Communal card does not pay anymore

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 22. While Mr. L.K. Advani is trying hard to play a hands-on Home Minister, grabbing headlines with `promise' of ``air space'' to the U.S., a part of his own Lok Sabha constituency of Gandhinagar appears to have become disillusioned with him. That the Congress was able to wrest the Sabarmati Assembly seat in Mr. Advani's constituency is as much an indictment of the Keshubhai Patel Government's non-performance as an indication of the petering out of the ``promise of the Advani politics.''

A Congress leader, Mr. Ahmed Patel, has described the by-election outcome in Sabarmati (as well as in the Sabarkantha parliamentary constituency) as ``a moral defeat for Mr. Advani and a moral victory for Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.'' The Congress leaders are entitled to their inferences; but, the extent of the BJP's defeat can be gauged from the fact that in the 1999 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Advani had carried the Sabarmati Assembly segment by a margin of nearly 47,000 votes. This constituency is quintessentially a BJP constituency, dominated by the rough-and- tough lower middle class voters. Less than two years later, the same constituency returns a Congress candidate by a victory margin of 18,000.

The significance of the Sabarmati defeat becomes more pronounced when it is kept in mind that Mr. Advani's political presence looms large in Gujarat. He is the king-maker and is widely seen as the patron-in-chief of the present `king', Mr. Keshubhai Patel. About a year ago the voters had expressed their disenchantment with the BJP State Government when the party lost comprehensively in the zilla panchyat elections. Yet the BJP high command - meaning Mr. Advani - remained unconcerned at the total non-performance in the only State in the country which the BJP can count as its own. If Gujarat was to be the show-case of the Advani promise of ``su-raj'', then the State and the rest of the country could do without Mr. Advani's sales pitch.

The by-elections in Sabarkantha and Sabaramti was the first time the voters were asked for a preference after the January 26 killer earthquake and the Madhavpura Mercantile Bank scandal. In the first the people lost their homes, and in the second they lost their savings.

On both occasions Mr. Advnai chose -as is his wont - to project a very visible profile. Now, the voters in his constituency have told him that notwithstanding all the good notices he manages to get in the national press and on television networks, at least they are not impressed and are, therefore, not averse to handing him and the BJP the Sabarmati humiliation.

However, the BJP failure in the by-elections also points to the limits of the politics of communal polarisation. In Sabarkantha, which has a sizable tribal population, the BJP activists sought to depict the Congress candidate (a newcomer to politics from the NGO sector) as ``Father Pinto'', with the all too obvious insinuation of a sectarian bias. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections the BJP garnered considerable electoral success by injecting a ``kristi vs. non-kristi'' (Christian vs. non- Christian) divide in the tribal areas, exploiting to the hilt the ``Sonia Gandhi- the-foreigner'' factor.

This time the voters were not taken in by the BJP's hate- politics. Similarly, the BJP cadres were suspected of having stoked communal tensions in the Daripur area (also part of Mr. Advani's constituency) about a month ago, perhaps in the hope that the revival of communal polarisation would help in the Sabarmati by-elections.

The message is clear: the communal card will not work.

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