By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Nov 25 2003 (IPS)

A year after sweeping elections in western Gujarat state by spurring India’s worst communal carnage in its post-independence era, Chief Minister Narendra Modi continues to stretch and distort accepted definitions of democracy.

Modi is not quite relishing the fruits of his divisive politics.

This month, a stern Supreme Court at one end and determined social activists at the other have reminded him that retribution may be at hand for the 2,000 deaths as well as the rape and brutalisation of countless others during the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom that critics see his party and him as presiding over.

It was only after the Supreme Court hinted last week that it was ready to order the trial of cases of murder during the pogrom to courts outside the state that the first convictions were available – 12 persons sentenced to life on Tuesday for the massacre of 14 Muslims in the Ghodasar area on Mar. 3, 2002.

On Monday, Modi was mobbed by a group of activists led by the elegant Nafisa Ali, incensed that he was asked to chair a session on ‘The Competitiveness of States: Sharing Best Practices” at a session of the prestigious World Economic Forum (WEF) organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

‘’These people are only interested in economic development but we are demanding all-round, equitable development,” said Ali, a television personality, runner-up in the 1977 Miss International contest and now chief of the non-government organisation (NGO) Action-4-India.

Ali said she could not understand how a man like Modi, who had so cynically polarised the majority Hindus and minority Muslims of Gujarat state to engineer an electoral victory for the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), could have anything to do with sharing best practices with other states in the Indian federation.

Modi not only refused to help rehabilitate more than 150,000 people forced to live in open camps after their homes were burned down by supporters of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum, a close affiliate of the BJP.

He also openly taunted them at election rallies before the Dec. 12, 2002 polls, which returned him to power in Gujarat. Brushing aside the immense contributions that Muslims have made towards the progress of Gujarat, one of India’s wealthiest and most industrialised states, he accused the community in his speeches of being loyal to Pakistan – which has a long border with the state – and of breeding rapidly even in the refugee camps. However, CII President Anand Mahindra defended the organisation’s decision to invite Modi on the grounds that this was the democratic thing to do.. ‘’Tomorrow they (the activists) will say we didn’t invite people from the alternate point of viewà it is absurd to say we should not invite the elected chief minister of a state.” Added Sunil Munjal, vice president of CII: ‘’In the kind of democracy we live in everybody has a place and we were only providing a non-political platform for important individuals who can influence investment in states like Gujarat which are rapidly opening up their economies.” Countering the CII views, Shabnam Hashmi, leader of ‘Anhad’, an activist group that works for communal harmony, said: ‘’Being elected is not everything – remember that Hitler and Milosevic were also popularly elected leaders.” Modi, who sat unmoved through the session, offered the comment that in India no state government could act ‘’out of the purview of the Constitution and that all citizens (in Gujarat) were being treated without discrimination.” But the list of those who would controvert Modi’s statement is long and impressive and includes members of such august institutions as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a statutory body, and several judges of the Supreme Court. Indeed several of the leading lights of the CII have expressed discomfort with Modi’s brand of politics, but have since recanted undoubtedly under intense pressure from the BJP which leads the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Top industrialists like Rahul Bajaj, who owns the world’s largest scooter-making facility, and Jamshyd Godrej, criticised continuing law and order and instability in Gujarat, leading to a confrontation between the CII and the Modi government earlier this year. Modi retaliated by boycotting CII functions and pressuring key union ministers to follow suit, and the organisation thought it prudent to tender a formal and ‘’unconditional apology ‘’ to the implacable chief minister in March this year. But it seems bringing the industrialists to the water was easier than getting them to drink.

Gujarat is now actually the only state where investment has gone to negative levels in the quarter ending June 2003, as compared to the previous quarter. Genuine foreign investment is nil this year. Several major projects worth two billion U.S. dollars stand stalled. Prominent among these are the Rajula – Sayla road project worth 400 million dollars and the 575 million dollar Pagutha Power Expansion project. Modi’s attempts to attract investment from information technology majors located in the southern city of Bangalore have been less than successful..

Azim Premji, India’s wealthiest man and founder of WIPRO, the global information technology major, has openly refused to invest in Gujarat although his family traces its roots to the Kutch area of the state. Confronted earlier this month with Premji’s assertion, based on a deplorable climate of fear and intimidation in Gujarat, Modi, in his typically abrasive combative style, suggested that the WIPRO chief was free to go and invest in Pakistan. Modi has not spared intellectuals in Gujarat who had dared criticise him for the pogrom and the shabby treatment of its victims afterwards. Among these is the celebrated danseuse and social activist Mallika Sarabhai who now faces charges of cheating clearly foisted on her. In late August, Nafisa Ali found herself charged with a police case for ‘inciting communal hatred’ by suggesting during a goodwill tour of Gujarat that ‘’polarising communities on the basis of religion was not democracy.” The influential ‘Indian Express’ newspaper was also slapped with similar charges for reporting her statements. ‘’It is deeply ominous for the survival of democracy that her words of healing and of democratic dissent, that can by no stretch of imagination be described as communal or inflammatory have invited the wrath of the state government,” said a mass petition to Indian President Abdul Kalam, signed by a long list of the country’s leading intellectuals. Of the few intellectuals known to have publicly denounced the events in Gujarat and called it an ‘’aberration” and still gotten away with it is Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But then he is the prime minister.

Excerpt: