Driving the wedge

Gujarat, why an ugly violence marks India’s most prosperous state

DARSHAN DESAI

GUJARATIS are once again talking of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. Gujarat has once again been pushed into a communal fire, with its scared people once again witnessing barbaric killings. Once again the ineffective police force and the rioters look like two sides of the same coin. In fact, this time it is worse.

Earlier governments fell for their inability to check the deteriorating law and order situation. This time the government is still there despite enough evidence of it having been deliberately inactive.

Chief Minister Narendra Modi described the Godhra carnage as an act of terrorism and not communalism, but now calls the blood-for-blood ‘backlash’ across Gujarat a reflection of the public anger. He told a press conference on Thursday that people were so angry with the Godhra incident that they could have reacted in a much worse manner than this. The toll, when he said this, was already a 100-plus.

There is nothing new about such a reaction from a BJP leader, only that this was a bit modulated by the compulsions of chief ministerial office. At the press conference held the next day, Modi went a bit further to say that the mass killings of 18 persons, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and his family, in the Gulmarg Society in Ahmedabad, were not unprovoked.

‘‘Though the killings need to be condemned, the point to be noted is that the mob assault on the society was after private firing. (Everyone knows Jafri had fired from his licensed revolver after his society was mobbed).’’ But the chief minister never bothered to clarified why the private firing took place, and only said this was to be ascertained.

The carnage in Ahmedabad is disturbingly reminiscent to the one in Surat in 1992, where more than 500 innocent people were stabbed and burnt to death in the post-Ayodhya communal frenzy. Men were lynched, while women were stripped, molested, stabbed and thrown into pyres in mass killings. Housing colonies, shops, offices and factories of minorities were selectively attacked.

Surat had always remained an island of peace in a state rocked by annual riots. This prosperous city had often seen a Muslim mayor and a Hindu Opposition leader joining hands during crisis, this city was one where Muslim women wore saris and denim trousers. Here, Hindus would live in Muslim colonies and Muslims would live in Hindu colonies.

Post-December 6, 1992, and that social fabric was shred to pieces. Today, the two communities in this textile city — as in Ahmedabad — live largely apart. The Surat carnage was preceded by the Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra of L.K. Advani, said to have been conceived by none other than Narendra Modi. It was Modi again who had stewarded Murli Manohar Joshi’s Kanyakumari to Kashmir Ekta yatra.

For the BJP, Hindutva came to represent the password to electoral success. In fact, Gujarat became the Sangh Pariwar’s laboratory, where they tested the Hindu-Muslim divide and tried it out nationally. The Ayodhya incident helped the party assume power in Gujarat and the country.

The splitting of tribals in the state’s eastern belt as Hindus and Christians helped the party capture almost all Assembly and Lok Sabha seats in the tribal areas, which had always returned Congress candidates. Now, they are with the BJP. Beginning with the tribal district of the Dangs, the saffron brigade spread its wings to other tribal areas. Through the Dangs, they tried to make a reference to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian status and internationalised the issue by making insinuations about the Pope.

In a way all this was easy to accomplish because Gujarat has had a long history of communal riots. It began in 1969, when the state witnessed its worst riots, leaving 5,000 dead. At that point various agitations over various issues would be given a communal slant, leading to the killing of innocent people.

While incidents kept recurring almost every year, they became a more regular feature after the anti-reservation stir culminated into a communal flare-up in 1985.

It led to the removal of the then Congress Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, followed by that of Amarsinh Chaudhary, who had succeeded him. Chaudhary, also a Congressman, had ruled for four and a half years, during which period riots kept on breaking out at regular intervals. From 1985 to the fag end of the eighties, when Chaudhary stepped down, nearly 1,300 people were killed in nearly 1,000 communal incidents.

Soon after, the BJP tasted power and shared power with the Janata Dal. Then came the Ayodhya yatra which led to communal violence breaking out in Surat and Ahmedabad. Finally, the BJP assumed power in the state. It was an open secret that the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were directly and indirectly involved in the riots. The present minister of state for home, Gordhan Jhadaphia, used to hold a post in the VHP.

It was for their involvement in the 1985 communal riots that Union Minister of State for Defence Harin Pathak and State Health Minister Ashok Bhatt were removed from office. Both are now back in the government with the same portfolios.

After the BJP assumed power, the government was extremely proud of the fact that the number of communal riots came down drastically. The events of last week has destroyed that claim conclusively. The BJP has always claimed that they brought law and order in the state, to which the Congress had always responded that communal incidents declined in number under BJP rule because the party didn’t need to engineer them.

There was even as buzz recently in Opposition circles that the BJP may attempt to play the Hindutva card after its recent electoral reversals. It is difficult to sift truth from falsehoods, and fact from fiction in Gujarat today, but there can be no denying that the state is once again sharply polarised between Hindus and Muslims.