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Poll setback for communal Indian
politics
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - The pro-Hindu juggernaut unleashed by Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) in India's Gujarat state in December has run out
of steam in northern Himachal Pradesh state, where a
professedly secular party won in results announced at
the weekend.
"This is certainly a message that
the so-called Hindutva [pro-Hindu] card is not
effective," a jubilant Sonia Gandhi, president of the
opposition Congress party, said. Out of 65 seats in
Himachal Pradesh, Congress won 40 with the BJP,
previously in power, far behind at 16.
Gandhi's
reference was to a declaration made by BJP president
Venkiah Naidu that his party's victory in Gujarat after
campaigning on a Hindu-based platform was "an experiment
that would soon be replicated in other states" - a
remark that portended the greater use of the communal
card in this country of over 1 billion people.
That experiment was a gruesome one, depending as
it did on the polarization of Gujarat's Hindu majority
and Muslim minority after last year's anti-Muslim pogrom
there, one of India's worst episodes of communal
violence.
Gandhi saw in her party's resounding
victory in Himachal Pradesh a "morale booster for the
Congress as it goes to polls in four states in
November", elections that will be watched for the
political fortunes of the prime minister's ruling party.
The BJP's defeat in Himachal Pradesh leaves it
in power in only one Indian state, Gujarat, in contrast
to the 15 states that have Congress party provincial
governments. The states headed for elections are western
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh in central
India and Delhi, which houses the national capital.
The Congress has also emerged as the single
largest party in Meghalaya, one of three northeastern
states (Tripura and Nagaland) which went to polls along
with Himachal Pradesh last week.
Congress, which
led India to independence from British colonial rule in
1947, dominated the country's political scene in the
succeeding years. But it has not been in power at the
center since 1996, succumbing to the BJP strategy of
supplanting ideology with religious symbols.
The
BJP owes its popularity largely to its single issue of
building a grand temple to the Hindu warrior deity Ram
on a strip of land in Ayodhya town, northern Uttar
Pradesh state. There, party stalwarts led the demolition
10 years ago of the Babri Masjid, said to be built over
the remains of an existing temple by 16th century Muslim
invaders.
So far, the BJP has been thwarted from
building the planned temple to Ram by a legal dispute
over actual legal title to the land on which the Babri
mosque stood. But this has served to keep the issue
politically alive and readily revivable during
elections.
Last year's communal strife in
Gujarat was triggered after 59 train passengers, most of
them pilgrims to the sacred site at Ayodhya, were burned
alive in a train at Godhra station by a group of
Muslims. The train was brought to Ahmedabad, Gujarat's
principal city, and the bodies displayed there by the
BJP government of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi,
who has been indicted by the National Human Rights
Commission for the anti-Muslim pogrom that followed. He
went on, however, to sweep the December elections in the
state.
Modi personally campaigned in Himachal
Pradesh, along with Vajpayee and top BJP leaders, but
their temple and Hindutva issues failed to impress
voters in the state which ranks high in literacy and
other human development indicators. Besides, the BJP
discovered that Hindutva can cut both ways.
At
election meetings, Vajpayee was forced to defend himself
against charges brought up by Congress campaigners that
he was secretly fond of eating beef burgers. In
contrast, Gandhi, who also personally campaigned in
Himachal Pradesh, concentrated on bringing home such
issues as the high rate of unemployment and corruption
involving an ousted BJP chief minister.
Talking
to reporters, Naidu said that the defeat in Himachal
Pradesh state would not affect the BJP at the national
level. But barring Gujarat, Congress has beaten the BJP
in every major state assembly election since Vajpayee
first came to power in 1998. This, however, has led to
several regional enemies of the Congress parties joining
hands with the BJP, ignoring its Hindu-based platform as
a lesser evil. Naidu said that the BJP "accepted the
defeat with humility", but declared that his party
intended to continue abiding by Hindutva which he said
was the "the soul of India".
At the moment, the
BJP has also raked up the issue of having legislated in
parliament, currently in session, a complete ban on the
slaughter of cows, an animal considered sacred by
orthodox Hindus but an important source of protein to
others. Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani has
challenged the Congress party to oppose the bill and so
far the party has been ambiguous about it, highlighting
the touchiness of the issue in the country.
Commented D N Jha, a former professor of history
at Delhi University, "Cow and temple have become the two
pillars of Indian democracy. It is as if our politicians
believe India has solved all its other problems." Jha
was pilloried for his controversial tome The Myth of
the Holy Cow in which he cited scriptures and
ancient texts to show that the cow was in fact
slaughtered for beef in ancient India and that its
sacred attributes were acquired in more recent times.
Such is the wariness of Hindu politicians on the
subject of cow slaughter that the Congress chief
minister of Madhya Pradesh, one of the four states that
is due to go the polls this year, has been stampeded
into supporting a countrywide ban. Sonia Gandhi said
that Congress would stick to its ideology of secularism.
But asked to comment on the proposed anti-cow slaughter
legislation, she said, "I don't want to enter into that
debate."
(Inter Press Service)
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