Narendra Modi with Cho Ramaswamy at Madras University
, who was delivering the Nani Palkhiwala memorial lecture in Chennai on Friday evening, did not take very long to get into election mode, ripping once again into the UPA government and particularly targeting the Prime Minister and select ministers.
Without a strong economy, he said, the world would not "get attracted" to India. "Today our rupee is in ICU, I don't know why Tamil people sent this person to Delhi," referring to Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who belongs to Tamil Nadu and is also a Lok Sabha MP from the state. (
Watch: Narendra Modi delivers Nani Palkhiwala memorial lecture in Chennai)
The BJP's presumptive prime minister also launched a sharp attack on the Centre's foreign policy. He said the government was making a mockery of itself with its handling of relations with Pakistan and China, drawing context from the launch of a book by Arun Shourie on India's relationship with China.
"Our foreign minister goes to China and says he wants to stay on in Beijing... I wish such people stay on in Beijing, we don't need them," he said in an attack on external affairs minister Salman Khurshid. He did not spare Mr Khurshid's predecessor either and recalled, "Our foreign minister at a big international forum, reads the speech of another country," referring to a faux pas by the Congress' SM Krishna some years ago. (
Highlights of Mr Modi's speech)
India, the Gujarat Chief Minister said, needed the diplomatic skills of someone like the BJP's former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He recalled that Mr Vajpayee was foreign minister in the Janata Party government when legal luminary Nani Palkhiwala was sent to Washington as India's ambassador, an important point in relations with that country, he said.
Mr Vajpayee, he said, had conducted Nuclear tests, not fearing global sanctions because he enjoyed the people's confidence. "When you don't have support of the people, a PM can't do anything," he said, adding in a jibe at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, "and when you don't have the support of the party, the people of India suffer."
Mr Modi, who wooed the 2000-strong Chennai audience at the Madras University auditorium with a 'Vanakkam' as he began, read his speech in English and would lapse into Hindi every time he veered off the script, which was often.