Lok Sabha elections 2019: Aides say PM Narendra Modi owns art of mass political movements

The Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, they add, is one such – a riposte of sorts to the Congress’ Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign launched by the Congress, which alleged wrongdoing in the Rafale fighter jet deal.

Updated on: Mar 21, 2019, 12:36:31 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Bharatiya Janata Party leaders from Gujarat and long-time associates of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are not surprised by the PM building a political movement centered around the word “Chowkidar” in the run-up to the 2019 general elections next month. According to them, time and again, Modi has shown himself adept at launching mass political movements using simple phrases – including, they add, riffs off ones thrown at him by the opposition.

According to aides, time and again, Modi has shown himself adept at launching mass political movements using simple phrases (PTI File Photo)

The Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, they add, is one such – a riposte of sorts to the Congress’ Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign launched by the Congress, which alleged wrongdoing in the Rafale fighter jet deal. The leaders say that the Supreme Court ruling and the report by the Comptroller and Auditor general have proved beyond doubt that there was no corruption in the deal.

According to the Gujarat leaders, when Modi joined the BJP in 1987-88 from the party’s ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the party was at its lowest point – it had been reduced to two seats in 1984 Lok Sabha elections. Trying to revive the party in Gujarat, Modi noticed a slogan “ Jai Baba Satguru” painted on walls all over the state. He hired 10 painters and asked them to paint the party’s Lotus symbol using top quality paint (so that it would not wash off) all over Gujarat. Subsequently, he added a line “ Bas, Ab BJP” to the symbol in the state. The political message was to vote out the Congress party. In 1995 Keshubhai Patel became the first BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat.

On similar lines, when he was chief minister of the state, Modi coined the slogan “ Jeetega Gujarat (Gujarat will win)”, which identified him with the aspirational state, in effect portraying the Opposition as anti-Gujarat.

The “Chowkidar” movement, according to top party strategists, is a brainchild of Modi, and conceptualised with a small band of tech-savvy followers.

The slogan again identifies Modi as the protector of India along with millions who have now joined the movement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More