Camp Varanasi

At the busy junction opposite the Varanasi Cantt railway station, a dusty pink signboard, crowded out by lassi- and chaat-shop signage, proclaims ‘Krishna Dharamshala’. On April 18, in room number 56 of the dharamshala, a group of youth gathered around. Watching Narendra Modi’s ‘Idea of India’ speech, which he had delivered in January at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, they cheered loudly, fervently repeating his slogans. Later that day, the same group would slap on an AAP topi on one of the members, foist a broomstick on him and jeer at the ‘Kejriwal’ in their midst — an act they would regularly indulge in for their amusement.

A few doors down, room number 59, the Varanasi office of the Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), was hosting a steady stream of volunteers arriving from across the country — Maharashtra, Kerala, Telangana, Seemandhra, the rest of UP, Punjab, Delhi, and even an itinerant Kashmiri Pandit. Since April 12, nearly 120 volunteers had registered and set up camp at Madhav Kunj, a wing of the dharamshala, and at the nearby Swastik Hotel. For the next month, till Varanasi goes to polls on May 12, these volunteers, along with thousands of BJP and RSS workers, will build and propagate the ‘Modi wave’ in the city, expected to become a tsunami as BJP’s UP in-charge Amit Shah will have you know.

In their online avatars, NaMo (an acronym for Modi that has gained wider currency in the election season) fans have acquired unsavoury, troll-esque reputations, for their single-minded bullying of Modi critics. Even their love for Modi has been overbearing — matched only by their hatred for Kejriwal — so much so, that it has, in some cases, become the basis for selecting or rejecting marriage proposals. But who are the faces behind the Modi masks, Twitter trolls and Facebook fan clubs? What drives them to go on month-long sabbaticals, quit plum jobs, abandon young families, shut down their businesses, only to sweat it out in the heat and dust of Varanasi, often with little hope of meeting the man himself? Why is it that you either love the NaMo fan club-turned-volunteer army or hate them?

Of the 120-odd volunteers, mostly under-30 and entirely upper caste, only four are women, self included. I had registered earlier that morning. Renu, a lecturer from Kanpur, and Aditi, who has come down from Bangalore, have been there since operations began at Madhav Kunj. Aditi and her husband, Nandan, run a software company in Bangalore. But they have shut down operations till May 12; Aditi will man the CAG office desk for the month and Nandan will handle their IT requirements. The fourth is a former Mrs India, whose costume changes are making more news at the dharamshala than the electoral battle outside in Varanasi. “Pata nahin kyun aayi hai (I don’t know why she’s come),” says Renu, bristling visibly at the attention the former beauty queen was attracting. “She’s not here for Modiji, she has her own agenda, for her 50,000 followers,” she adds, still fuming.

Dr Manisha ‘maine PhD kiya hai’ Tyagi, a recently crowned Mrs India, was one of Modi’s chief guests at a Chai pe Charcha session. She has been his fan ever since. “He is nice yaar in person. He can make jokes,” she says, looking up from her Facebook profile where she has been posting hourly updates of her volunteer stint for her 10,000-odd followers. Her man Friday, Madan, “my husband’s best friend and my business partner”, immediately plays a clipping from the Charcha session. Once apprised of the campaigning schedule for the day, she quickly clarifies, however, “Main city me nahin jaaongi, I want to go to the rural areas. We have adopted 124 villages in Ghaziabad, where my NGO works.” To me, she says, “security ka problem ho jaata hai na, these guys have no arrangements here, not for celebrities.”

Her diva demands notwithstanding, she and her man Friday intend to stay the entire month at the dharamshala, not the hotel where arrangements are slightly better. She has left behind her husband and two children at home because she “believes in Modi yaar”.

