Fans call Narendra Modi as Messiah

- Narendra Modi was once a tea vendor, and his

status gradually raised to the Chief Minister ship. His fans call him a messiah. The opponents allege that he is a power hungry Machiavelli. Some say he has both the qualities.

What the truth is ? Is Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi a Messiah or Machiavelli?

In the decades he has spent in Indian politics, Modi has transformed himself from the quiet pracharak (propagandist) of the Hindu right to perhaps the most talked about chief minister in the country.

Today, he is single-handedly spearheading the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) aggressive campaign to retain power in Gujarat after six tumultuous years in office during which the terrible anti-Muslim violence of 2002 left over a thousand people dead.

Since then Modi has become a hate figure for rights groups, secularists and large sections of the political establishment. The US has even denied him visa. But the 57-year-old politician has a huge following, in Gujarat and elsewhere.

If he does lead the BJP to victory in the assembly elections December 11 and 16 , he would emerge as the strongest leader in the country's main opposition party - and the electoral win will cast a shadow on national politics.

And if he loses, he will have only himself to blame - and his seeming inability to carry his colleagues with him.

Social scientist Ghanshyam Shah told IANS: "This election is going to revolve around Modi. Gujarat has never seen a dominant personality like him in independent India."

For this man from north Gujarat, life began from running a tea canteen at Ahmedabad's teeming bus terminus.

Once he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), Modi worked as a pracharak in the Kangra region of Himachal Pradesh where people remember him as a docile and humble man, an image contrary to his present one.

During Modi's tenure in New Delhi as the BJP's national spokesman in the late 1990s, he went to the US for a three-month course on public relations and image management. This apparently now helps him to get the publicity he desires.

Even his opponents admit that he is a master of publicity and propaganda, one who can turn any situation to his advantage. He seems to prove it almost every day.

Said one from his media management circuit: "He knows what to say when. Even on most controversial issues, when facts are not in his favor, he turns the situation to his benefit. He also knows when to create controversies and how to draw maximum mileage out of them."