The Hindu Business Line : Modi magic worked; what now?

"HINDUTVA. Hindutva. Hindutva". This was the first response of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) chief, Mr Sankersinh Vaghela, on the spectacular victory the BJP has pulled off in Gujarat, managing to win 126 seats — a clear two thirds majority in a House of 182 — against the Congress-I's 51 seats, much less than what any opinion or exit poll had given to the Congress. The BJP has improved on the 117 seats it had in the last assembly.

This is clearly the BJP's Gujarat strongman, Mr Narendra Modi's moment of triumph and it is obvious that his high voltage Hindutva campaign did work wonders for the party. Of course BJP's spokesman and General Secretary, Mr Arun Jaitley tried to keep a brave face and said that this was the entire party's victory and mandate for the good governance given by the BJP in the last four and a half years, and it was not due to any "Hindutva campaign."

But this is far from the truth. An indication of the BJP's poor standing on the good governance front could be seen in the pre-Godhra era when it was routed by the Congress-I in the district Panchayat elections, and even the Municipality elections, losing its long held bastion of the even the Ahmedabad Corporation. The dip in the State's economic indices — Gujarat's slippage from the position of one of the most industrially developed States of India, increasing unemployment, growing pollution, small businesses suffering even before the communal mayhem and the most recent of all, the co-operative banks scam in which thousands of middle class people lost their lives savings — hardly pointed to an effective administration.

The pattern of the victory and the BJP's making huge gains in Central Gujarat where the communal riots were the most vicious after the Godhra carnage, as well as its onslaught on the hitherto Congress-dominated tribal belt in central Gujarat, do point to Mr Modi's acerbic campaign having worked. His linking the Congress with Pakistan and maintaining that a Congress victory would be celebrated by Mian Musharraf had paid a rich dividend. As Mr Nirlesh Kothari, a visiting faculty member of the Anand-based IRMA told Business Line in a telephonic chat, "The results show that the Hindutva wave has, indeed, worked. They were able to create a fear psychosis in the minds of the people that only Mr Modi was the saviour of the Gujarati Hindus, and with no other saviour visible to the people, they have obviously bought that theory." On Mr Vaghela's soft Hindutva strategy failing to make a mark, he said that his having been a former RSS and BJP man was effectively exploited by the BJP. "The Congress-I chief, Ms Sonia Gandhi, did make a mark in her campaigns but the Congress, which does not have any other charismatic leaders, was not able to build on the response Sonia Gandhi got in her meetings." He fears that the next three to four months will be crucial for Gujarat on the communal harmony front and expects "minor communal clashes in this period. But coming to whether Gujarat will finally get the governance it deserves, the BJP has no other option because the Lok Sabha elections are not too far away and the new government's performance will come up for scrutiny then."

Mr Girish Patel, founder of the Lok Sangarsh Samiti, anda vocal critic of Mr Modi for his administration's role in the communal riots in March this year, finds the results "very depressive, but not surprising. It is unfortunate that Mr Modi and his brand of Hindutva have snatched a victory at a very heavy cost... over 1,200 lives lost, thousands of people injured and thousands of crores worth property destroyed. However big a victory, it does not absolve his government from the crimes committed." But he does not think this is a lost cause. "Even though a bad signal for the rest of the country, I don't think this experiment can be replicated in other parts of India, because the people will reject it. However, this victory is bound to encourage some VHP and BJP elements from indulging in some adventurism elsewhere, but I don't think they'll meet with much success."

In a way, this election has also thrown up the anti-incumbency factor, though in a limited way and in regions which were not affected much by the riots. In Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP's bastions, the party did make some losses and the Congress-I made gains there. But this election also has a telling story from the tribal belt of Central Gujarat. This has been a traditional Congress-I stronghold, which has been neglected by successive Congress MLAs. But over the last 10 years the VHP and even the RSS cadres have been quietly working in this area, reaching the tribals the benefits of the government schemes meant for them. Add to this the tribals having been encouraged, perhaps for the first time, during the March 2001 riots to "show Muslims their place in a Hindu samaj" and loot their homes and property in an answer to "years of exploitation". Small wonder then that the BJP has done so well in the tribal areas of the State. Above all, the BJP's biggest gain seems to have come from its leader's campaign that unless Gujaratis return the BJP to power with a huge mandate, the State will become a hot bed of terrorism and another Kashmir. That seems to have really done the trick.

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Modi magic worked; what now?