After a four-day-long survey of Varanasi’s rural and urban segments — all the city areas and 16 villages — for the volunteers, work has come to a halt for now. Meanwhile, some members have peeked at my text messages and the management has carried out a social profile check. Finding no evidence of any online Modi love, they suspect that I have been planted by the Aam Aadmi Party to leak information. After all, they have done the same to the AAP camp. Back at room number 56, Arvind Kejriwal’s politics is being hotly discussed. My defence of the new, if flawed, political movement that is AAP is seen as support for them, and the CAG management is called in. If there’s anything that NaMo fans like more than Modi, it’s Kejriwal- and AAP-hating.

“We have received complaints,” says Ayush, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus and CAG’s Varanasi in-charge. “We’re not sure you’re a NaMo fan. Can we see the official text invitation from CAG?” he asks politely. When I ask whether every new volunteer is subjected to a similar interrogation and search routine, he is uncertain. “There is a cursory search.” But by then, other volunteers had found each other on Facebook, made a group on WhatsApp and clicked pictures, holding NaMo banners, sporting BJP caps; a shining example of ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ in keeping with Modi’s idea of India.

What began as a coffee pe charcha session on making governments accountable in June last year, CAG is now a steadily growing army of Narendra Modi fans, providing Modi’s campaign with formidable muscle, online and offline. By early 2014, CAG had organised the Statue of Unity movement, the ‘Run for Unity’, launched Moditva, the book on Modi, and three Chai pe Charcha sessions, and acquired more than 45,000 volunteers, all in the name of BJP’s poster boy. However, the much-touted iron collection drive for Sardar Patel’s statue has gone nowhere, and numbers have rapidly slumped for the chai sessions.

“We are a socio-political outfit,” says Ayush, one of the 85 founder-members of CAG. “When we started out, we wrote to everyone including the PM, Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi and Narendra Modi (about our initiative). Only Modi responded enthusiastically,” he says. Perhaps, that’s one reason why since October 2013 the “socio-political outfit” has campaigned overtly and exclusively for the BJP’s PM candidate.

Post-lunch, a 10-member group heads out to the Chandua-Chittupur area in the city for door-to-door campaigning. Clutching a sheaf of BJP pamphlets, I tag along. Prakash from Allahabad is the team’s best campaigner. In fact, he is the best campaigner among the whole lot of volunteers at Varanasi, and that includes several BJP karyakartas and RSS pracharaks. He writes his own slogans (“Some have been accepted by the Election Commission, you know”) that others repeat. At times, his campaigning is more about the EC, and less about Modi. He doesn’t even leave kids out, exhorting them to “get their mummy and papa out on voting day”. And while others merely push pamphlets and shout slogans, Prakash has long conversations, notes down numbers and promises voters information. “We have done a very good survey, Modi will get 50 per cent of the vote share. Ajay Rai will come in second and Kejriwal will only get 8 per cent. We have found local issues of Varanasi that no other party has,” he says.

The sample survey, a six-page questionnaire, was administered to more than 1,000 residents across Varanasi’s rural and urban belt. Ganga, hunger, poverty, infrastructure, education and heritage are the most pressing issues that were identified. (Although, no self-respecting Banarasi will admit to being hungry or poor, says Prakash.) The team has also arrived at a caste-wise breakup of the city’s 16 lakh voters — majority of whom are Vaishyas (3.5 lakh), Muslims (3 lakh) and Brahmins (2 lakh). While political parties woo Mukhtar Ansari of the Quami Ekta Dal, the bunkars (weavers), Brahmins and Chaurasias, Ayush tells the volunteers to focus on the 60,000-odd new voters, who have no loyalties at the moment.

Despite his vocal fandom for Modi, Prakash admits that Modi is not Vajpayee. “Zameen asmaan ka farak hai, Atal aur Modi main,” he says. When I mention Modi’s silence on 2002 and Muzaffarnagar, Maya Kodnani, his virtual two-man Cabinet, he nods, non-committal. “What you ask for is a just society. But, at least, Modi can give other things like governance and development. Nirbhaya hatyakand ke baad jo hua, when police lathicharged protesters, I knew then. Change laana hai.”

