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Congress is BJP's B-Team in Gujarat by M.J.Akbar
Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has a great deal of hair for a man of his age;
it is long, even luxurious and slickly combed. Within those hirsute
waves lies hidden, at the centre of the skull, a special tuft: the
classical mark of a believing Brahmin.
Many Brahmins have given up this tradition, more out of embarrassment
rather than denial. The tuft is not considered modern. But Dr Joshi
has an ancient tradition to defend. The Joshis are ‘uccha koti’
Brahmins, of the first rank (lower ranks of the caste include Brahmins
who till the land, or those who preside only over the death
ceremonies).
The Joshis, Pants and Pandes came originally from the Konkan region of
Maharashtra and settled in the Kumaon hills of the Himalayas. The
reasons for migration are lost but common practices remain: the manner
of the thread ceremony for instance, in which the Vedas are read for
three days, and the anointed Brahmin asks for bhiksha, gets his hair
shaved and ears pierced. These were the Brahmins in charge of a
people’s knowledge, prayer and ritual.
If the voters of Gujarat want to vote for Hindu qua Hindu, who do you
think they will choose between a Kumaon-Allahabad Joshi like Murli
Manohar Joshi and an Italian-Indian Roman Catholic like Sonia Gandhi.
Or between a svelte Gwalior-Brahmin orator like Atal Behari Vajpayee
and a heavily-accented Sonia Gandhi?
So why has Sonia Gandhi chosen to chase Narendra Modi’s tail in
Gujarat? What is this me-too Hindutva all about? The Congress election
strategy in this crucial election is incomprehensible, even if one
uses nothing more esoteric than common sense. Who advised Sonia Gandhi
to begin her campaign from Ambaji, a pilgrimage centre? What signal
was she sending? That she was a devout Hindu? That the Congress was a
party of only devout Hindus? I have no problem with candidates
visiting temples, mosques, dargahs and churches: that is a sign of
respect for the faith of the people, and we are a deeply religious
people. But to politicise religion is quite another matter. To make
Hindutva your central message is to surrender to the BJP even before
the battle has begun.
You do not have to be a Clausewitz to realise that you never fight on
a battleground of the enemy’s choice; you select a field where you
have the advantage. That is elementary, dear Congress. Hindutva is the
BJP’s strength. Governance is the BJP’s weakness, and
misgovernance includes permitting, if not abetting, the post-Godhra
riots. This mistake is reminiscent of the mistake Rajiv Gandhi made in
1989, the first election to witness the emergence of the BJP as a
national force that could make a bid for power at the Centre. As party
president in that defining phase, L.K. Advani had pounced on Rajiv
Gandhi’s compromise with Muslim fundamentalism over the Shah Bano
case, and turned the discourse to Ayodhya, from where it has not
shifted (the pilgrims who were brutally torched in Godhra were
returning from Ayodhya). Instead of staying with the Congress
ideology, hewn, tested and implemented through a century of trauma,
Rajiv Gandhi, acting on the advice of R.K. Dhawan, decided to open the
campaign for the general elections of 1989 from BJP territory, both
physically and mentally. He went to Ayodhya for his first speech. With
that gesture, the debate entered the BJP’s space. The Congress lost
just enough seats in 1989 to bring the BJP within striking distance of
power. In a very real sense the Congress has not recovered from 1989.
Just when the party was showing signs of recovery, Sonia Gandhi has
repeated this mistake.
The Congress strategy of "soft-Hindutva" reeks of cynicism and
contempt: cynicism about its ideology and contempt for the voter.
The cynicism is evident everywhere. Sonia Gandhi, as president of the
party, has permitted her candidates to treat Muslims as lepers.
Congress candidates and leaders shy away from being seen with Muslims
in localities that are predominantly or totally Hindu. In many places
Muslims have been told to keep away from Congress offices. Why? Why is
the Congress also feeding the hatred that has been created against
Muslims? In their campaign speeches, Congress leaders and candidates
skirt around the post-Godhra violence and accuse Narendra Modi of not
being able to protect Hindus at the Akshardham temple, which was the
victim of vicious terrorist violence. Naroda Patia, the scene of the
biggest massacres in the post-Godhra riots, is deliberately not
mentioned by Congress leaders. Why? Sonia Gandhi believes that the
Muslims have no option except to vote for her, so why bother about
them; she must woo the Hindus by becoming a saffron Congress.
