— Dipankar Bhattacharya
If one single word dominated the entire country’s political discourse in 2002, it was Gujarat. While secular-democratic India rightly viewed the Gujarat genocide as the biggest ever war unleashed by the saffron brigade on the very notion of modern India and the December poll verdict as a wake-up call for Indian democracy, for the Sangh Parivar, Gujarat has been the most emphatic political victory scored till date! In fact, Gujarat gave the parivar its latest mascot in the form of Narendra Modi. Gujarat has also added a ‘global’ dimension to the genocidal politics of the saffron brigade, the politics that is bankrolled by overt and covert hate funding from abroad and articulated most aggressively by the VHP’s ‘international’ secretary, Mr. Praveen Togadia. At times, even Modi appears to be a mere mask and Togadia, the real face.
True to his style and the division of labour practised in the Sangh, Vajpayee has once again sought to distance himself from the Singhals and Togadias. Having repeatedly endorsed Modi’s ‘Rajdharma’, Vajpayee used his year-end vacation in Goa to entertain us with his latest ‘musings’, trying to redefine Hinduism and secularism in a way that both become identical. Nobody of course felt amused and the mask of musings was soon blown into pieces by the latest saffron missile called Moditva. The BJP has since officially declared that it will try to replicate the Gujarat model to face the next round of Assembly elections in 2003, especially in crucial states like Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It has also washed its hands off the so-called NDA agenda by saying that it is relevant only at the Centre and not in the states!
The saffron brigade is however not wasting its time in merely discussing the viability of replicating Gujarat elsewhere in the country. It has already started making every attempt in this direction. VHP is busy organising ‘Trishul Diksha’ campaign to make inroads into the adivasis in these two neighbouring states of Gujarat. All saffron outfits are working overtime to stoke the communal fire in the election-bound states. In Bihar, where the BJP has long reached a plateau and considered a liability by many of its allies, the party is trying to regain its initiative by vitiating the political atmosphere with its communal venom. Togadia is making well-publicised trips to states like Karnataka and West Bengal, which have never witnessed a saffron wave.
The Congress is predictably still licking the wounds it suffered in Gujarat. The party has made no critical review of its Gujarat fiasco where it plumbed new depths of political bankruptcy by handing over the reins of the party to ex-servicemen of the saffron army. It went to the extent of issuing two manifestos, with the Gujarati manifesto completely glossing over the questions posed by the genocide. The Congress thus effectively anticipated and corroborated Advani’s claim that ‘secularism’ in India was only a concern of the English-language media!
The only statement the Congress has made after the Gujarat debacle is a reiteration of its newfound intent to ally with other non-BJP forces, something it has not managed to do in a state where it could have mattered most, Uttar Pradesh. And the only step it has taken so far is to replace its Chief Minister in Maharashtra, installing Sushil Kumar Shinde in place of Vilasrao Deshmukh, a step which is being interpreted in political circles as a reassuring and accommodating gesture to its once formidable dalit electoral base.
As for the BJP’s existing and aspiring allies, the dominant trend has been one of hailing the Modi victory. Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalitha have all echoed this line from three different corners of the country. Karunanidhi has only questioned Jayalalitha’s ‘right’ to hail Modi’s victory for she had allegedly once demanded his resignation!
The ‘third forces’ have of course refrained from welcoming the so-called ‘mandate’ for Modi, but there is a disturbing trend of silent acceptance of the Gujarat outcome. Speaking at a seminar in Delhi on December 18, a senior CPI leader described Gujarat as a ‘temporary phenomenon’ while a top ideologue of the CPI(M) saw nothing more than an ‘authoritarian’ streak that merely reflected a growing international trend in the era of neo-liberal globalisation!
The widespread demoralisation caused by the Gujarat mandate in secular-democratic and progressive circles is understandable. But why should sections of the Left stretch this demoralisation to a defeatist political line? Can we ever put up effective resistance to the fascist danger by downplaying or softpedalling it? Treating Gujarat as something normal or natural in the given context may be good ‘objective’ analysis of the ‘ground reality’, but it fails miserably to generate and strengthen the secular-democratic resolve to reverse this ‘natural’ order, let alone address the more challenging task of identifying, organising and galvanising the social and political forces that can do this.
‘Gujarat’ has today become the name of a potent formula perfected in the Modi-Togadia laboratory and taught by the saffron brigade for wider application. This has categorically exposed the bankruptcy of the Congress and squarely posed the question of developing a secular-democratic counter-offensive. The Left has to take the lead and it can effectively take the lead only by strengthening resistance in its own strongholds, by unhesitatingly subjecting every sign of vacillation and political opportunism to merciless criticism and by carrying on painstaking ideological-political propaganda and organisational work among every vulnerable section of the society. The victims must be turned into victors and the communal fascists who are today setting the agenda must be pushed back on every front to a point of irrelevance, to what is called the ‘lunatic fringe’ in a modern polity.