Images Of The Gujarat Elections

 Nalini Taneja

NOW that we know just how firmly the Hindutva forces are ensconced in their ‘laboratory’ and are already threatening to use the results of their ‘experiments’ in other states, let us take a look at some of the election scenes from Gujarat; if nothing else then to see for ourselves how one sided the whole affair was, and why it should not have come as a shock. Most of us continued to believe till the very end that the Gujarat elections were open ended, and that the politics of hate could as well suffer a defeat in the state, if not for any other reason than because the Hindutva forces had gone for an over kill. In actual fact the Hindutva forces were in control from the day one, and it would have served us well to have not given these elections the status of a referendum for the direction that India will take.

It is not the people of Gujarat alone who have brought the Hindutva forces to this victory; it is the entire bourgeois political leadership of this country.

The Election Commission had done its duty by secularism, but the political will to enforce its directives was simply not in place. The entire election campaign was an infringement of the directives of the Election Commission, as evident from newspaper reports, and neither the Indian parliament nor the Supreme Court of this country even tried to put a stop to these day in and day out infringements of the election code and our Constitution as well. The largest opposition party, the Congress, far from resisting, actually imitated the Hindutva forces when it could.

In retrospect we must recognise that the Gujarat elections were held in the political circumstances and on the ideological terrain mapped out by the Hindutva forces, and with its intimidatory tactics in full strength. Godhra remained the dominant visual and verbal image and it appeared that Muslims of the entire country must answer for it. The secular campaign that argued otherwise hardly made a dent in this vilification of a whole community. Sushma Swaraj was openly stating: “We are against those who cheer Pakistan during an India Pakistan match” (The Indian Express, December 1, 2002). Uma Bharti made the plea: “Do not make the mistake of punishing Hindustan by voting Congress”. (The Indian Express, December 1, 2002). Both Advani and Vajpayee defended Narendra Modi for for his “successful” and “exemplary” leadership”, during recent months. Advani actually dared Pakistan to fight a fourth war, while Modi called every Muslim a potential “Mian Musharraf” and characterised a vote for Congress as vote for Pakistan. And the VHP leaders have called the Gujarat victory a victory for nationalist forces, equating nationalism not merely with the Hindutva ideology but also with the wiping out the Muslims from this country.

On the side of the Congress, was their man in Maninagar, Yatin Oza, who not very long ago was with the BJP and twice sat in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly as a BJP MLA. Mr Oza, whose roots were (are?) firmly in the RSS, was seeking election claiming the mantle of Hindu leader for himself and his new party. That could be said for a great many Congress campaigners as well. And as Anjali Mody has pointed out in a report on the campaign (The Hindu), the Congress actually had two election manifestos, with the English containing the high-sounding words about secularism and the soul of India, and promising a white paper on the Godhra episode and the role of the BJP government in it; and about secularism as the bedrock of Indian polity. The Gujarati version of the manifesto on the other hand found no space for secularism, the ideas of nationhood or even for denunciations of the Congress' chief opponent that the English one has.

And in all the localities where the Muslims have borne the brunt of the genocide: houses were shut, people listened with bated breath for election results that seemed to decide whether they may ever step out without fear; there were whole localities that did not dare to vote; in many places Muslims came collectively from many miles away where they had fled to just vote and push off immediately. Many could not even return to their constituencies to vote despite the Election Commission assurances which they knew were no guarantee against what was happening on the ground; thousands of names had already vanished from the electoral rolls and perhaps from citizenship rights as well as they remain without means of livelihood, with residences destroyed and no proofs of belonging where they have lived for years. This is one image of the Gujarat elections that has simply not reached across to people outside the state because the political leadership of this country and the media sought to play it down in its hurry to designate the elections a referendum for secularism.

And finally, the likes of Chandrababu Naidu, Mamata Banerji, and Jayalalitha who maintained absolute silence on these goings on during the campaign have suddenly found their voice. But on which side? The victors, of course. All three have welcomed the people’s democratic mandate. And Mayawati who campaigned for the BJP in Gujarat has already endorsed everything that Modi has been doing. With such friends of secularism at the helm of affairs, could a BJP defeat really have been on the cards?

Good sense of the people and ‘real Hinduism’ are both being mediated today into politics through the so called secular NDA partners whose hurry to privatise has made them lose sense of what else the nation is losing in the process. They follow their Imperialist masters in endorsing Hindutva so long as globalisation processes proceed fast enough.