JEDDAH, 16 May 2004 — As a young backpacker Luke Harding found India charming and eccentric. Fifteen years later, he returned as The Guardian’s correspondent. After finishing his time there in September 2002, he recalled how one terrible incident of secular violence in Gujarat brought his love affair with the country to an end.
“I can identify the moment I fell out of love with India quite precisely,” he wrote in his last article from India in The Guardian. “It happened at the end of February 2002. Riots had just broken out in the western state of Gujarat, after a group of Muslims attacked a train full of Hindu pilgrims, killing 59 of them. In Gujarat’s main city, Ahmedabad, Hindu mobs had begun taking revenge on their Muslim neighbors — there were stories of murder, looting and arson.”
In a book of essays titled “India in Slow Motion,” Mark Tully says there is something about India that defies logic. One moment the country descends into anarchy, the next it comes out of the mess with much of its reputation intact.
What happened in Gujarat in the summer of 2002 was that moment of anarchy, when everything seemed over for a country that had prided itself on its non-violent Gandhian ideals. Commentators started comparing it with Rwanda, Khushwant Singh wrote “The End of India,” and the mainstream English-language press wrote endlessly about the atrocities committed by the state against minorities, most of them women. Yet that mass murderer Narendra Modi scored a stunning victory in the assembly elections that followed. That was the lowest point in the country’s history. Indians abroad hung their heads in shame.
Yesterday, India that is Bharat — a euphemism for the rural heartland where a majority of the one billion Indians live — struck back at those who had mauled its reputation. In voting the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance out of office, it said no to the proponents of Hindutva and their doublespeak.
The party had suddenly warmed up to Pakistan, even as average Hindus in India started to believe the proud Indian Muslims were a kind of Pakistani fifth column. Even victories in cricket matches over Pakistan were somehow linked to the so-called “feel good” factor.
The ruling alliance also tried to gloss over dozens of corruption scandals, the most important being the defense scandal that Tehelka captured on video. The link went straight up to Defense Minister George Fernandes. But it was Tehelka that found itself faced with a barrage of lawsuits, its editors hounded by various arms of the government. Not a single person involved in the scandal was convicted.
The BJP was shameless. One thing glued the coalition together, but it was a powerful glue: Power, and the money that came with it. History books were changed on a whim. India’s secular credentials were consigned to the dustbin. As the ruling coalition pumped millions into its “India Shining” campaign, farmers in the rural heartland were committing suicide.
But voters were biding their time, waiting to turn the lights out for the shining for the government that had let them down. And they did. Almost all of Vajpayee’s Cabinet colleagues were roundly defeated.
The party generated so much fear among ordinary Indians that even yesterday a lot of them were worried that a BJP in opposition is a recipe for disaster. There will be riots on a grand scale, they feel. The BJP will move further right, they say. Yes, that can happen. Communal riots are a political reality in India; there have been worse riots under the Congress dispensation. But there is a difference between riots and ethnic cleansing, and what happened in Gujarat was a genocide in which the state took an active part. Under Congress and the Communists, the state will not be a direct party to any conflict between the majority and the minority. That is the difference. And that is where Indians of all hues have won.
The hero of the moment is Laloo Prasad Yadav. Ridiculed and abused, he bore the brunt of the Vajpayee government’s vindictiveness. He posed a very simple question to the people of Bihar. Would you like to be in Bihar or Gujarat? There is no comparison between the two states: Gujarat is very rich and Bihar very poor. But the flame of secularism burns the brightest in the dark alleyways of Bihar, and people are burned alive in the gleaming cities of Gujarat.
Indians overwhelmingly chose Mahatma Gandhi over Nathuram Godse. They chose Bihar over Gujarat, Laloo over Modi, Sonia over Vajpayee. Perhaps this could be the beginning of a new love affair for Luke Harding.
