The reason is that there are still doubts as to whether his rise in the party has been mainly self-propelled, especially against the background of his unstated but still quite explicit ambitions. The misgivings exist because Modi is still untested in the larger national context. If he slips, therefore, either in word or deed, it will put the BJP out of reckoning for another five years.

Hence, the eagerness with which the party’s spokespersons have been running about in the wake of his latest interview where he patted himself on the back for his role during the 2002 riots by saying that he had “done the right thing … absolutely” during the outbreak. But, others, belonging to his own party, have demurred.

For instance, the Goa chief minister, Manohar Parrikar, admitted recently that there had been “administrative failure” during the riots, which underlined a “bad example of governance”. However, questions have been asked over the last decade whether the “failure” was inadvertent or deliberate.

Parrikar thinks it is the former because Modi “may not have had that kind of a grip on the administration that he has now.” But, the state’s governor at the time, SS Bhandari, who belonged to the BJP, thought otherwise. “The riots were taken so lightly”, he said afterwards, “that they have left a deep wound”. Just as the then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee considered the possibility of sacking Modi, Bhandari said that dismissal was “one way out, but there were other ways to deal with the situation” which had left “a black stain on the BJP”.

What these views contradicting Modi’s lofty notions of himself suggest is that the wannabe PM is so full of himself at the moment that he doesn’t bother to tread carefully – the first requirement for a man aiming high in a treacherous political environment. Besides, he faces several difficulties where the need for circumspection is concerned. One is that he is now apparently so sure of securing the party’s nomination for the PM’s post that he is not bothered about choosing his words after weighing them judiciously.

For instance, he was categorical in the interview that the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigating Team (SIT), which probed his role in the Gulbarga Society massacre, had given him a clean chit. But, that is half the truth. The case is not yet closed and the court’s amicus curiae or friend of the court, Raju Ramachandran, has expressed the view that the chief minister’s role in the riots requires further investigation.

Modi’s other difficulty is that he still remains immersed in the claustrophobic world of saffron pracharaks, seemingly his natural habitat. He was speaking, therefore, as a Sangh parivar apparatchik, not as a chief minister, when he told the interviewer, “I am a Hindu nationalist”. It didn’t occur to him that for a public figure, the flaunting of a religious background is no longer acceptable. One cannot imagine, for instance, a major European politician announcing that he is a Christian nationalist or a member of the Sri Lankan ruling party proclaiming himself as a Buddhist nationalist.

The reason is that the world has moved on from the time when a country was identified by the religion of its majority population. Instead, they aspire nowadays towards the multicultural concept, or “multi-culti”, as the writer, VS Naipaul, who applauded the Babri masjid’s demolition, derisively said. The RSS, however, continues to harbour illusions about establishing a Hindu rashtra. And, since that is the Parivar’s dominant view – the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal make no bones about it although the BJP is more careful – Modi’s blurting out of the “truth” is not surprising.

Even if the BJP tiptoes around the assertion, it will undoubtedly be acclaimed by the RSS as well as the Hindu hriday samrat’s admirers in the cyber world. In fact, Modi’s declaration may have made the task of his critics in the BJP harder since the RSS is bound to throw its full weight behind him. Arguably, however, the chief minister may well be playing a double game – using the development plank to woo the apolitical urban middle and the Hindutva card to consolidate the BJP’s core base of support of communal Hindus.

However, every action has a reaction, as he so memorably said during the Gujarat riots. The more he flaunts his Hindu credentials, the more he will alienate the minorities and liberals. Not only that, because of Modi, there is bound to be a greater consolidation of the Muslim votes against the BJP than ever before, which the party’s vain attempt to issue a “vision document” about Muslim empowerment will not succeed in defusing. (IPA Service)