> [ Ulhas, what's your take on this one?]
> Dark days for India
>
> Luke Harding looks at how the BJP's election victory in Gujarat will
> affect India's future as a secular state
I think this article overstates the significance of Gujarat elections. BJP has lost every election, since it came to power in 1999 at the Centre. Gujarat is an exception.
> It was, the Hindu newspaper pointed out, a "stupendous victory".
Yes, but Gujarat is a small state. There are about 600 million registered voters in India and 30 million of them are in Gujarat. 20 million actually voted, BJP polled 10 million and the Congress Party 8 million.
> The result of the elections in the Indian state of Gujarat had never
> really been in doubt. Exit polls after last Thursday's elections all
> suggested that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) would
> hang on to power.
>
> But nobody, not even India's BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
> had quite expected the scale of the party's landslide yesterday. The BJP
> romped home with 126 seats in the new 182-seat assembly. The opposition
> Congress party was virtually wiped out, winning only 51 seats.
BJP had won 121 and 117 seats in 1995 and 1998 elections respectively, now they have 126. The exit polls gave them between 100-110 seats, BJP has done better than what the exit polls expected. BJP has certainly done far better than it would have if riots had not taken place.
> The BJP's stunning triumph was clearly down to one man - Gujarat's chief
> minister, Narendra Modi. Nine months ago Mr Modi presided over the worst
> religious riots in India's recent history. Hindu mobs enraged by the
> Muslim burning of 59 Hindu pilgrims on a train in the town of Godhra,
> went on the rampage - burning, killing and raping more than 2,000 of
> their Muslim neighbours.
This is true, but we need to consider fascism as a mass movement. To say that BJP victory was due to one man-Modi- would incorrect.
> Mr Modi's administration and police force were complicit in the carnage.
> Mr Modi did not apologise for the riots.
This is not the first time that BJP has done it. Its an old tactic.
> Instead he scented a political
> opportunity. In the run-up to the polls the chief minister campaigned on
> new, aggressive platform of "Hindutva" - or chauvinist Hindu
> supremacism.
This is the essence of BJP.
> His main campaign theme centred on Muslim terrorism in neighbouring
> Islamic Pakistan and in Gujarat itself. Officials hinted that the
> state's Muslim minority, who account for 9% of the population, should
> consider leaving India for Pakistan. The strategy was shameful,
> disturbing, and fascist. But it worked brilliantly.
Its a crude and primitive strategy, not the brilliant one. There is a good Satyajit Ray film "Ganashatru", based on Ibsen's Enemy of People. Obscurantism is frequently more effective than rational thinking.
< This morning Indian
> newspapers were busy analysing whether Mr Modi's populist rightwing
> tactics could be repeated elsewhere - and what the implications were for
> India's future as a secular state.
I don't think results in one small state can demolish the secular character of Indian state. What India has in reality is "creeping fascism", slow and gradual spread of fascist influence/hegemony over 50 years, last 15 years have been particularly important.
> This isn't quite how the BJP sees it. The party's hardline religious
> allies, who want to scrap India's secular constitution and turn the
> country into a Hindu state, have called for Moditva Mr Modi's brand of
> chauvinist politics - to be repeated elsewhere.
It is not easy to repeat Gujarat elsewhere. BJP's all India votes over the years are: 11% (1989), 21% (1991), 25% (1998) and 23% (1999). 1991 was an exceptional year globally. I don't see a rapid BJP growth in the coming period.
> Ten Indian states go to the polls next year, followed soon afterwards by
> a general election in 2004. In the past Mr Vajpayee has been constrained
> by the fact he leads a 19-party coalition government, largely made up of
> ostensibly secular parties. But the BJP's coalition allies have usually
> preferred to stick with the BJP, even if it means sacrificing their
> principles. The prime minister will now come under intense pressure to
> pursue a more aggressive, rightwing agenda even if that means further
> polarising Hindu-Muslim relations in India.
Vajpayee's coalition at the Centre will disintegrate if that happens. I am not sure BJP is willing to sacrifice power at the Centre for aggressive, rightwing agenda.
>BJP party workers,
> meanwhile, are now talking up Narendra Modi as a future prime minister.
That is the quickest road to BJP's defeat and oblivion !
> Yesterday's result also comes as a big blow for Sonia Gandhi, the
> Italian-born widow of India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. After
> losing India's last election disastrously in 1999, Mrs Gandhi's party
> had been enjoying a modest recovery, including victory in elections two
> months ago in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Congress party rules states Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan. Chhatisgarh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Assam, Manipur. BJP rules two small states and is a junior partner in Uttar Pradesh.
> "The BJP may not find it as easy to try the same methods in other
> states," Ramachandra Guha, a writer and political analyst said. "But it
> is depressing. The man who has presided over a successful pogrom has
> used it as an electoral strategy."
Very true.
> Mr Guha and other liberal commentators admit Indian political leaders
> have previously exploited religious riots to reap spectacular
> dividends most notably Rajiv Gandhi, who won a landslide victory
> following his mother, Indira Gandhi's, assassination in 1984 at the
> hands of her Sikh bodyguards. Enraged Congress supporters hunted down
> and killed several thousands Sikhs. But the Congress party did not
> mention religion during the ensuing election - it was implicit.
Congress did not win 1984 elections due to anti-Sikh riots.
> These are dark days for India, it seems. "What has happened in Gujarat
> is original in the sophistication and completeness of its articulation,"
> Mr Guha said, adding: "the creation of Pakistan at Partition is an open
> invitation to Hindu fundamentalists. As long as there is Pakistan there
> will be Hindu fundamentalism."
BJP is not a fundamentalist party, it is communal. It can survive even if Pakistan ceases to exist. The real conflict is not between Hindus and Muslim or between India and Pakistan. It is between secularism and fascism, or the form of class rule for Indian capitalism.
Ulhas