Gujarat Assembly Elections: Obnoxious showdown of ‘RAM’ and ‘HAJ’

The BJP poster that described the Gujarat election as a face-off between “RAM” and “HAJ” said it all. “RAM” proclaimed the valour and virtue of the blessed trio – the chief minister (Vijay) RUPANI, AMIT (Shah) and (Narendra) MODI, collective embodiment of the Ramayana epic’s heroic divinity. Across the great divide, HARDIK (Patel) of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti, ALPESH (Thakore) the OBC leader, and JIGNESH (Mevani) who represents Dalits made up the mleccha “HAJ” although all three are indisputably Hindu. They have never set foot in Mecca, nor are they ever likely to.

Obviously, the opposition – meaning the Congress Party – was equated with Muslims. This was of a piece with all those baseless tales that saffron ideologues have tried to spread over the years about the alleged Muslim ancestry of both the Nehrus and the Gandhis. The more worrying factor is that Muslim is equated in this narrative with all that is low and despicable, “neech” in a sense that Mr Modi chose to misinterpret Mani Shankar Aiyar’s very different use of the word. It took no perspicacity to grasp that a Ram vs. Haj contest meant a battle between the pure and impure, between the dwija or twice-born and the mleccha or outcast. Never before has the religious polarisation of Indian politics been more starkly defined, with the supporting rhetoric not only emphasizing the importance of Hindus and Hinduism but, by implication identifying Muslims with Pakistan, and therefore, – given the current climate – branded an enemy of India.

Mr Modi’s charge that his predecessor, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the former vice-president, Hamid Ansari, were somehow hand in glove with the Pakistanis to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party and make Ahmed Patel chief minister of Gujarat highlighted the level to which campaigning had sunk. The slur on the revered Dr Singh was despicable. Mr Ansari, a respected career diplomat before being elected vice-president, is prima facie entitled to sue for damages. The charge against Pakistan was almost a diplomatic casus belli since no evidence was adduced. What was worst was the implication that Mr Patel – Mr Modi’s derisory “Ahmed Miyan” – had no business aspiring to be chief minister, and that his elevation to that post – once held by Mr Modi himself – would be a national threat. Emphasising the danger, mysterious posters that the Congress disowned, suddenly appeared a couple of days before voting exhorting Muslims to vote for the Congress to ensure Mr Patel became chief minister. It sounded like a criminal conspiracy to install a bogeyman. Yet, Mr Patel was a four times Member of Parliament, and acted as political secretary to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, then Congress president. He had every right to aspire to be the next chief minister.

Mr Patel was then the state’s only Muslim MP. Now there are three others, all Congressmen. The Congress fielded six Muslim candidates compared to seven in 2012. The BJP has never fielded a Muslim candidate for assembly polls. Of the three victorious Muslims, Imran Yusufbhai Khedawala is a first-time MLA who defeated the sitting BJP legislator, Bhushan Bhatt, in the Jamalpur-Khadia seat by 29,339 votes. A contributory factor for the outcome may have been the withdrawal from the fray of Sabir Kabliwala, who had divided the Muslim vote in 2012. The two other newly-elected Muslim MLAs are both veterans of the 2007 and 2012 elections – Shaikh Gyasuddin Habibuddeen from Dariapur (Ahmedabad) and Pirzada Mahamadjavid Abdulmutalib from Wankaner.

Had the Rajindar Sacchar committee or an equivalent body examined the election results, it would have pointed out that three MLAs hardly do justice to a community of more than 50 lakhs which constitutes 9.67 per cent of the state’s population, but remains on the fringes of electoral politics. They were barely seen or heard, even though the numbers indicate that Muslims are a significant factor in 30 out of the 182 assembly constituencies. Perhaps Gujarat’s Muslims are themselves beginning to feel irrelevant since their vote fell this time to 68.59 per cent from 72.17 percent in the previous assembly election.

Even Rahul Gandhi’s canvassing speeches seemed to ignore the Muslim presence. As a relatively young man, he could directly have appealed to the 51.92 per cent of Gujarat’s 4.35 crore voters who are in 18-39 age group (many voting for the first time) to think of themselves as Indians and not only Hindus. In his first speech as party president, Mr Gandhi did describe the difference between the BJP and his Congress. “They divide, we unite,” he declared. “They ignite fires, we douse them. They show anger, we show love”. But earlier on the election stomp, he said nothing to indicate either support for minority rights or for the Constitutional sanction for the secular ideal. There was not a single mention of the hideous bloodbath of 2002. There was no expression of sympathy for or solidarity with the sufferings of Gujarat Muslims since 2002. He seemed to acquiesce in the political message that Muslims are second-class citizens in Gujarat. No wonder Hindu zealots call the state the laboratory of the future. It’s the nursery where their majoritarian philosophy is being tried out.

It is possible that being relatively new to the challenge of leading his party in an election on which the eyes of the entire nation were fixed, Mr Gandhi shied away from doing or saying anything that might have been deemed provocative or cost his party votes. Conscious of sneering comparisons with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, embarrassed by the vicious anti-Muslim innuendo of the electioneering rhetoric all round him, worried by mischievous allusions to his party’s stand on the Ayodhya controversy, and by constant references to Allauddin Khilji and Padmawati, he tried to play safe. That meant projecting himself as an Indian-Hindu version of what Americans call “a regular guy”.

He visited no fewer than 25 temples, smeared tilaks on his forehead, draped turbans on his head, and was photographed clutching a miniature image of the goddess Durga. He also claimed that he and his “family” were “Shiv bhakts”.  Mr Gandhi emphatically did not visit mosques or churches. Whether or not all this posturing convinced voters that he is as pious a Hindu as Mr Shah or the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Adityanath, it certainly rattled the BJP which feared he was stealing its saffron clothes. But as the heir to a legacy that straddles the mainstream of Indian life, Mr Gandhi cannot afford to be just a BJP clone. Even in defeat, his Congress has re-established itself as a party that can resist the juggernaut of majoritarian politics and uphold the values of secular, consensual, democratic politics. That is, in fact, Congress’s only raison d’être. Mr Gandhi cannot afford to jeopardise it.

The writer is the author of several books and a regular media columnist.