Almost a year ago I asked Narendra Modi about his political aspirations and if he ever wanted to become prime minister. He did not lapse into silence like most political leaders would and instead looked me in the eyes and said “That is a loaded question. If someone says that I will do whatever the party tells me to do – then he will get trapped. And if someone says he has no interest then also the person will get trapped. It is very difficult to give answers to such questions. It is for writers (like you) to study and come up with their assessment – will the party suffer if it takes such a decision or will it benefit from the decision. It is a matter of the assessment of the writer. Giving an answer to this question will neither help nor is it possible to give any answer.”

Last year when this conversation took place, the campaign for the Gujarat assembly was several months away and Modi had barely begun his political assault within the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh Parivar. But never for a moment did Modi say that he was not interested in the top spot. In the months that followed, Modi built on his victory within the BJP he secured by ejecting his bête noire, Sanjay Joshi. But even after the campaign heated up, he failed to galvanise the entire Sangh Parivar behind him. In the polls, significant sections of the RSS in the Gujarat lent tacit support to Keshubhai Patel’s Gujarat Parivartan Party and this is what resulted in Modi failing to cross the two-third mark when the ballots were counted in December last. The RSS at that point was still unsure if Modi could deliver despite the odds.

However, once that minor irritation was rationalised, Modi had begun charting his route ahead. In less than three months the first hurdle in his path, Nitin Gadkari, was overcome. The then party president earned Modi’s ire by re-inducting Sanjay Joshi but was later coerced by the RSS leadership into dropping the controversial Pracharak from the BJP national executive. In the run-up the Gujarat assembly polls, Gadkari again displeased Modi by displaying political ambitions and once the verdict was declared, the Gujarat strongman made it clear that anyone except Gadkari was acceptable to him. Rajnath Singh’s elevation was a result of the joint efforts of Modi and LK Advani who used the opportunity to hit back at the RSS leadership.

Once there was a more pliable man as party president, Modi knew that the bigger hurdle was Advani but this tackle would be a difficult proposition without the assistance of the RSS leadership. Just the way Modi and Advani made common cause to ease out Gadkari, he got cosy with the RSS leadership to force Advani into accepting the role of an elder statesman within the party and not pursue an active role for himself.

It helped Modi because Advani’s ideological shift in recent years from a hardline Hindutva position to a more Vajpayee-like stance had not gone down very well with the RSS leaders since 2005 when he made the pro-Jinnah statements. As far as Modi has been concerned, despite the problems he has had with the RSS leadership it has been purely because of his autocratic style of functioning and not with his ideological posturing. Though one section of the RSS has for long felt that Modi was giving Hindutva a bad name by focussing solely on the aggressive aspects of the campaign, the dominant group within the RSS was at peace with the ideas and ideals of Modi.

Despite the ideological twist to the power struggle within the RSS, the month of June was difficult for the Sangh Parivar as a whole because of the open revolt by Advani. However, by being able to rein him in and ensuring his participation in regular meetings of the party’s decision making bodies, Modi had been able to get started on the track to the top spot at the next hustings.

Modi has managed to break free of the other aspirants in his own party decisively by judicious use of his old strategy – polarising the organisation and presenting a ‘Modi versus rest’ situation. Modi’s political line has prevailed and while in March the BJP was unsure of abandoning the soft Hindutva line evolved in the Vajpayee era, the party slowly began moving towards a hard line on social and political issues relating to internal security and inter-community matters. In this significant shift in posture, the BJP was assisted by events in Bodh Gaya which gave leaders like Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley – known for their ambivalence on internal security issues – an opportunity to speak with the stridency they have not been known for. The centre’s decision to speak in two voices – one through the CBI and other through the IB – on the Ishrat Jahan case further enabled the BJP to make its transition besides of course elevating Modi’s political stock.

Unless there are dramatic developments, Modi’s formal anointment as the party’s nominee for the prime ministerial position appears inevitable and probably not very far away. He and his core supporters would not be unduly worried about the departure of the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (U). In any case, the BJP strategy for the moment appears to be what Modi had also told me when I asked about dwindling allies of the BJP. He said: “When Atalji became prime minister for the first time in 1996, we got no allies – Akali Dal and Shiv Sena had been with us earlier but no new allies. But in 1998 the situation changed: the party was the same, the leaders same – just because our seats increased, the allies also increased [and he laughed loudly]. Then when the seats got reduced – the allies went away. The issue therefore is that the number of allies will depend on the winnability of the BJP. We have to increase this.”

The key therefore is to maximise chances of the party in those areas where it is strong and either does not need allies or are confident that the present ones will not desert the ship. Modi feels that this can be done by polarising the electorate and through an undertone of hardline Hindutva interwoven into the veneer of good governance and the so-called development model. For the moment there appears little deviation from this path and Modi is making a steady headway on the path which he thinks is correct. And he has got his party to accept his strategy. Whether this will be the road to success or not will be known in less than 300 days. The countdown has begun!