'Modi Played A Lot Of Cricket'

'Modi had his own cricket team in his school days. He was a good cricketer.'

Author of three books on Narendra Modi, Arvind Chaturvedi speaks exclusively to Rediff about the prime minister's boyhood in Vadnagar, his years with the RSS and his bond with his mother.

Arvind Chaturvedi is a Varanasi-raised journalist who studied sociology at Varanasi Hindu University before moving into television news. His first book, The Real Modi: The Man Who Would Be Prime Minister, was brought out by Bloomsbury in Hindi and later in English and Gujarati, and drew on interviews with people who knew Narendra Modi during his RSS years, his time underground in the Emergency, and his early political career in Gujarat.

His second book, Modi Ka Banaras, examined the prime minister's constituency and his relationship with Kashi.

His third, Maa Heeraben Aur Narendra: Ek Unkahi Kahani (published in English as Maa Heeraben and Narendra: A Moving Story), is centred on Modi's late mother Heeraben Modi, who passed away in December 2022 at the age of 99.

Across the three books, Chaturvedi has drawn on interviews with Modi's childhood friends, teachers, RSS associates and family members, several of whom had rarely, if ever, spoken to journalists before.

In this conversation with Prasanna D Zore/Rediff, Arvind Chaturvedi speaks about how he came to write on the prime minister, the stories behind each book, and what he believes sets Modi apart, both as he saw him described by others and as he observed him in person.

Every author has an origin story, and Arvind Chaturvedi's is an unlikely one: A sudden, unexplained sacking from a television newsroom in 2013, after nearly a decade in the job. Out of work and, by his own admission, smarting from the manner of his exit, Chaturvedi decided to channel the setback into something that would outlast it -- a book on Narendra Modi, then Gujarat's chief minister, that would go where earlier profiles hadn't: Into the family, the friendships and the everyday habits that rarely make it into political coverage.

What followed was months of travel across Gujarat, tracking down people who had shared a home, a classroom or a khadi-clad decade with Modi, at a time when few of them were willing to talk.

In this first half of the conversation, Chaturvedi recounts the SRCC episode that first drew him to study Modi's working style, the discipline and quiet influence of his mother Heeraben, mischievous and unexpectedly political glimpses of his Vadnagar boyhood, and the RSS mentor -- Lakshmanrao Inamdar, universally known as 'Vakil Saheb' -- who shaped him from the age of eight.

'Very few people knew his family, even superficially'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be celebrating his 76th birthday on September 17. Could you tell us how did Modi's mother Heeraben celebrate his birthday in his childhood?

In childhood, on Modi's birthday, his mother Heeraben would give donations to poor people and offer food to sadhus . However, there is no concrete evidence that Modi's birthday was actually celebrated in his childhood in a formal sense.

Heeraben was also concerned about her children's future, so she would show their horoscopes to astrologers who visited Vadnagar to learn what lay ahead for them. The astrologer's name is not known, but when Heeraben showed him Narendra Modi's horoscope, he predicted that Modi would either become a great saint or a king.

You've now written three books on Prime Minister Modi, and each one has taken a different angle -- his mother, his childhood, and Varanasi. Which of the three would you say is closest to you?

That's a very good question, and an interesting one. Let me tell you a small story first. In 2013, I was working with a large news channel -- I'd put in about ten years there. I'd just come back from some leave, and the very next day I got a call from HR asking me to come in.

When I met them, I was told to submit my resignation. Ten years is a long time; you go through every high and low with an organisation. I had tears in my eyes, and honestly, I had no answer for why it had happened.

I'm curious about that too -- what exactly happened that led to such an abrupt exit?

What had happened was that we had a director news and a managing editor at the channel, and there was some friction between the two. It was felt that I was closer to the managing editor, when in fact I was closer to the director news. My resignation was really the fallout of that tussle.

As I was leaving, after giving so many years to that place, I made up my mind that I'd do something in life that would give me real satisfaction, real recognition. For about six months after that, I had no job.

It was during that time that I decided I would write a book on Narendra Modi -- one that would be different from anything else out there.

I'd concluded that the human angle was missing from every book written on him so far. Very few people knew his family, even superficially; nobody really knew his friends, or the people who worked alongside him, or the teachers who had taught him as a child.

So I decided that I would write about the side of the prime minister that the country, and the world, didn't know. That took me to Gujarat, where I spent the next six or seven months travelling to different places, meeting his mother, and others close to him.

That was the first book, The Real Modi, published by Bloomsbury -- and it was the hardest of the three to write, because at the time Modi had just become prime minister, and very few people wanted to speak.

This would have been around May 26, 2014...

Yes. Nobody wanted to talk -- not about meeting his family, not about speaking to them. But I persisted. I travelled across the country for this book, and I made it a point to meet everyone who had been part of Modi's life before he entered politics -- people in whose homes he had stayed for long stretches, including during the Emergency, when he moved between different relatives' houses.

I met all of them, and that's what you'll find in my first book, The Real Modi.

'Those fifteen minutes are what made Modi the...'

You mentioned this was the most difficult of the three to write. Why?

