Election politics and Gujarat riots

Election is scheduled on December 11 and 16 in the historic state of Gujarat of India. The Indian Prime Minister has already accused the Hindu nationalist leaders of this riot-scarred state of fuelling tensions with Muslims ahead of elections there. Observers of the political scene may remember that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), found it electorally rewarding to divide the polity on communal lines, at least in Gujarat.
It may be pertinent to recollect that at least 2000 Muslims were killed in widespread riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 after Hindu pilgrims were killed in a Train fire. According to credible reports, the state government and police allegedly supported the rioters.
Gujarat has been considered a hypersensitive state as far as communal violence is concerned since the late 1960s. It witnessed a major outbreak of violence in 1969 that shook the entire country. The state witnessed several communal riots after 1969. A prolonged spell of violence commenced on 18 February 1985 and lasted until October 1986. Besides, several other riots took place. Ahmedabad and Baroda have been particularly prone to violence. Even Surat, another major commercial centre in Gujarat, witnessed fierce rioting in the post-Babri mosque demolition period in 1992-93.
A considered view is that Gujarat ought to have been a peaceful state, not only because of its economic prosperity, but because of its Gandhian heritage. It is the state where Gandhi commenced non- violent struggle of workers. It was Gujarat from where he launched in 1930 the non-violent salt satyagraha. That is why one wonders how Gujarat became the epicenter of communal violence in India and witnessed such ferocious communal riots?
One may not take exception to the observation that communalism is basically a political and not a religious phenomenon. Violence is an outgrowth of communal ideology and the institutions which promote it. The Jan Sangh which was formed in 1950 by Shyamaprasad Mukerjee was a right-wing Hindu party whose main purpose was to establish a Hindu Rashtra (i.e. the Hindu nation) and was integrally linked to the RSS, a right-wing ideological movement established in 1925.
The Jan Sangh, which was renamed the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, was a political offspring of the RSS. The Jan Sangh had played a key role in inciting communal violence in Gujarat in 1969. The RSS and Jan Sangh had specifically targeted Gujarat.
It may be relevant to recollect that Gujarat contained a large number (around 500) of former princely states, whose rulers were hostile towards Indira Gandhi as she had abolished the privy purses of these princes. Thus Jan Sangh became a natural ally of these 'feudals' who gladly supported its ideology of Hindu Rashtra. Gujarat also was fertile ground for the Jan Sangh because of its conservative trading communities. Indeed, the RSS and Jan Sangh are mainly financed by these petty traders; they pay them handsomely out of their 'black' money.
The 1969 riots were mainly organized by the RSS and further consolidated Jan Sangh's position by their polarizing effects. Indeed, it is now widely acknowledged that communal violence is a tactic in the consolidation of political support by Hindu right wing parties. The Shiv Sena established itself in Maharashtra, for example, by provoking communal riots in such places as Bhivandi, Mahad, Jalgaon, Panvel, Thane, Nashik and Aurangabad. All these towns witnessed major communal riots during the 1970s and 1980s and the Shiv Sena increased its appeal and established its presence within them.
The Jan Sangh, later known as the BJP, adopted a similar strategy in Gujarat and repeatedly provoked communal violence to consolidate its position in that state. There was yet another factor which also played an important role. In this conservative state there was a total absence of any reform movement.
Another factor to the communalization of Gujarat, though not directly related to the growth of BJP, is increasing crime in big towns like Ahmedabad and Baroda. There is prohibition in Gujarat and this has led to a thriving business in illicit liquor. Much of the crime in Gujarat is related to the liquor mafia. The Baroda riots of 1982 were directly related to a fight between Muslim and Hindu liquor barons. In Ahmedabad too, owners of illicit liquor dens quarrel among themselves and when they happen to belong to two different communities, communal violence results. The BJP always exploited such riots to increase its political clout among the Hindu population.
It remains a mystery as to what happened in Godhra on the morning of 27 February 2002 when fifty-nine Hindu passengers coming from Ayodhya in the Sabarmati Express and traveling in S-6 were burnt. The government appointed Justice U.C. Banerjee, a Supreme Court Judge, to inquire into the Godhra train incident. Justice Banerjee published his report in January 2005 and concluded in his findings that the fire in S-6 of Sabarmati Express was accidental and not planned.
However, the BJP leaders and particularly the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, took it for granted that Muslims set fire to the Sabarmati Express compartment to kill the karsevaks (volunteers) returning from Ayodhya.
What happened in the three months from 28 February to the month of May 2002 was unparalleled in the history of communal riots in India in terms of intensity and brutality of violence. Though the government figures claim 900 people died, unofficial figures put the death toll at more than 2000.
What happened in Gujarat in the initial ten days was poignantly summarized by an IAS officer (who resigned from the IAS cadre in protest), Harsh Mandar, who wrote in his agonizing piece, "numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujrat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state, My heart is sickened, my soul wearied, my shoulders aching with the burdens of guilt and shame".
Immediately after the Gujarat carnage, Narendra Modi dissolved the assembly and ordered elections. The BJP had a comfortable majority in the Gujarat Assembly and there was no political crisis of any kind which could have warranted dissolution of the Assembly. The only reason for the polls, it thus appears, was to exploit the charged communal atmosphere in the state.
The BJP achieved its goal in that it won a two-thirds majority in the December 2002 elections. It captured most of the seats precisely in those areas which were rocked by the communal violence. It lost several seats in the areas which had remained peaceful. After the declaration of the election results, the BJP celebrated its triumph and took pride in inventing a new model to win elections. In fact, the model was a most shameless legitimization of the communal carnage in Gujarat.
From the above it follows that the Hindutva ideology (primacy of Hindu values) of BJP does represent a threat to communal harmony in India. Its advocates appear more determined than those 'secularists' who work for the concept of unity in diversity. Secular forces hardly work with such dedication, much less with a sense of mission.
It is pertinent to observe that the above Hindutva ideology is a deliberate effort to realign state and cultural power in the interest of the majority. If successful, it will result in non-Hindu minorities being defined--explicitly or implicitly--as second class citizens of India.
With regard to the question of civic action to prevent, contain, and control riots, it has been evident that the political mobilization of communal sentiment overpowered whatever civic engagement existed. The civic action to contain and control rioting once started was ineffective.
It was found that the ability to sustain inter-communal relations, sentiments and actions, and thus provide a barrier to communal violence, decreases the longer the authorities delay, procrastinate, and thereby allow the momentum of the move towards a communal riot to accelerate. At some point, if no action or insufficient or incompetent measures are taken, the end result is total communal polarization that overwhelms all existing inter-communal feelings of commercial, professional, and interpersonal solidarity.
Hope lies in the fact that there exists now in India an institutionalized system of riot documentation that comes into play after each riot, that embraces a range of civil liberties organizations, secular intellectuals, retired supreme court judges, English-language press journalists, and others who go to the sites of these riots, pogroms, and massacres, record for all time the actions of the rioters including often the names of the leading perpetrators, and create a body of truths to counter the mendacities of the perpetrators and the blame-displacing claims of their apologists.
The force of the riot provoking elements continue to exist at numerous places in India and they outweigh the civil society but the latter provide a ground for hope that the extra local civic action of the civil society may acquire sufficient political force and backing to ultimately displace and contain the former.
Muhammad Nurul Huda is a columnist of The Daily Star.