If the Congress is going to be the B-Team of the BJP why should the
voter not stick with the real thing and vote BJP? Why elect the fraud?
There is real identity between Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi in one
critical perspective: both believe that the Hindu voter is communal,
and can only be persuaded by a communal dialectic. The implications of
this strategy stretch far beyond this election. The Congress under
Sonia Gandhi has decided to abandon secular politics in Gujarat and
imitate Modi, albeit without Modi’s unique extremism. It is a
difference of degree and not content. No wonder Jawaharlal Nehru’s
face is missing from the lineage of Congress leaders on Congress
posters, although Sonia Gandhi’s is included: Nehru called dams and
steel mills the temples of modern India. Nehru would never have
buckled, as his successors have done.
It is not as if Nehru and the Congress did not face such dilemmas. It
seems to be forgotten that the first general election was held after
the horrible massacres and hatred of the partition riots. In
hindsight, and with knowledge of the Congress’ huge victory, we tend
to forget that the Congress leadership was worried about the Hindu
vote in the north in 1952. In Jawaharlal’s own constituency,
Phulpur, the Opposition had put up what might be called a Hindutva
candidate, a rabble-rousing swami whose main objection to Nehru was
that he ate beef. Nehru treated this candidate with arrogant contempt,
but other Congress leaders were worried. Did this change Nehru’s
position on the Hindu-Muslim relationship? If anything, he redoubled
his campaign against fundamentalists of all hues, whether Hindu or
Muslim.
Congress memory need not go as far as 1952. It could have learnt
something from 1992. Digvijay Singh, who has kept away from the
Gujarat campaign, officially because of his state’s differences with
Gujarat over the Narmada dam, could have told his party how he won the
elections in Madhya Pradesh in 1993, in the shadow of the post-Babri
riots and passions. Did the Congress take Sonia Gandhi’s
"soft-Hindutva" line then? No. Narasimha Rao was president of the
party then, and despite his colossal blunders of December 1992, when
he slept while the Babri mosque was demolished, he never succumbed to
the temptation of borrowing from the BJP. The Congress stuck to its
traditional commitment to secularism. The BJP was stunned when it
discovered that the voter did not want to thank the party for helping
to demolish the Babri mosque. Digvijay Singh is still in power. I have
my doubts about a Congress that cannot stand up to Narendra Modi, and
honours him by imitation.
It is chicanery to claim outside Gujarat that you want to destroy the
evil of communalism by defeating Narendra Modi; and to indulge in a
variation of his communalism inside Gujarat.
In any case, is success the only measure of ideology? Supposing the
Congress does well by imitating Modi. Does this mean that the Congress
should rewrite its values and convictions?
Strange as it may sound, a similar problem attends the BJP. What would
be the consequences of a substantial victory for Narendra Modi? If
Modi gets a thin majority, which is all that every sensible senior
leader in the BJP is hoping for, then Modi should be worried. If Modi
gets a bumper majority then the BJP should be worried.
Modi is an ideologue, with a difference. The difference is hysteria.
It is an edgy hysteria, which can mesmerise; and it easily melts into
the kind of megalomania that makes a politician believe that he is
serving the larger good through a destructive frenzy against a
perceived enemy. In Hitler’s case, the enemy was the Jew; in
Modi’s case the enemy is the Muslim. Such a politician is not a
fool; in fact, he may have a high degree of intellect. But it is
intellect unleavened by reason, and untempered by humanism. If Modi
wins big, he will immediately seek to make the whole of the BJP a
version of his Gujarat experience. He is already visibly contemptuous
of the senior leadership of his own party. One reason why Advani got
poor crowds was because Modi wanted to prove to his official boss that
in Gujarat, it was Modi who ran the show, not anyone from Delhi. Modi
will mount a challenge within his party, and get some support too; he
will dream of becoming Prime Minister of India after a national
victory fashioned through the Gujarat rhetoric. He will depend on
terrorists to supply him with Godhras elsewhere in India.
The flaw in the dream is that long before Modi gets anywhere near
Delhi, he will have destroyed the BJP.
Will the Congress never learn that there is nothing called "soft"
fundamentalism? However, there is something called a soft mind. The
Congress ploy in Gujarat is too clever by half. And the voter is not a
fool.
Gujarat in the last month of 2002 has become a state holding an
election that no party deserves to win. That of course makes Gujarat a
loser. ENDS
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