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Himachal Pradesh: A litmus test for
India
By Swaraj Thapa
SHIMLA,
India - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is
keenly aware that the future of his pro-Hindu Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) depends heavily on the outcome of
provincial elections due to be held on Wednesday in
northern Himachal Pradesh state. Also watching the
elections with some apprehension is arch political rival
Sonia Gandhi, who leads the opposition Congress party.
Little wonder then that India's two top
political figures braved snow and biting cold weather in
this Himalayan state, called the fruit bowl of India for
its generally horticulture-friendly climate, to
personally lead one of the most acrimonious election
campaigns in recent history.
Three other states
- Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura - are also due to
elect new assemblies on Wednesday. But unlike Himachal
Pradesh, they are situated in India's remote northeast
and outcomes there do not impinge greatly on national
politics.
Gandhi took the BJP head on, accusing
the party of coming to power and maintaining it by
"spreading communal poison" throughout her whistle-stop
tour of the state last week. She also used the
opportunity to expose the massive scams that have dogged
the Vajpayee government, including fraud in a
government-run mutual fund which resulted in millions of
investors losing their life-time savings, kickbacks on
defense deals and the slow pace of privatization of
public sector assets.
"When the BJP talks about
corruption it seems like a big joke," Gandhi said,
referring to attempts by Vajpayee to bring up during his
campaign earlier scams for which the Congress party,
including Gandhi's late husband and former prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi, paid dearly.
The Congress
party, which led India to independence from British
colonial rule in 1947 and has ruled for most of the
succeeding years, has been out of national power since
the 1996 general elections but now controls 15 state
governments. However, the Congress party's winning spree
in state elections was rudely interrupted by elections
in western Gujarat state in December, when the BJP
struck back by polarizing votes between majority Hindus
and minority Muslims and swept two-thirds of the seats.
Himachal Pradesh now presents an opportunity for
the Congress party to prove its theory that the Gujarat
results were a mere aberration and Gandhi's oft-repeated
contention that the Congress party is the "natural party
of governance" in India.
Undoubtedly, a victory
in Himachal Pradesh would go a long way in reinforcing
the beliefs of the Congress party and Gandhi and enthuse
the party in provincial elections, which are due to be
held towards the end of the year in the important states
of central Madhya Pradesh, western Rajasthan and Delhi,
which houses the national capital.
For the BJP,
losing Himachal Pradesh, one of the few states it rules,
could worsen growing disenchantment with a new and
aggressive brand of Hindutva (pro-Hindu) that is being
promoted by groups that are closely associated with the
BJP.
That both parties were well aware of the
significance of Himachal Pradesh was apparent from the
high-pitched political campaign that each side unleashed
on the other. For the first time in this otherwise
"small" state, a flurry of leaders, apart from Vajpayee
and Gandhi, criss-crossed the mountainous territory in
helicopters, addressing as many six rallies in a day.
In addition to Vajpayee, the BJP fielded deputy
Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, a Hindutva hawk
widely billed as Vajpayee's successor. Significantly,
Hindutva was seldom an election theme in Himachal
Pradesh, an overwhelmingly Hindu-majority state. Rather,
the BJP campaigners have sought shrewdly to center the
campaign around a "more-Hindu-than-the-Congress" plank.
Elections analysts have said that this is the
strategy that worked in Gujarat, where the Congress
party disastrously experimented with a "soft Hindutva"
approach in place of its traditionally secular stance.
Vajpayee also used his electoral rallies to
reaffirm the BJP's stand on the emotional issue of
constructing a grand temple to the Hindu deity Ram at
his supposed birthplace 10,000 years ago, in Ayodhya in
adjacent Uttar Pradesh state.
He also went to
great lengths to deny publicly that he was fond of beef
hamburgers, a charge leveled against him by Congress
party leaders in an attempt to demolish his Hindutva
credentials. Beef is taboo for Hindus and Vajpayee has
promised that his government will soon pass legislation
to ban the slaughter of cows, regarded as sacred, in
every corner of the country.
Gandhi personally
preferred to stick to development issues. At her main
rally in Shimla, she dished out dire statistics on
unemployment in the state - 1.1 million jobless out of a
population of 4 million.
Officials, off the
record, concede that the figure may be exaggerated. But
the BJP has been caught off guard by the Congress'
campaign, and has been forced to do a lot of explaining
rather than harp on Hindutva issues.
The BJP
also faces an "anti-incumbency factor" in the state,
which has been made worse by allegations of corruption
leveled against chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and his
administration.
(Inter Press Service)
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