Astral Codex Ten

Gujarat

4 min read

Gujarat

Article

Gujarat is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 14, 2021 and April 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Gujarat became a center for the resistance”; “Chief Minister of Gujarat, India’s fifth-largest state”; “prior to the March 1985 Gujarat assembly elections”. It most often appears alongside Ahmedabad, Germany, India.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: September 14, 2021
  • Last seen: April 10, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Modi - A Political Biography
September 14, 2021 · Original source
Gandhi immediately moved to arrest all her political enemies and shut down all newspapers that criticized her. The RSS was one of Gandhi's main enemies and had to go underground quickly. Gujarat became a center for the resistance. So Modi, as an official in Gujarat's RSS, ended up right in the middle of this. He remained a paper-pusher, but now he was a paper-pusher for freedom, scheduling meetings of resistance leaders, maintaining a master list of safe houses and trusted operatives, and keeping lines of communication open.
Modi was also responsible for transportation and travel to Gujarat of those opponents of Indra still at liberty...Modi too, in the course of his duties, was compelled to travel, often with pamphlets that could have got him arrested. To minimize the risk he became a master of disguise, something that came naturally to one who always paid attention to his appearance. On one outing, he would appear as a saffron-robed sanyasi; on another, as a turbaned Sikh. One time he was sitting in a railway carriage, hiding behind a thick black beard, when his old schoolteacher sat down next to the grown-up "urchin". The disguise worked perfectly, but some years afterwards the teacher attested that as Narendra disembarked, he introduced himself and offered a hearty saluation.
Modi came out of the Emergency a rising star, appreciated by all for his logistical role in the Resistance. In the newly open political climate, the RSS was devoting more attention to their political wing and asked Modi to come on as a sort of campaign-manager-at-large, who would travel all around India and help friendly politicians get elected. He turned out to be really good at this, and rose through the ranks until he was one of the leading lights of the new BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, "Indian People's Party"). He spent the next two decades running campaigns, traveling the country, and getting involved in internal backstabbing (which he had a habit of losing in ways that got him kicked out of the party just before something terrible happened, leaving him as the only person untarnished by the terrible thing when they inevitably invited him back). Finally some of Modi's political enemies failed badly in the leadership of Gujarat - one was expelled for corruption, another suffered several natural disasters which he responded to poorly. Modi had been accepted back into the party. He was beloved by Gujaratis, who still remembered his heroic work during the Resistance. He was the only person untarnished by various terrible things. By the rules of Indian politics, it was the party's choice who would replace the resigning incumbent as Chief Minister of Gujarat, and as Modi tells it, everyone else just kind of agreed he was the natural choice (his enemies say he did various scheming and backstabbing at this point). So on October 7 2001, Narendra Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister of Gujarat, India's fifth-largest state.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, INDIA Contact: Kabir Contact Info: rudrakabir[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 15th, 06:00 PM Location: Ares Cafe, SBR. I will be wearing a shirt with birds on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7JMJ2FVM+48 Event Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/n9yE7TRGWdiCEa3Wf/ahmedabad-ssc-spring-meet
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7JMJ2FVM+48, https://www.lesswrong.com/events/n9yE7TRGWdiCEa3Wf/ahmedabad-ssc-spring-meet