POLITICS-INDIA: Communal Politics Defeated in State Poll

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 2 2003 (IPS) - The pro-Hindu juggernaut unleashed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s Gujarat state in December has run out of steam in northern Himachal Pradesh state, where a professedly secular party won in results announced Saturday.

”This is certainly a message that the so-called ‘Hindutva’ (pro-Hindu) card is not effective,” a jubilant Sonia Gandhi, president of the opposition Congress party, told reporters.

Gandhi’s reference was to a declaration made by BJP president Venkiah Naidu that his party’s victory in Gujarat after campaigning on a Hindu-based platform was ”an experiment that would soon be replicated in other states” – a remark that portended the greater use of the communal card in this country of 1 billion people.

That experiment was a gruesome one, depending as it did on the polarisation of Gujarat’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority after last year’s anti-Muslim pogrom there, one of India’s worst episodes of communal violence.

Gandhi saw in her party’s resounding victory in Himachal Pradesh a ”morale booster for the Congress as it goes to polls in four states in November”, elections that will be watched for the political fortunes of the prime minister’s ruling party.

The BJP’s defeat in Himachal Pradesh leaves it in power in only one Indian state, Gujarat, in contrast to 15 states that have Congress party provincial governments.

The states headed for elections are western Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh in central India and Delhi, which houses the national capital.

The Congress has also emerged as the single largest party in Meghalaya, one of three north-eastern states (Tripura and Nagaland) which went to polls along with Himachal Pradesh last week.

The Congress party, which led India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947, dominated the country’s political scene in the succeeding years. But it has not been in power at the centre since 1996, succumbing to the BJP strategy of supplanting ideology with religious symbols.

The BJP owes its popularity largely to its single issue of building a grand temple to the Hindu warrior deity Ram on a strip of land in Ayodhya town, northern Uttar Pradesh state. There, party stalwarts led the demolition 10 years ago of the Babri Masjid, said to be built over the remains of an existing temple by 16th century Muslim invaders.

So far, the BJP has been thwarted from building the planned temple to Ram by a legal dispute over actual legal title to the land on which the Babri mosque stood. But this has served to keep the issue politically alive and readily revivable during elections.

Last year’s communal strife in Gujarat was triggered off after 59 train passengers, most of them pilgrims to the sacred site at Ayodhya, were burned alive in a train at Godhra station by a group of Muslims.

The train was brought to Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s principal city, and the bodies displayed there by the BJP government of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has been indicted by the National Human Rights Commission for the anti-Muslim pogrom that followed. He went on, however, to sweep the December elections in the state.

Modi personally campaigned in Himachal Pradesh, along with Vajpayee and top BJP leaders, but their temple and ‘Hindutva’ issues failed to impress voters in the state which ranks high in literacy and other human development indicators.

Besides, the BJP discovered that ‘Hindutva’ can cut both ways.

At election meetings, Vajpayee was forced to defend himself against charges brought up by Congress party campaigners that he was secretly fond of eating beef burgers.

In contrast, Gandhi who also personally campaigned in Himachal Pradesh, concentrated on bringing home such issues as the high rate of unemployment and corruption involving an ousted BJP chief minister.

Talking to reporters, Naidu said the defeat in Himachal Pradesh state would not affect the BJP at the national level.

But barring Gujarat, the Congress party has beaten the BJP in every major state assembly election since Vajpayee first came to power in 1998. This, however, has led to several regional enemies of the Congress parties joining hands with the BJP, ignoring its Hindu-based platform as a lesser evil.

Naidu said the BJP ”accepted the defeat with humility”, but declared that his party intended to continue abiding by ‘Hindutva’ which he said was the ”the soul of India."

At the moment, the BJP has also raked up the issue of having legislated in Parliament, currently in session, a complete ban on the slaughter of cows, an animal considered sacred by orthodox Hindus but an important source of protein to others.

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani has challenged the Congress party to oppose a bill and so far, the party has been ambiguous about it, highlighting the touchiness of the issue in this country.

Commented D N Jha, a former professor of history at Delhi University: ”Cow and temple have become the two pillars of Indian democracy ? it is as if our politicians believe India has solved all its other problems.”

Jha was pilloried for his controversial tome ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow’; in which he cited scriptures and ancient texts to show that the cow was in fact slaughtered for beef in ancient India and that its sacred attributes were acquired in more recent times.

Such is the wariness of Hindu politicians on the subject of cow slaughter that the Congress party chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, one of the four states that is due to go the polls this year, has been stampeded into supporting a countrywide ban.

Sonia Gandhi said the Congress party would stick to its ideology of secularism. But asked to comment on the proposed anti-cow slaughter legislation Saturday, Gandhi said: ”I don’t want to enter into that debate.”