We simply had no connection to draw on. When I entered journalism, Modi had already moved to Gujarat and become chief minister there, so there was no direct link between us. And Modi has this particular trait -- after becoming prime minister, there's a period where everyone wants to establish themselves before they start speaking freely, especially today, when people make claims without any basis in fact. So whatever I wrote, I made sure it rested on verified facts.

Coming to your Varanasi connection -- tell us something interesting about the research and the writing of that book.

That book is Modi Ka Banaras, and it's a fascinating one, because you'll remember all the speculation before Modi picked his Lok Sabha seat in 2014. Some said he'd contest from Lucknow, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's old seat; some said Maharashtra; some suggested the south, others Gujarat.

But once that seat was decided, it effectively connected the whole of eastern Uttar Pradesh, all of Bihar, and, further along, Bengal and Jharkhand -- a very large belt around it.

And Varanasi -- Varanasi, Kashi, whatever you call it -- is a city every Indian feels connected to...

And a city where people believe that if they die there, they will attain salvation. So when the seat was chosen, all of this was clearly weighed -- how to connect all these states. As I mentioned, Amitbhai Shah brought in the Apna Dal, then Om Prakash Rajbhar, then other smaller parties -- all of them were drawn together, and the entire political landscape there changed after that.

In the course of your research, was there anything that genuinely surprised you -- that changed the way you saw Modi?

Let me tell you something interesting about how I came to write on Modi at all. As I said, I was working at a news channel in 2013, and I covered an event Modi addressed at Delhi's SRCC College.

I was there, and I heard his full speech -- he spoke about development in Gujarat, and used that line about the glass being half full or half empty, hope versus despair. Standard Modi fare, you might say. But what struck me came after his speech.

The chairperson of SRCC's governing body was Sonia Gandhi, the UPA chairperson at the time; Rahul Gandhi and other senior Congress leaders, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had also been invited.

We asked the college principal why they hadn't attended, and his answer surprised me. The invitations had gone out by post and e-mail to all of them -- some replies came back after ten days, some after fifteen. But Modi's office replied within fifteen minutes.

Those fifteen minutes are what made Modi the chief guest at that event. That stayed with me -- that at a time when politics was at its most heated, and the entire country was talking about it, one person's decisiveness could cut through everything else. Because, as you know, politics can be a fairly ruthless business.

'He has real confidence in his own judgement; once he has taken a decision, he tries to see it through completely'

Let's talk about Heeraben. Your book on her is described as deeply emotional. Which moment between mother and son do you feel best captures the depth of that relationship?

Heeraben was Modi's strength. She understood instinctively what her son needed. Let me give you two or three small examples. When the prime minister decided to observe a fast -- say, eating only once a day for six days -- it was Heeraben's decision, more than anyone else's, that most people in the household would follow the same routine for those six days, out of solidarity with her son.

And when Modi decided, as a young man, that he wanted to go to the Himalayas, the rest of the household was against it. But his mother stood by him. His father eventually agreed to let him go -- you can imagine the anxiety a father would feel. But it was his mother who made that decision first, and she was the one who let her son go.

Heeraben's simplicity, her discipline, her way of living -- do you think there are qualities of hers that you still see in Modi today?

The biggest trait his mother had was waking up before dawn, doing her prayers, and following a very fixed daily routine. In the village, people would come to her for what we'd call home remedies or traditional treatments -- I've written about this in detail in the book.

Heeraben was extremely disciplined, and she also kept everything in order. That mattered a great deal, because Modi's father, Damodardas Modi, tried his hand at several different lines of work -- he ran a salt mill first, which didn't succeed, and later opened a tea stall. The story of that tea stall is genuinely fascinating, and it's something you don't come across in many other accounts.

So which of Heeraben's habits do you feel are most visible in Modi today?

Discipline. You could listen to Modi for hours, and that's one of his most striking qualities -- it made a real impression on me. Even if you speak to him for two or three hours, he will listen to you with complete attentiveness.

To me, that's a form of self-mastery -- listening well is something most people simply don't do, because he has an unusual capacity to hear people out and rarely reacts hastily.

Beyond that, he has real confidence in his own judgement; once he has taken a decision, he tries to see it through completely. That's something I've observed at close quarters.

Do you remember any particular incident from meeting him?

When I went to show the prime minister a poster of my second book, Modi Ka Banaras, I was told he wanted to meet me. I said I'd come without any preparation and asked if we could meet another day, but I was told the prime minister wanted to meet me that very day. So I waited, and after a while I was called in.

I had plenty to draw on from childhood stories, and during that meeting he told me one himself -- a small one, which I've included in my third book. I'd like to share it, if you have the time.

Modi was travelling from Vadnagar to Visnagar -- his mother's sister's daughter, whom he calls his sister since his grandfather had more than one marriage, lives there, and I met her recently in Ahmedabad, where she told me a great deal about her father's hotel.

On that train journey, Modi noticed a boy with a disability who had a bag and a newspaper. As passengers boarded, the boy would hand them the newspaper to read, and also offer to polish their shoes. There was something quite distinctive about the way that boy went about his work -- when you do something in your own particular way, it draws people's attention.

