[nukkad] Gujarat elections and the lessons - Pamela Philipose (IE)

[Sai (Indian Rediff) <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. 
-Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought this was a very lucidly written article. 

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=14948

Secularism as a dirty word
Why the Gujarat elections have made villains of us all
Pamela Philipose

Katzenjammer is a word not commonly used because of its
German provenance, but it sums up rather well the mood
at a time when the Gujarat pollquake has altered the
political landscape and flattened many a cherished
structure built with great deliberation over decades.
‘Katzenjammer’ means hangover, distress, depression. It
also signifies confusion.

It’s not so much the Modi/BJP victory in Gujarat but the
manner in which that victory was created that
distresses. It’s is not so much the Congress defeat but
the manner in which that defeat was fashioned that
depresses.

History has proved time and again that Hate and Fear
have been remarkably effective instruments in wresting
power. Remember Rajiv Gandhi’s famous victory of
December 1984, also gained after the riots that claimed
some 3,000 Sikh lives, when he rode to power on lines
like ‘Will the country’s border finally be moved to your
doorstep?... Why should you feel uncomfortable riding in
a taxi driven by a taxi driver who belongs to another
state?’

Of course, Modi/BJP went a step further this time. They
succeeded in portraying the Opposition Congress as the
Other, in regions where the We-They polarisation created
by the riots had set in. It was helped by the
politically constructed perception that ‘They’ were
seamlessly linked to Kashmiri separatists, jehadi
terrorism, Pakistani perfidy.

If I lose, said Narendra Modi on his gaurav trail, there
will be celebratory fireworks in Pakistan. In other
words, voting for the Congress amounted to a traitorous act.

The Congress had only itself to blame if it couldn’t
come back on this. It had willingly conceded the battle
for the mind long before it had begun. In fact, long
before that even, right from the days when the March
riots raged, the Congress was missing in action.

When it was required to defend the values it ostensibly
stood for, it preferred to mouth vague pieties, shut its
eyes and duck for cover. If it had done what it should
have, it would also have had the confidence to question
the gumption of the BJP in talking about security when
it had so clearly failed to provide it as the ruling
party at both the state and Centre.

It is difficult to believe that it was the cadres of the
Congress that had once stood vigil on housetops to
protect Muslim and Hindu mohallas from attack in days of
the Partition, that it was the leaders of this party
that had confronted the mobs and fasted for peace. In
Gujarat, today, the Congress run over by Modi’s rath,
wrung out by his wrath, has betrayed that legacy
completely and totally.

Ironical as this may sound, the party could learn from
Modi and his force multiplier, the VHP. They have
demonstrated between them what reaching out to the
people in a consistent fashion can do at the ground
level and nothing demonstrates this more eloquently than
the conspicuous success of the BJP in the tribal-adivasi
belt of Gujarat — a region that is contiguous with
Madhya Pradesh. Over the last three years, the VHP’s
Margdarshak Mandal has been extremely active here and
today it has a presence in almost every village. Then
again, look at the manner in which Modi made himself a
household name, using every communication device, from
the Diwali greeting card to the local newspaper, from
the compact disc to the internet, from video to
video-conferencing, to reach out to people,
unremittingly, tirelessly, day after day.

It’s all very well to talk of Gujarat as a laboratory of
Hindutva. But let’s not forget that such experimentation
requires a great deal of time, energy, money and
commitment. What has the Congress done in response,
apart from flying in Sonia Gandhi from time to time,
that is?

There is a larger point to be made here. We cannot
expect good ideas, or good values, something we perceive
as extremely valuable for the unity of the country, to
travel by themselves. They have to become a felt need,
they have to be internalised by people and become a part
of their lives. Take the simple concept of ‘secularism’
that has been so vilified in recent times.

What, after all, is it but a fundamental idea to connect
Indians — no matter their cultural and religious
diversity — with each other? Why does Praveen Togadia
reach for his trishul every time he hears the word
‘secularism’? Because he is intelligent enough to
understand that if his vision of a monolithic
religion-based order is to succeed, the accommodative
and inclusive vision of the country’s founding fathers
will first have to be defeated.

Within hours of the BJP victory in Gujarat, he had
declared that this was a vote against ‘the
pseudo-secularist ideology of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru’.
He went on to swear that his future exertions would be
focused on getting the people of this country to reject
this theory conclusively.

The worrying thing is that those who defend the idea of
secularism — and there are many in this country who
would do so if they perceived the term without blinkers
— are clueless about how to take on the Modis and
Togadias. Not just in terms of electoral strategies but,
more importantly, at the level of civil society.

Yet it is vital they do so, especially because the
interests of the politician and the citizen are not
always the same. While the politician, often with the
help of local mafia, may be tempted for the cynical
purpose of winning power to drive a wedge between
communities that have lived in peace for centuries; it
is the citizen — especially the poor and powerless —
that is left with the task of coping with the terrible
consequences.

The rest of us, therefore, need to search for ways to
rebuild the ground between extreme politics inspired by
Hinduism, Islam, or any other ideology. This engagement,
from all indications, is not a new phenomenon.

As political scientist Sunil Khilnani recently argued:
‘From the late 19th century, all Indian thinkers and
political figures faced a fundamental problem. How to
discover or devise some coherent, shared norms — values
and commitments — that could connect Indians together
under modern conditions, that would define a public
sphere for Indians?’

Gujarat demonstrates how important it is for India that
this process continues. 

________________________________________________
Get your own "800" number
Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more
http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To join/leave, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html