Opinion - Editorials

A bi-polar contest

THE POLITICAL SCENE in Gujarat has remained unique in the sense that the State is among the few where the effect of social fragmentation on the existing parties has only been marginal. So much so, the electoral battles in the State have remained bi-polar with the Congress and the BJP having had to engage in straight fights and splinters from these two parties have hardly been able to sustain themselves. This, indeed, was because the Congress as a party in Gujarat was able to internalise the caste-based dynamics into its political strategy and cultivate, in the process, a social alliance of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims (KHAM), as its stable support base. This strategy, however, had its fallout and the BJP through the years emerged into a force and various other attempts to forge an anti-Congress political force in the State could not take off. The BJP's growth, in this context, was also accompanied by the growth of Sangh Parivar outfits — the VHP and the various bodies that indulge directly in campaigns against the missionaries and their activities in the tribal regions — thus converting Gujarat into a laboratory for implementing the majoritarian agenda. The rise of Narendra Modi in the BJP's affairs (not just in Gujarat but also in the party's leadership in Delhi) is nothing but the unfurling of this core aspect of the Sangh Parivar's agenda and the December 12 elections to the Gujarat Assembly will put it to test.

The BJP, which has been in power in Gujarat for the past ten years, will look to the outcome of the polls to extract a vindication of its majoritarian agenda in other parts of the country. After having lost in the various States that went to the polls after the BJP-led NDA captured power at the Centre (Goa has been the lone State where the BJP managed to wrest power since 1998 while in Uttar Pradesh, though the party managed to cling on to power, the fact is that it lost the mandate in February 2002), the BJP's stakes in Gujarat are high and its leadership is in no mood to persist with its moderate pretensions. The party's deep commitment to the majoritarian agenda is only too clear from the fact that the BJP leaders (including the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee) have not bothered to restrain the VHP's storm troopers in the poll campaign in Gujarat. Notwithstanding the expressions against Mr. Modi and his role in the post-Godhra pogrom across Gujarat, Mr. Vajpayee has agreed to show up at the election meetings and it is clear that the BJP as a party no longer thinks it needs the liberal mask. The party is aiming at nothing but complete polarisation on communal lines as its election strategy in the State.

It is in this context that the Congress has emerged as a clear option for those people in Gujarat who value the pluralist and democratic traditions that are integral to the constitutional scheme of things. Rather than being a referendum on the BJP's record of governance (as it has been in the various elections to the State Assemblies in the past decade or more), the Gujarat polls have turned out to be a battle of two distinct notions of nation building and the Congress as a party is clearly the force at one end of the bi-polar contest. In this context, it is a pity that the Congress adopted a non-inclusive approach in its election strategy. It may be true that smaller parties such as the NCP, the Samajwadi Party and some of the smaller splinters of the socialist movement do not have much of a presence in Gujarat. But then, the contest could have been made far sharper if these platforms were stopped from floating what has now come to be known as the third front in Gujarat. The third front, after all, can gain (whatever little it may) only from out of the anti-BJP sentiments particularly after the systematic violence against the minorities. While it remains to be seen how far this will happen, the outcome of the December 12 elections will have implications on not just the shape of the polity in Gujarat but also on the political map across the country in the months to come.

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