It's an old story, but the point of it is this: When I met him recently, he told me this story himself, and I have no doubt it stayed with him all these years.

'Whatever task Modi took on, he approached it with a real sense of responsibility'

Did Heeraben ever share with you how she felt watching her son become prime minister -- any moment that has stayed with you?

I recall that after becoming prime minister, Modi went to America for the first time, and the meeting between us was arranged by a well-known spiritual leader, Swami Argalanandji, who acted as something of a mediator between our families.

He arranged for me to meet Modi's family, and I saw that his mother Heeraben was following her son's visit to America with great excitement. She spoke about how, even as a child, Modi approached tasks with a distinctive outlook.

Let me give you a small example: A wall at his school had collapsed, and to raise money to rebuild it, a souvenir magazine was printed, receipts were issued, and donations were collected from people -- and that's how the wall was rebuilt.

My point is that Modi understood, very early on, that if you undertake something collectively, together...

Working as one unit...

Exactly. I've written about how, even in his Class 7 or 8 days -- what we'd now call his 'Gen Z years' -- he responded to events around him. Their head teacher, Rasbihari Maniar, who taught them mathematics, was transferred out.

What did Modi do? He gathered all his friends, took whatever help he needed from them, and organised a farewell for Rasbihari Maniar within the school itself. In a way, it was a small act of rebellion.

Which class was this?

He taught them in Classes 7 and 8. When I went to meet Rasbihari Maniar himself, he told me this story -- that when he came to leave, the entire school gathered at the station and gave him a grand send-off.

You've actually answered one of my other questions with that -- I was going to ask what Modi was like among his classmates and teachers as a child...

There are many such stories. Modi played a lot of cricket -- he had his own cricket team in his school days.

This is from his school years?

Yes, his school years. He was a good cricketer, and one thing that stood out was how strongly he believed in unity.

Here's an interesting detail: Modi never once stood for class monitor himself, but he would get his friends elected to the post -- one of them later became a bank manager. I went to meet him, and he told me the story of how Modi got him elected monitor.

So even in those days, there was quite a contest around the monitor's election?

Yes -- the monitor liaised with the principal, so the post carried real weight. It mattered.

You've also written about his association with the RSS, and his life underground during the Emergency...

Setting politics aside, as I said, whatever task Modi took on, he approached it with a real sense of responsibility.

During the Emergency, when he was given work to do, he carried it out very seriously. Modi has written his own book on the Emergency, but I believe there's still room for someone to write more on that period -- though that would take a great deal of time, the way my first book did.

I've written a number of stories about how devotedly he carried out his responsibilities in those years. He was also, interestingly, fond of films, and would go to watch them with people much younger than him.

You mentioned his interest in cricket, and now films -- did he take inspiration from cinema too?

According to information on his own app, he has spoken about the Dev Anand film Guide. He drew a philosophical meaning from it -- Modi's trait, I've found, is that he tries to learn something from everything, big or small.

I once saw a photograph of him with the actor Manoj Kumar, given to me by someone in Gujarat. And Modi himself has said that Lata Mangeshkar was like an elder sister to him, and that he held her in great affection.

Who else has he spoken about with real warmth?

One person who has had an enormous influence on his life is the man he calls 'Vakil Saheb' -- his guru.

When Modi went to live at the RSS shakha -- travelling first from Vadnagar to Visnagar, and later to Ahmedabad, to live with his uncle -- there was a man there who worked closely with him in the early years, whose name I'll give you in a moment. He told me the story of how, when the prime minister first went to stay at the shakha, his responsibilities included making tea, cleaning, and booking train tickets for visiting Sangh functionaries. Those were the tasks Modi did. It wasn't an easy life, at that time.

I sometimes think about this -- a perfectly ordinary young man, from a household where putting together two square meals wasn't always assured, is today the prime minister of this country. That, in itself, is no small thing.

The Man Who mentored Modi?

Tell us more about this RSS mentor you mentioned...

Whenever Modi found himself in difficulty, it was to this man that he turned for support.

His name was Vakil -- 'the lawyer'?

That was his title, yes -- let me think for a moment, I read up on this again this morning so I'd have it ready for you. His name was Lakshmanrao Inamdar.

Lakshmanrao Inamdar. Where was he from?

From Maharashtra -- Pune, in fact. A deeply learned man, and extremely disciplined.

Is he still alive?

No, he passed away some years ago. Modi came into contact with Vakil Saheb at the age of eight.

Eight years old, in Vadnagar itself?

Yes. From then on, whenever Vakil Saheb visited Modi's village, Modi would have observed his manner of speaking, his way of working, and absorbed a great deal from him over the years. Vakil Saheb left a deep imprint on Modi's character.

Mr Modi has written a book about him too, hasn't he?

Yes -- Modi wrote a book in his honour, called Jyotipunj, published by Prabhat Prakashan. In it, he writes about everyone who shaped his life -- people from his RSS years, from the time he became the organisation's general secretary, and through the different stages of his political journey.

• Part 2: 'Modi Doesn't Take Decisions In A Day'