AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI, 16 December 2002 — The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s poll strategy of dividing Indians on religious lines has paid rich dividends in elections in the western state of Gujarat. The Hindu fundamentalist party yesterday returned to power in the state with a two-thirds majority. In elections held Thursday, the party won 126 seats in the 182-member assembly. The opposition Congress party received 51.
In Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s commercial capital, as well as in the capital New Delhi, huge crowds gathered at BJP offices, cheering, setting off firecrackers and dancing in the streets at what many saw as an unexpectedly good result for the BJP and its controversial chief minister, Narendra Modi.
But violence broke out in parts of the state and curfews were put in place in two areas of the town of Baroda, 120 km (75 miles) from Ahmedabad. Police said one person was killed after celebrating BJP activists and Muslims clashed in Baroda, while there were incidents of stone-throwing in Ahmedabad as the BJP candidate went on a victory procession.
“The people of Gujarat have given a verdict in our favor. I thank them for this,” Modi said. “This is a defeat for pseudo-secularists,” he told a victory rally of 40,000 people. Modi assured the state’s minority Muslims, hundreds of whom were killed in sectarian violence early this year: “The new government will belong to not only those who voted for it, but also to those who did not.”
A dejected Shankersinh Vaghela, the leader of Congress in Gujarat, said: “People are supreme in democracy and they have chosen to go with the communal lines of the BJP.” He said the BJP’s strong showing was a victory for “hardcore Hindutva (Hindu way of life) politics.”
Praveen Togadia, general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said Gujarat “has turned out to be a graveyard for secular forces”.
Political analysts said the results could force the BJP to move to the right nationally, using the same hard-line Hindu platform in a string of upcoming sate elections and a national election due by 2004.
