The Hindu : Politics after Gujarat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 25, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Politics after Gujarat

By Rajmohan Gandhi

Let the Congress and the Left attempt a partnership in the States and at the Centre and form a front that would exert a gravitational pull on the regional parties.

GHASTLY HAPPENINGS may at times create an unexpected opening, and Gujarat's unveiling of the callous face of the Hindu right, which should properly be called the un-Hindu right, may have done just that. That face has caused minds to tick in the Congress, in the Left parties, in several regional parties — and most significantly in the large unaligned segment of Indian opinion (in all castes and classes) that judges events as they take place. And while the unveiling has clearly been accompanied by some emboldening in sections of the Sangh Parivar, others in that Parivar or sympathising with it also seem to have joined the ranks of the perturbed.

Gujarat's BJP Government, which did not protect the lives, honour and properties of the innocent, continues to cover up its complicity, refuses to enter rapes, murders and arsons on its registers, and of course refuses to book the murderers, rapists and arsonists. It refuses even to admit that something shameful happened after Godhra.

What happened in Gujarat may happen elsewhere; what happened to innocent and helpless Muslims may happen to innocent and helpless non-Muslims. Flashing across many minds, this thought has the potential to unite many if not most non-BJP parties. The Abdul Kalam episode has no doubt provided a distraction from this thought, and from a crucial corollary of that thought, which is that safety of life and secularism are two sides of the same coin. The Kalam question seems also to have produced a unity of all non-Left parties, including the BJP, for a specific purpose and moment. But the diverting Kalam episode will soon be over, and the worry about the safety and honour of the weak, unprotected and innocent women and men of India will return to haunt the BJP.

And to provide an opening to the others. Of course, the task of bringing together the Congress, the Left and a significant chunk of the regional parties is exceedingly tough. The past divisions (those over the Emergency and over V.P. Singh's departure from the Congress were some of the sharpest) linger. There are differences on economic policies. There is the hard challenge of power-sharing, especially in States where the chief rivalry is between the Congress and the Left or between the Congress and a regional party.

Yet, Gujarat has provided an impulse to overcome these hurdles. The coming weeks and months will show whether the political leadership spread across the Congress, the Left and the regional spectrum has the wisdom to take advantage of the impulse.

This required wisdom can be broken down into four components. One, political judgment — the ability to recognise a moment pregnant with possibilities. Two, the good sense to acknowledge past and present realities. (Thus, Congressmen can acknowledge that the Emergency alienated many patriotic Indians, and non-Congress secular parties can acknowledge that the Congress is needed for saving India from the narrowness of the un-Hindu right.) Three, the patience and acumen to negotiate win-win compromises among parties that have fought bitter battles in the past. Four, a statesmanlike skill for using a psychological moment to bring in elements long missing from the Indian political scene.

For instance, an understanding that a Government's task in India is not to set communities or castes against one another but to address the need of citizens of all castes and religions for water, electricity, roads, school and medicine.

In other words, the fight to protect every Indian's life can also be a fight to better that life. Is it too much to ask the Congress, the Left and regional parties to join hands to help India reach such a goal, and to prevent the possibility of Gujarat repeating itself there or anywhere else?

Yet, even this will not be enough. Any new Indian politics of secular and democratic unity will have to extend its concern to the subcontinent as a whole. Its ultimate goal will have to include the defence and improvement of life in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan as well.

The Congress, the Left, and their regional partners in the alliance projected above cannot of course afford to drop the country's guard. Hostility from neighbours will have to be firmly dealt with. But politics after Gujarat can encourage a people-to-people as well as a Government-to-Government effort for better relations on the subcontinent, and aim for a gradual and measured transfer of the subcontinent's resources from war machines to schools, hospitals and roads, a transfer based on verifiable agreements and undertaken for the sake of the deprived masses of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Perhaps I am being unrealistic. Perhaps I am over-impressed by history's examples, such as Churchill's success in mobilising against the Nazis the numerous Britons raised for years on the belief that communism and the Soviet Union constituted the main menace to Britain. Perhaps I am a dreamer uncorrected by experience or age or by the evidence of what interests middle-class Indians in a globalised, TV-crazy, movie-mad, cell-phoning age. Perhaps I am too attached to an inherited preference for a relaxed, confident and tolerant Hinduism.

Perhaps I have been excessively affected by the charring, quartering and raping of individuals in Gujarat and by the inaction over Gujarat of Messrs. Vajpayee and Advani, and unduly influenced by the appraisal of some that Gujarat has been a watershed event. The merely modest possibility of a subcontinental nuclear clash may also have swayed me.

If so I can hope to strike a chord with others with similar hearts or stomachs. To the rest, I make a limited, cold, practical and yet difficult suggestion. Let the Congress and the Left treat Gujarat as a reason for abandoning pre-Gujarat animosities, and also for overcoming the misunderstanding created by the Kalam episode. Let them attempt a partnership in the States and at the Centre and form a front that would exert a gravitational pull on the regional parties.

But what about the risk of provoking the Hindutva right? Is it not possible that the latter would respond with more of what was done and not done in Gujarat? This is indeed possible, although a fight for the safety of the innocent may also appeal to a few within the Sangh Parivar, especially when waged on behalf of every Indian.

Still, the hazard of provoking the others is real. What should be added is that the hazard of not standing up is immensely greater. Those with doubts on this score should consult any book on the course of events in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. They may also profitably study how in the 1980s and 1990s religious extremism grew in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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