Amit Shah-lite: Not all is whitewashed on the BJP leader's new website

First there was brand Narendra Modi. Now there seems to be brand Amit Shah. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s national president has just launched his own website. Punctuated by the trademark lotus, the website gives you information about Amit Shah, his life and work, accompanied by pictures of the leader in thoughtful moments.

This is new for Shah. Modi went in for a heavy airbrush in the run up to 2014, losing the deeper shades of Hindutva, trading his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh past for the inspirational story of the chaiwallah who became chief minister, distancing himself from the Gujarat riots of 2002 that occurred under his watch and reinventing himself as the leader of developed India, in tune with the youth and with it on social media. But his dour second-in-command never did lose the rough edges.

Shah has been dubbed the BJP’s organiser, the master of electoral arithmetic, the pointman for the unsavoury campaign, wherever it needs to be fought. He is credited with having skilfully managed the legal cases against Modi, ranging from surveillance charges to fake encounters to involvement in the riots of 2002. Shah himself fielded a few criminal charges, including the Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Ishrat Jahan fake encounter cases. But the Cromwellian figure soldiered on, seemingly unfazed by the whispers around him.

Not anymore. The new website aims to project a softer, more sensitive politician, even if he is a self-confessed Savarkar fan. This Shah has a gallery of “precious moments”, divided up under “political events”, “with leaders”, “spiritual side” and “other events”, such as meeting Virat Kohli and Vivek Oberoi. This Shah is a man of many parts, photographed swinging a bat and moving pieces on a chessboard – he was president of both the Gujarat branch of the Central Board of Cricket Association and the Gujarat Chess Association.

There is a potted history, describing his political rise from modest beginnings in the village of Mansa in Gujarat. It emphasises “Amit bhai”’s organisational skills, which “came to the fore” when “he successfully handled mass mobilisation of people in favour of the Ram Janambhoomi Movement and Ekta Yatra”. The same skills helped him build up the BJP as the largest political party in the world, the biography points out.

There is a “timeline”, which gives you a life in pictures, starting from 1997, when Shah filed his first MLA nomination. There is also a section titled “Pioneer says”, which has a collection of glowing newspaper reports about him.

But it’s not all whitewashing. The most fascinating part of the website is the way it navigates the darkest moments of Shah’s career. The fake encounter episode gets a separate slot in the section entitled “Journey”, which plots the key events of his career: “Falsely implicated by UPA [United Progressive Alliance] government in an Encounter Case, 2010”. In his bio sketch, the episode is painted as a trial by fire, the Central Bureau of Investigation clean chit a triumph over the “Congress conspiracy”.

Having said that, the site makes space for a section called “Critic”, which collects the brickbats. It unflinchingly records the more damning articles, on former IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt’s allegations that Shah was involved in the 2002 riots,  on Lalu Prasad’s sapient observations about “fat people” and elevators, on Shah’s proximity to Lalit Modi and other peccadilloes.

Neither is Shah afraid of ridicule. The section called “The Lighter Side” compiles cartoons featuring Shah, some of which are rather uncomplimentary. Consider, for instance, this Satish Acharya cartoon on the Nitin Gadkari bugging scandal:

There are others which show him manipulating the Bihar elections, walking off with the CBI clean chit gift-wrapped by Modi, losing his cool at a press conference and more.

This is uncharacteristic of the BJP leadership, which has been rather touchy about criticism of late. A campus magazine in Kerala which published Narendra Modi’s image next to George Bush, Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler last year was told to simmer down. More than one television channel has been ticked off by the government for carrying critical content on Modi.

Could it be that Shah has a sense of humour? Is this the safety valve theory at work, managing dissent by containing it in controlled spaces? Or does Shah mean to parry criticism about the BJP’s intolerance to criticism? The motivations of brand Amit Shah will perhaps be revealed in days to come. For now, this much is clear: the master strategist of the BJP has made his next move.