If the relation between electoral politics and communal
polarisation needed to be explored and established, the state of Gujarat would
provide a good case study. In December 2002, the architect of the Gujarat
genocide 2002, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister Narendra Modi romped
home with a 51 per cent vote share and 126 of the 181 seats polled. Worried by
the growing critique of his autocratic style of functioning even within his own
political establishment, a dissidence that has been simmering since mid-2004,
Modi has reverted to doing what he does best: Making provocative and divisive
speeches to ensure that ‘his’ vote base consolidates against the common enemy –
Islam and Muslims.
Kicking off his party’s campaign for the Ahmedabad municipal
corporation (AMC) elections scheduled for November 13, 2005, Modi declared his
intentions at the very first public rally, held in Vasna on September 26, when
he asked his supporters to defeat the rule of the "Mughal begum and badshah"
in the city. This was followed by a spate of vitriolic speeches in the city’s
most communally sensitive areas of Dariapur, Ellisbridge, Shahpur and Kalupur,
making local residents apprehensive of poll-driven violence. Modi’s vitriol was
an obvious reference to present mayor Aneesa Mirza and former standing committee
chairman Badruddin Sheikh, and the community they hail from, using the metaphor
of Mughal rule, a common ploy in communal discourse.
Several complaints have been lodged against Modi’s speeches with
the State Election Commission, citing the provisions of Sections 123(3) and
123(3-A) of the Representation of People’s Act (RPA) which state that soliciting
votes or winning an election by (a candidate or his agent) appealing to
religious or divisive sentiments is a corrupt electoral practice. (The legal
remedy unfortunately lies only through a subsequent challenge by way of
an election petition under Section 80 of the Act.)
Incidentally, at the meeting in Vasna where Modi kick-started
his campaign, the father of slain BJP leader Haren Pandya was reportedly
brutally attacked by BJP workers and also beaten up by the police. The reason?
He and his supporters were shouting anti-Modi slogans. Vithal Pandya, who has
alleged that Modi was behind the murder of his son Haren in March 2003, was
seriously hurt, and thereafter detained by the police along with his three
daughters.
Whether Modi’s divisive stance for the Ahmedabad electorate will
be successful in the November 13 elections and in the statewide panchayat
polls that follow is however being strongly debated. Some legitimate
apprehensions are also being expressed as this is the first civic election in
the city after the 2002 carnage when Ahmedabad saw murderous bouts of violence
in incidents at Naroda, Gulberg society, Gomtipur and elsewhere. Poll-driven
communal violence in the 2002 civic polls left one dead in Jamalpur and killed
10 others in Dariapur.
But political observers see the dissatisfaction expressed
against Modi’s government by the hardcore saffron brigade, the backbone of the
BJP, as the main reason why Modi’s efforts may fail. It seems the organisational
tentacles of the RSS-VHP-Bajrang Dal outfits still call the tune in the land of
the Mahatma.
While the dissidence led by former BJP chief minister Keshubhai
Patel’s lobby has been much talked about within Gujarat state politics, an
interesting emergent issue relates to recently expressed Dalit and tribal anger
with the saffron party in the state.
In late September, public utterances against the chief minister
by BJP MLA Siddarth Parmar at a massive Dalit convention in Rajkot saw the party
running for cover. While the BJP has taken the usual political recourse to
‘decide the fate of Parmar’, it is Parmar’s statements that are significant here
– the elected representative from the Gujarat government accused his chief
minister of neglecting Dalit interests. Other Dalit leaders present at the
convention also made elaborate references to Modi’s anti-Dalit conduct.
Around the same time, on September 20, six to seven thousand
tribals from the tribal areas of Surat, Valsad and Navsari participated in a
protest rally organised independently by Punarvasan Sangharsh Samiti, a
voluntary organisation fighting for tribal rights. They were protesting the
state government’s decision to hand over 1.15 crore acres of agrarian land to
landlords on a 20-year lease, and reiterating other long-pending demands. Led by
Pratibha Shinde, some fundamental issues were raised at the rally. "While tens
of thousands of tribals in the region dislocated from the dam sites have yet to
get a patch of land for their livelihood, the government has gone ahead and
announced that they would hand over pasture land to landlords," says Shinde.
Another serious challenge to the state’s ruling party from the voice of south
Gujarat.
If their public utterances are anything to go by, it has long
been apparent that the hardcore elements within the VHP-RSS and its allies have
scant respect for basic human rights or the Indian Constitution.
It is an unfortunate fact that this has gone largely unchallenged by the Indian
law and order machinery so far. And in BJP-ruled states such as Gujarat, and now
Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, their verbal utterances and subsequent actions are
‘allowed’ with utter and complete impunity.
So it was in the village of Panvad and in Tejgadh town of
Chotaudepur taluka in rural Vadodara where the VHP openly called for an
economic and social boycott of Muslims in late September. The boycott, which was
‘successfully’ carried out for over two weeks, was imposed because the local
Muslim community ‘dared’ name the accused in the violence and destruction of
2002 and the Gujarat police – pushed by a SC directive to re-open and
investigate these cases – arrested one Mahesh Gandhi for his involvement in the
same. Their bully-boy tactics even got the VHP what it wanted – the culprit
released.