Gujarat and Karnataka: Soon to be poll-bound and united in communal cleaving

Is it a coincidence that Gujarat and Karnataka, going to polls soon, witnessed communally cleaving events during the current round of Assembly elections

Is communal cleaving still the weapon of choice for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to win an election?

The poll process underway in the five states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur suggests so, as does the 'build up' going on in states due for polls next - Gujarat in December 2022 and Karnataka mid-2023.

What is common between Gujarat and Karnataka? Both are BJP ruled states, and both are currently the 'staging' areas for the cleaving forays in the election-bound states.

Emanating from Karnataka, 'hijab' has hogged headlines nationwide, while in Gujarat, civic bodies targeting street food carts selling non-vegetarian fare made news in November. Similarly, if the murder of a Bajrang Dal activist in Shivamogga, Karnataka, this month was a "jihadist conspiracy" by an "Islamist" organisation which led to statewide protests by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), so was an inter-religion shooting and death in Dhandhuka town in Gujarat in January, a trigger for similar Gujarat-wide demonstrations by sister outfits of the Sangh Parivar.

Interspersed are many incidents that include charges of conversion against The Missionaries of Charity, Vadodara, and numerous Muslims for similar activities towards their faith. Cops routinely 'unearth' links to subversive organisations, ensuring headlines. Conversion to Hinduism is labelled 'home-coming' while from it to another faith, an offence. Discriminatory use of the Disturbed Areas Act, the anti-love jihad laws enacted in 2003, amended in 2021 with some of its sections struck down by the Gujarat High Court subsequently, keeps the judiciary busy and the news pages occupied.

Also Read -- UP polls: How diminished are BJP's returns after phase five

Is it a mere coincidence that in an era of over-arching media reach, these two states, which themselves will be going to polls soon, were witnessing communally cleaving follow-up of events in the run-up to as well as during the present elections? Uttarakhand, part of the current poll process, already had a hate-spewing 'Dharma Sansad' at Haridwar last December.

If the BJP is a radically altered outfit today and has enjoyed its longest-ever continuous stint in power at the Centre, the credit goes singularly to Narendra Modi. But it was Gujarat that nurtured this one time Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak on deputation to the BJP, who had never even contested a panchayat election before he was appointed chief minister. It assented to his leadership with a record 13 year plus stint and saw him off as prime minister in 2014. He, in turn, cradled Amit Shah, who, past his ordeal behind bars, is the country's Home Minister today. Much of what is being implemented countrywide was experimented with in Gujarat and evolved as the Gujarat Model. And that includes the theory of 'how to influence people and win elections' through a cut, cleave and conjoin process.

Karnataka remains the uneasy but the only BJP gateway to the South. The BJP is stuck at the gates where the pendulum has been oscillating between the Congress, the Janata Dal and itself. The 2018 Vidhan Sabha elections saw the BJP secure the highest seats but stood outnumbered by the Congress-JD combined tally, so did what it is now best doing - poaching through muscle, might and money. It thus has a government there. Elsewhere, Puducherry is a sleight of the hand which will slip the day BJP loses its central perch. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana remain distant dreams.

The March 10, 2022 results to Uttar Pradesh and four other states are a critically vital barometer to test the prime minister's timbre for the all-important 2024 Indian election orchestra. But more importantly, it will prove how many strings of Modi's mandolin stand soiled by over-use. A quarter-century of ruling Gujarat and a quarter of this quarter in the national saddle, the Narendra Modi-led BJP has yet to develop a surefire solution other than this incendiary mix.

Appointed Gujarat chief minister in 2001, Modi first evolved this poll potion in the aftermath of the Godhra train carnage and the communal violence that followed, leaving over a thousand people dead, predominantly minority community members.

The polarising experiment began with his statewide Gujarat Gaurav yatra of 2002 and has been a constant part of the BJP poll battle plans in election after election in Gujarat thereon. After Modi's elevation to lead India, its national replication began post the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. His backroom boys have worked out numerous permutations and combinations of this nationally destructive but electorally productive theme.

Nevertheless, what was once a potent force multiplier, no longer seems to carry the element of surprise in poll warfare. At least, that is what appears to be the biggest takeaway from the frenzied poll campaigning underway in Uttar Pradesh so far. Its overuse seems to have made it predictable, even jaded, allowing the opposition to devise effective counter-measures as the Akhilesh Yadav-Jayant Chaudhary combine has done in Western Uttar Pradesh where the BJP had swept the region in the 2017 elections through pure polarisation after the communal violence of Muzaffarnagar.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah's desperate cleaving effort when he initiated his door to door campaign with a visit to the displaced Hindus of Kairana or Chief minister Yogi Adityanath's 80-20 per cent talk hinting at the Muslim minority and alluding to the opposition siding with terrorist elements remain some of many cogent examples. Interspersed are recorded and reported speeches of his party MLAs threatening to turn beards into chotis and skull caps into tilaks, even seeking disenfranchisement of Muslims.

The prime minister wasn't found wanting either. Addressing a rally in Kanpur Dehat, he charged the opposition with preventing Hindu consolidation. "Is this democracy? You are openly saying you want to divide Hindu votes. Then whose votes are you trying to gather," he questioned. The intention of all these remarks is evident, and the Election Commission's response expectedly juiceless, a far cry from the times of chief election commissioner (CEC) T N Seshan, who made the most powerful of politicians shiver in their boots.

Gujarat has been termed the laboratory of political experiments from the times of the Mahatma to Modi. Ironically, it was then chief minister Narendra Modi's Gujarat Gaurav Yatra of 2002 where hawking of hatred was turned into a fused art of obfuscation. His speeches would be littered with references to "Miyan Musharaff", though the identified target was minorities. The speeches carried references galore to "hum panch, hamare pachees" or the one which said, "Should we run relief camps? Open child producing centres?"

Modi's own police intelligence chief R B Sreekumar wanted polls postponed and was sidelined. The then CEC, James Michael Lyngdoh, was pronounced with an extended drawl to underline his Christian identity and linkage to "Italian' Sonia Gandhi" and her Congress party's conspiracy to defame Gujarat. The elections that followed in a polarised Gujarat provided him with a steamroller majority and a confirmed conviction that the formula works, so the unhindered replication to this day.

And so, when hate hangs heavy, be sure, it is election time in present-day India.

(The writer is a veteran Ahmedabad-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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