NEW DELHI, 8 December 2002 — 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 center 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 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 to begin her campaign from Ambaji, a pilgrimage center? 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 and churches: That is a sign of respect for the faith of the people, and we are a deeply religious people.
But to politicize 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 realize 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 center.
As party president in that defining phase, L.K. Advani had pounced on Rajiv’s compromise with Muslims over the Shah Bano case, and turned the discourse to Ayodhya, from where it has not shifted (the Hindus 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, 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 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, 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 Patyia, the scene of the biggest massacres in the post-Godhra riots, is deliberately not mentioned by Congress leaders. Why?
Sonia 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 Modi and Sonia 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 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’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 learned 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’s “soft-Hindutva” line then? No. Narasimha Rao was president of the party then, and despite his colossal blunders of Dec. 6, 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 is still in power. I have my doubts about a Congress that cannot stand up to Modi, and honors him by imitation. It is chicanery to claim outside Gujarat that you want to destroy the evil of communalism by defeating 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 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 mesmerize; 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 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.
