I was interviewed by TV channels this week on an issue that is quite strange. The question is: Was Narendra Modi ever a tea vendor? I have written before that there is evidence to suggest that this is not entirely true. And perhaps the spreading of the story is not Mr Modi’s fault. So far as I know, Mr Modi has never himself used the word “vendor”, or in Hindi/Gujarati the word “thela” suggesting a street seller of tea. But the idea that he is from a poor family and therefore someone who has risen on merit from that has stuck. It has brought an element of romance into the campaign. I have not read this in any of the books Mr Modi has himself written, though I remember him saying it in some speech. Last week, Congressman Ahmed Patel said that someone told him Mr Modi’s father was a canteen contractor in the railways and not someone who ran a street tea stall. This rings true to me, and if it is, that would clarify the thing entirely. The other thing is that the photograph of Mr Modi’s father’s house that has been published in Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s biography (Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times) is revealing. It is a concrete structure, small but not very different from the houses of the middle class that most of us are familiar with. Certainly it does not suggest the residence of someone who ran a tea stall.
Mr Modi comes from the community Gujaratis call Ghanchi. It is part of the OBCs, but is actually economically quite well off. Gujaratis know Ghanchis as excellent businessmen, who run the local kirana shops. One speculation I have is that Mr Modi’s reference to “selling tea” could have been the packets that his father’s store carried. It is true that Mr Modi has specifically said that as a child he went around selling tea, particularly during the war with China in 1962 (when Mr Modi would have been 12 years old). Mr Modi left his home in his teens to join the RSS, and so if what he says about selling tea at that age is true, it could not have lasted very long. He also claims to have finished his schooling, and so the tea selling could only have been on the side, perhaps as something to help his father out in the evenings.
These then are the facts which we have. The thing has become an issue because of Mani Shankar Aiyar’s awful statement that Mr Modi was better suited to running a tea stall. To wit: “Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country, but if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him.”This gave Mr Modi an opening, and he launched his “Chai pe Charcha,” a brilliant tactic which got him coverage in the Washington Post and the New York Times. The publicity that the tea issue has generated led to the controversy and hence the questions about his past. Anyway, it seems to me that what Mr Modi has said is mostly true even if it is slightly spiced up to make his background sou-nd more deprived that it really was.