Broadly, two issues have shaped the support of these volunteers — the Gujarat model of development and the aftermath of the December 16 gang rape in Delhi. Santosh, a Delhi-based entrepreneur who hails from Muzaffarnagar, says, “I did my research about the Gujarat model. I spoke to my friends in Muzaffarnagar and I found that Hindus were lodged in jails, thanks to Samajwadi Party’s appeasement of the Muslims.” Adds Renu, “I can tell people about the model because I’ve seen it myself.” Interestingly, Modi fans choose to look only at the Gujarat model, ignoring those of Tamil Nadu, Delhi or even the BJP-run Chhattisgarh.

“Look at Modiji’s family, they have not taken advantage of his current situation at all,” says Raahil, a Delhi-based entrepreneur, originally from the region of Kutch. “And see Jashodaben, she is on a pilgrimage, fasting for Modiji to become the prime minister,” says the man whose wife and family still live in Gujarat and see him only five days a month. To him, Modi’s is a life of “tyaag and dedication to the nation.”

When I ask Raahil what attracted him to the leader, he says, “You know, I was a part of the India Against Corruption movement. Kejriwal ruined it and that’s when I joined CAG. I think this (CAG) is my freedom struggle.” In fact, many of the CAG volunteers were former IAC affiliates and much of the hatred towards Kejriwal dates back to that time. Clearly, what Arvind Kejriwal lost in support, Modi has gained as followers.

Arvind Kejriwal had claimed last month, “In 48 hours, I have been to 26 districts of Gujarat. I have seen no development.” Raahil dismisses his statement outright. “How did he cover 26 districts in 48 hours? The conditions of the roads must have been excellent. The airports must have been good too.”

Outside, in Varanasi, the air is rife with news of a 64-page booklet on Kejriwal, ‘Aap aise ho’. His campaign has allegedly been disrupted by BJP workers, shouting slogans at his rallies and circulating posters that scream ‘bhagoda’ (truant). At Madhav Kunj, Manoj, who like a few others has left his job at TCS, rushes in, hollering, “Ek Kejriwal ke rally main gaye, Modi Modi cheekh ke aa gaye.” (We went to a Kejriwal rally and yelled Modi Modi at the top of our voices.)

Later, Ayush calls for a meeting. Things have been getting a tad too disorganised. Door-to-door campaigning has been patchy. The Vadodara chapter of CAG volunteers has been a non-starter. The survey is done, but the analysis, which will be used by the BJP and RSS, has not been prepared yet. The chargesheets against Congress are yet to be printed. And the clamour, from the volunteers, for a meeting with Modi is only getting louder.

“You will be divided into 10-member groups and your team leaders will be announced,” says Ayush. “All the material is getting ready, please read it carefully. You will also be trained in presenting the material. We need to give Modi a historic winning margin. Our campaign will be a failure if we don’t win by a margin of 3 lakh votes. We are going to give you forms. You will ask every potential voter for their EPIC number. You will identify influencers among them, who can bring you many votes from one society. Every volunteer will get five forms and we need 125 EPIC numbers from you every day.”

While the groundwork is done by the volunteers, the collation of campaigning material, strategising and analysis are covered by the core teams of CAG in Delhi, Lucknow and Gandhinagar. Some of the BJP-CAG strategy meetings have even been chaired by Amit Shah in the past. On the day of polling, 1,562 polling booths in the constituency will be manned by many such volunteers, ticking off the voters approached beforehand by them against the ones that finally turn up. As Ayush barrels on, “Wherever the polling percentage goes up, these are votes for the BJP. That means our voters are choosing to stay at home, we need to get them out”, individual members slip out of the meeting for the aarti at the Krishna temple in the courtyard. Noticing the thinning crowd, he takes a break, and soon, the meeting too comes to an end.

