POLITICS-INDIA: Caste May Yet Spoil Hindu Party in Gujarat Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - Attempts by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party to whip up Hindu sentiment to retain hold of western Gujarat in state assembly elections this month may fail badly because of serious caste differences within the majority community, analysts say.

Gujarat, which goes to the polls on Dec 12, is the only state in India that is now directly controlled by the BJP and was the scene of an anti-Muslim pogrom earlier this year that left more than 2,000 members of the minority community dead and more than 100,000 others homeless.

But the Muslims form just 10 percent of Gujarat’s 50 million people and the real fight is among various Hindu castes which are being wooed by the BJP and its arch rival, the Congress party.

The BJP, which rode to national power in 1998 on a Hindu fundamentalist wave, has been on the retreat in the provinces since then and its rival and avowedly secular Congress party presently controls 15 major Indian states and according to early analysis is poised to wrest Gujarat as well.

According to a survey commissioned by the popular weekly Outlook and released Monday, the Congress party is poised to win considerably more seats in the assembly than the BJP thanks largely to caste polarisations.

The Congress party’s trump card is its chief minister candidate Shankersingh Vaghela who commands the loyalty of not only his own Kshatriya (warrior) caste but also that of the an amorphous group labeled as ”other backward communities” which comprise around 40 percent of the population.

Ranged against Vaghela is chief minister Narendra Modi who must depend on the Patels, a caste of landowners and businessmen whose loyalty is in doubt largely because Modi himself does not come from that caste.

In fact, the Patel community is said to be angered by the unceremonious unseating of their leader Keshubhai Patel by the BJP high command in New Delhi to accommodate Modi as chief minister.

Modi’s rule has been unremarkable except for the anti-Muslim pogrom that began after the Feb 27 torching at Godhra town of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims from a campaign in the temple town of Ayodhya where Hindu mobs tore down the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992.

Modi drew condemnation from such bodies as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Election Commission and human rights groups for his role in backing rather than quelling the pogrom that followed the Godhra incident.

According to an analysis by the respected Frontline weekly, in spite of the frenzy over Godhra, the Hindu vote remains ”a nebulous factor considering the heterogenous nature of Hindu society”.

Says Rajdeep Sardesai, political editor and anchor for the Star News television channel: ”Like in every state in the country, caste identities are critical at election time.”

According to Sardesai, one of the main questions in the current polls is whether Modi, a member of the other backward caste (OBC) group can get the Patels to ”subsume their caste identity within the wider framework of the Hindutava (pro-Hindu) cause”.

For the Congress party the question is whether Vaghela can recreate a broad alliance of Kshatriyas, Dalits (at the bottom of the caste ladder) Adivasis (tribals) and Muslims that worked well for it through the 80s.

But Sardesai also points to disgruntlement with the BJP’s poor governance in the Saurashtra, Kutch and other areas in southern Gujarat which were devastated by a major earthquake two years ago and followed by severe drought conditions with no worthwhile relief efforts undertaken.

According to Premchand Palety, director of the ‘Cfore’ group which carried out the pre-poll survey for Outlook, Saurashtra and Kutch regions could prove to be the BJP’s Waterloo because of deep dissatisfaction with rehabilitation programmes following the Jan 1991 earthquake.

Palety said another factor weighing against the BJP is the fact that in many constituencies the Muslim vote could be decisive and while voter turnout among Muslim women has been low in previous elections this time it may not be so.

A particularly shocking feature of the pogrom was the systematic mass rape of Muslim women by Hindu mobs led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum, a close affiliate of the BJP.

”The fact is that Gujarat could either shatter the myth of the religious vote bank once and for all or end up reinforcing it in future elections,” says Sardesai.

The pro-Hindu card has not worked too well lately in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state and home of the Babri Masjid. In state assembly elections held there earlier this year the BJP found itself humbled despite attempts to revive a campaign to build a temple where the mosque once stood.

But with little else to fall back on, Modi, who released his party’s manifesto on Sunday, seemed bent on consolidating what he could of the Hindu vote bank. The document promises a new law to prevent the conversion of Hindus to other religions and rein in madrasahs (free Islamic schools).

Significantly, the BJP manifesto has nothing to offer to the 150,000 Muslims who were herded off into refugee camps after their homes were burned down during the pogrom.

It was left to the election commission to track down a large number of them to locations far away from their homes and often to places outside Gujarat state and encourage them to participate in the polling no matter where they are.

All eyes are now on Chief Election Commissioner James Lyngdoh, who attracted international plaudits for fairness and toughness by smoothly conducting elections in another communally sensitive state, Kashmir, in September and October.

Lyngdoh has already said the situation in Gujarat is far more ”nasty” than in Kashmir and has already moved to rein in Modi’s attempts to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the tearing down of the Babri Masjid that happens to fall on Dec 6.

POLITICS-INDIA: Caste May Yet Spoil Hindu Party in Gujarat Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - Attempts by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party to whip up Hindu sentiment to retain hold of western Gujarat in state assembly elections this month may fail badly because of serious caste differences within the majority community, analysts say.
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