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POLITICS-INDIA: Religion a Major Issue in Gujarat Elections
Ranjit Devraj
- Nominations began Monday for the Dec. 12 elections in India’s western Gujarat state, where communal issues have taken preponderance over economic development thanks largely to a violent pogrom against Muslims the state was witness to earlier this year.
The state’s chief minister Narendra Modi, currently in the national capital for discussions with THE prime minister and leader of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told reporters that he would not make an election issue out of the Godhra incident that triggered the communal violence in the state.
In that incident, 57 train passengers, returning from the Hindu temple town of Ayodhya, were burnt alive on Feb 27, setting off tensions that led the killing of some 2,000 Muslims by fanatic Hindi mobs.
”The BJP will seek votes on its past performance. Godhra will not be an issue, but if it is raised by the opposition, we will give them an apt answer,” Modi said, toeing Vajpayee’s line last week that the gruesome incident and its horrendous aftermath cannot be an issue over which the elections are to be fought.
As the Indian Parliament opened for its winter session Monday, accusations rang out that the BJP was trying to whip up Hindu sentiments over the Godhra incident by organising ‘yatras’ or pilgrimages to the site where the train was torched – allegedly by Muslims.
Most of the victims were returning from a campaign to build a temple at a site in Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh state, where Hindu mobs, led by the BJP and affiliate organisations, tore down the 16th century Babri Masjid 10 years ago, claiming it was built by Muslim invaders over the demolished remains of a Hindu temple.
The temple-building campaign helped boost the BJP’s political fortunes and helped it to seize power at the centre in 1998, relegating the 115-year-old Congress party to the position of being the second largest single party.
”When they (the BJP) saw that they were losing ground, they decided to start the ‘yatra’ (religious procession) ,” said Subodh Roy, leader of Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) that is politically aligned with the secular-minded and main opposition Congress party against the BJP.
On Sunday, the state administration briefly arrested leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum, Praveen Togadia and Acharya Dharmendra, to prevent them from carrying out the ‘yatra’ to Godhra in violation of a ban on religious processions in the state until after the elections as ordered by the Election Commission, a powerful constitutional body.
Togadia and Dharmendra then made fiery speeches accusing the election commissioner, James Lyngdoh, of being anti-Hindu and siding with the Congress party led by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi because they were both Christians. On Monday, the Congress and other opposition parties in the Lok Sabha or lower house of Parliament said Togadia and Dharmendra should have been locked away until after the elections were over and said Vajpayee should have publicly condemned their statements.
BJP leaders such as Vijay Kumar Malhotra then sought to turn the tables on the Congress party, saying that the party was guilty of not preventing a similar program against Sikhs after members of the community assassinated former prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, in revenge for a raid she ordered on their Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab state.
Under the notification issued Monday by the Election Commission, nominations would continue until Nov. 28 and counting of votes, recorded on electronic voting machines on election day on Dec. 12, would be conducted on Dec. 15.
Despite Vajpayee’s and Modi’s statements that Godhra will not be used as an election issue, the VHP has announced plans to hold a mammoth ”Victory day ” rally in the textile city of Ahmedabad on Dec. 6, the tenth anniversary of the day when the tri-domed Babri Masjid was brought down.
It has been the BJP’s strategy, tried and tested since the demolition of the Babri Masjid, to allow the VHP, which calls itself ‘non-political’ , to carry out flagrantly communal activities, and reaping the political benefits that accrue from whipping up majority Hindu sentiments.
In fact BJP leaders have been refusing to comment on the Dec. 6 rally, saying that the party has nothing to do with the campaign and that it was essentially a VHP show. ”We cannot comment on it – ask the VHP,” said BJP spokesman in Gujarat, Nalin Bhatt.
According to a pre-poll survey, sponsored partly by the ‘India Today’ magazine, 55 percent of voters in Gujarat support Modi and the BJP’s blatantly pro-Hindu policies while only 42 percent backed the Congress party ‘s secularism.
On the other hand, a study published in ‘Outlook’ magazine predicts a win for the Congress party and its chief minister candidate, Shankersinh Vaghela, a formidable political rival to Modi who once led the BJP in Gujarat but joined the Congress party saying he was tired of its communal politics.
The ‘India Today’ magazine is perceived to be broadly supportive of the BJP and right-wing interests while its rival ‘Outlook’ magazine’ prides itself on investigative reporting and strict neutrality.
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani has denied that the party’s fortunes in Gujarat would affect its rule at the centre, betraying a sense of nervousness at its rapidly eroding political base.
Speaking in Parliament Monday, Advani accused the Congress and opposition parties of trying to create opinion around the world that ”Muslims were not safe in Gujarat as long as there were Hindus in that state.” Advani, considered a pro-Hindu hawk, has his own Parliament seat in Gujarat.
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POLITICS-INDIA: Religion a Major Issue in Gujarat Elections
Ranjit Devraj
- Nominations began Monday for the Dec. 12 elections in India’s western Gujarat state, where communal issues have taken preponderance over economic development thanks largely to a violent pogrom against Muslims the state was witness to earlier this year.
(more…)
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