Only last week a chorus of voices from the second rung of the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership articulated what had, till now, been spoken of in whispers — that Narendra Modi would succeed L. K. Advani as the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the next election.
This was as much a verdict on the octogenarian Advani’s ability to reach the highest office in the land in this election, as it was an exercise to cut Rajnath Singh to size.
There have been inquiries on the killings in Godhra and its aftermath, but they have either been by a commission appointed by Modi himself, or through NGOs.
That commission, headed by Justice H T Nanavati, has said that it could not find any lapse on the part of the Gujarat government in the riots.
The Supreme Court’s SIT will be able to access records of the police and the government itself and probably give us a better understanding of what happened during those horrific days. Did Modi lose control, or was he cynically manipulating things? A case could be made that Modi, who took office in October 2001, was not really in full control of the levers of governance when the Godhra massacre of Hindu pilgrims took place in February 2002 and so he was not able to effectively check the violence that led to the massacre of Muslims in several parts of the state.
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