The Hindu : Gujarati exceptionalism

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 16, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Gujarati exceptionalism

By Dipankar Gupta

As the influence of left wing activism is waning all over the country, even in areas that once had a strong trade union movement, Gujarat will perhaps no longer be that exceptional in the years to come.

THE USUAL statistics do not fully explain the extent of killings in rural Gujarat post Godhra. The State is not exceptional in terms of urbanisation, literacy, gender ratio, or even in terms of the proportionate differences between Hindus and Muslims. It is true that Gujarat has a developed and fairly old urban structure. There are about 50 cities in the State. This can probably account for the widespread nature of riots in the urban areas, but how does one account for the spate of rural violence over the past two months and more?

Communal incidents are usually urban in character, and there is also a large body of literature that provides reasons for this. But Gujarat, this time around, has been very exceptional. Not only have the riots lasted for months, but rural violence has occurred on a scale that could never have been predicted.

It is true that the Sangh Parivar build-up has been quite intense in Gujarat for over a decade. It is true that the Home Minister has been repeatedly elected to Parliament with a huge majority from Gujarat. It is also true that Narendra Modi's Government was unusually encouraging in its dispensation towards the rioters. All of these together explain the duration of the carnage that lasted for over two months in urban Gujarat, but cannot account for the extent of rural participation. In the past, villagers were never involved in any of the major riots that have degraded India since Partition. That it has happened now in Gujarat demands an explanation. Is Gujarat really unique, or is this an early warning sign of things to come elsewhere in India as well?

It used to be said that rural areas are, on the whole, riot-resistant. This is because in villages there is greater face-to-face interaction, along with a sense of familiarity that has significant generational depth. Everybody knows exactly where they stand with respect to others in the village. While this may force interactions between villagers along a traditionalist format, at least they do not have too many problems with regard to their "roots" or with issues of cultural identity. This is probably what inhibits rural people from stepping out and bludgeoning their neighbours. Many commentators have been impressed by this phenomenon and concluded, quite hastily, that villagers were above prejudice. In fact, the truth lay elsewhere. As the prejudices of rural oligarchs were never really challenged, different communities lived in relative peace in the countryside so long as the subalterns behaved.

Going by contemporary reports, this state of affairs certainly does not hold any longer for Gujarat. To account for Gujarat's exceptionalism on this score, we have to couple objective statistics and census figures with a rather unusual ideological strain peculiar to this region. What is unusual in Gujarat is the conjunction of two features that occur separately in most parts of India. Gujarat is highly industrialised with a significant migrant labour population. But Gujarat lacks a left wing tradition of a kind that exists in other industrial cities of India. Contrast, for example, Ahmedabad with Mumbai, Kolkata or Kanpur in terms of trade unionism and left wing activism. Gandhi decimated the left movement in Ahmedabad, and what little trade unionism existed in Gujarat during his time and after did not build the bonds of comradeship that only left wing movements can engender. As a result, instead of secular ties, community identity became a prominent diacritic among the State's industrial workforce.

Commentators usually tend to overlook this crucial aspect, or underplay it. This is because, for many, the left has left without a trace. But astute scholars of contemporary Gujarat, such as Ghanshyam Shah and Jan Breman, have brought out the relationship between the absence of the left trade unionism, and the rise of communalism in the State, particularly in Ahmedabad. Which is why Mr. Modi can start a riot and call it off at will without facing any political headwind. Against this ideological background of urban Gujarat let us take a closer look at the evolving nature of rural India.

Land holdings are getting smaller in the country as a whole. This has made rural Indians, including the well-off among them, insecure about their agricultural pursuits. Consequently, a large number of rural households, rich and poor, have family members who live outside the village, and with whom they are in close interaction. The urban world is no longer that alien and far awaybut very close and something that most villagers can reasonably aspire to be a part of. Further, even for those who continue to live in villages, the city is not that distant any longer. They are exposed to urban influences when they go to colleges, or when they seek work outside the village.

In my own research in rural India I found that there was a generational gap between college-going youth and their parents. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, a large number of young men who had either been to, or were enrolled in, colleges in the neighbourhood, were quite persuaded by Advani's rath yatra. Their parents were generally scornful of the entire shilanyas affair even as the bricks went through their villages. On occasions there were heated debates on this subject between generations. This is not to say that the older villagers were without prejudice, but that they did not find political expressions of communalism very agreeable. Their children had a different point of view in a large number of cases. While talking to them I realised that these young village men only grudgingly respected their parents. For many of them their parents had let them down as they could not, or did not, make the transition to urban India. So, if they were stuck in this most unhappening place it was their parents' fault. Consequently, the rural youth are not particularly willing to adopt the hand-me-down role models their parents had happily taken to when they were young.

The young men of rural Gujarat are not exceptional in this regard. But if one were to link the specific ideological bent prevalent in Gujarati cities to the general receptivity of contemporary rural youth to urban persuasions, then the power of communalism in rural areas can be somewhat comprehended. It must also be remembered that nowhere in rural India are "banias" role models as they are in Gujarat. The rural Patidars, who had earlier claimed to be Kshatriyas, now aspire for baniya status. As is quite well known, the baniyas as a community straddle both urban and rural India. They, therefore, act as particularly good conduits for transmitting urban ideologies. From the Nav Nirman movement and the anti-reservation agitations of the 1980s to the yatras of more recent times, it has been this upper caste baniya tilt that has been ideologically triumphant in Gujarat.

We are forced to conclude then on a somewhat dismal note. As the influence of left wing activism is waning all over the country, even in areas that once had a strong trade union movement, Gujarat will perhaps no longer be that exceptional in the years to come. On the other hand, it is also true that to be forewarned is to be forearmed!

(The writer is Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU.)

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

An act of terror against India

A realistic move

Gujarati exceptionalism

The mosaic cracks

The U.S. should act now

Heinous act

Better security needed