instead of taking some text from Advani’s blog and some text from DeshGujarat with adding some prejudice against Modi sitting in a hotel, Guha could visit the place driving few kilometers extra before writing about it.

Mr. Guha further states in his article that Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram has no policemen either inside or outside the place. On this account Mr. Guha should note that when some dignitary visits Sabarmati Ashram, the Ashram too witnesses heavy police bandobast starting from a day before(ditto as Mahatma Mandir). In normal days, Sabarmati Ashram has no police bandobast because it has private security guards on its muster who are deployed inside as well outside(that too ditto as Mahatma Mandir)the Ashram.

-Now how to deal with such superficial writings by authors who visit Gujarat like paratroopers and submit unauthentic piece with information lifted from this corner of web and that corner of web? Editors listening? Newsprint comes out of painful sacrifice of some trees somewhere, therefore Editors and owners of the newspaper must see it is not wasted.