In much of the BJP’s campaign rhetoric, reflected in the meetings with the volunteers, it appears that the city is on trial, not Modi. To achieve that historic margin he seeks, even the RSS, after a gap of almost four decades, has woken up its 300 shakhas in Varanasi for the elections. Sruthjith joined the RSS when he was 10. Having lost contact with the Sangh for the last few years, he has come back to work with the CAG. As the volunteers get ready to campaign in Ramnagar to reach out to 25,000 voters, Sruthjith suggests we visit the Kashi Vishwanath Temple later that evening. Meanwhile, I am wanted at the office again. Apparently, a fresh round of complaints has been registered. “Okay, we are still not convinced that you are here for Modi and I need clarity,” says Ayush. Besides two rounds of door-to-door campaigning, the last two days have been quite uneventful. How could I have possibly offended Modi fans? Was my sloganeering not loud enough? Did I not participate in the impromptu nukkad sabha (which was nipped in the bud on the streets when the word ‘talwar’ crept into the song)?

After much debate, I am let off to keep my date with the pracharak. On our way, Sruthjith offers some helpful advice. “When you are in a group, try not to raise objections. They won’t like you.” When I ask him why he chooses to campaign for CAG when he could have campaigned as a BJP or RSS volunteer, he says, “I want to campaign for Modiji.” Many of the volunteers, like him, have taken the CAG route for the same reason: to campaign for Modi, not the BJP. “We need to have an ideal to look up to, we need a decisive leader, a model to follow,” he says. If PM Manmohan Singh seems ‘weak’, Rahul Gandhi irrelevant and Kejriwal, a ‘bhagoda’, Narendra Modi has stepped in as a fierce leader who can “look China in the eye and stop the beheading of soldiers”, items that have made it to the BJP and RSS pamphlets as well.

At the AAP headquarters in the Mahmoorganj area of Varanasi, Manish Sisodia is taking stock of the campaign thus far. Arvind Kejriwal is in Amethi, canvassing for Kumar Vishwas. “I think we have got a good response to our door-to-door campaigning,” says Sisodia. “We have made inroads into the rural areas, and especially, the lower-income groups in the city.” The residents of Ramnagar were visited by volunteers of BJP and AAP on the same day and yet, both parties claim to have received support. The issues AAP has identified are similar to those in the CAG survey. “Ganga, infrastructure, heritage and education,” says Sisodia. “But the best thing about Varanasi was that it was not a mere tourist destination, it had something else. It was the spiritual capital of the country. Foreigners still come here in search of that spirituality, adhyatmikata. We want to restore that status, that spirit to Varanasi.”

Under repeated attacks by the BJP, has AAP’s campaign suffered from Kejriwal’s resignation? “Maybe. But our supporters or non-BJP voters are willing to listen to our reasons,” says Sisodia. Among the 2,000 AAP volunteers in Varanasi, many are locals, including members of the party’s city chapter. The saffron brigade, on the other hand, has brought in about 30,000 of them from BJP and the Sangh Parivar, including the CAG volunteers, for Modi’s campaign.

Both Modi and Kejriwal are seen as outsiders, although unlike Kejriwal, Modi is yet to make an appearance in Varanasi. Despite the absence of the Gandhis in the city, local Congress don Ajay Rai continues to enjoy the backing of the Bhumihar Brahmins. On billboards, his campaign cleverly claims, “ Varanasi ki rai, Abki baar Ajay Rai .”

Back at Madhav Kunj, in Krishna Dharamshala, volunteers are fighting over the day’s menu. “There are too many aloos,” complains the Andhra brigade, while Renu fumes at the watery dal. A few volunteers who had come from Delhi have already left, disappointed with the campaign. A locals versus outsiders battle is also brewing. As Vijay Kumar, a BJP party worker puts it, “Varanasi main BJP ke liye winning condition to aa chuki hai. Ab to bas in volunteers ko kaise bhi busy rakhna hai .”

Names of the volunteers have been changed to protect identities.

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