It looks like just any other neglected, public park. You are likely to miss the austere ashram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat where Mahatma Gandhi spent critical years of his life, if you are not especially looking out for it. There’s nothing to suggest this had been once the command center of India’s freedom movement.

Gandhi lived in this ashram on the banks of River Sabarmati for 16 years after his return from South Africa. And some of the momentous decisions, from the Dandi March to the civil disobedience movement that revolutionized India and changed the course of history, were made here.

This is where the Hindus and Muslims and the Nehrus and Azads joined hands and stood shoulder to shoulder to fight for a common cause, under Gandhi’s watchful eyes. The charkha or wooden wheel that Gandhi used to weave coarse cotton fabric called “khadi” in protest against foreign rule and firangi imports and the desk on which he used to work sitting on the ground have been preserved for posterity.

Hridaya Kunj, as the cottage is called, is located in the center of the sprawling ashram, which is also home to a museum and a library of books on and by the Mahatma.

The museum chronicles well the life and times of the man lovingly called Bapu or the father of the nation. But this is a father abandoned and forgotten by his children. The ashram is a testament to the indifference that his people have come to develop for Gandhi’s outlook. The whole complex has gone to seed, literally.

There are hardly any visitors around. The few you run into are mostly foreigners. No wonder Gandhi’s ashram has become a love nest of sorts with many a young couple sitting around, exchanging sweet nothings.

The Gandhi ashram falls within the limits of Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency from where BJP’s Advani is seeking re-election.

The party has for the first time nominated the 81-year-old as its prime ministerial candidate, pitting him against the aging Manmohan Singh as well as Rahul Gandhi, the young son of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

This time around, says my Gujarati friend, no candidates from Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency, the state capital, or other neighboring constituencies have come to seek the Mahatma’s blessings. Perhaps, I try to reason, it has something to do with the maddening heat that is driving me a little crazy too.

Indeed, Gandhi and his teachings are hardly on any one’s mind in this election. Not even in the land where the apostle of nonviolence was born. In fact, the only agenda of the world’s biggest election this year is that there is no agenda.

This maybe why this election has become the most unpredictable and uncertain vote in the country’s history. If those who have completed five years in power are uncertain about retaining it beyond May 16, the opposition appears even more nervous. Anything could happen and anyone could clinch the top job.

I am not sure if this bankruptcy of issues and ideas is good or bad for the country. But at least this election is not being fought on an agenda of hatred and divide-and-rule. For the first time in its history, the BJP is talking about real issues like inflation and employment instead of resorting to regulation Muslim-bashing. Even Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s fire-spitting satrap increasingly being projected as a future prime minister by a doting Indian media, has been uncharacteristically silent on his favorite punching bag. But even if Modi was kind enough to lay off Muslims in his rabble-rousing speeches in these elections, his love affair with the “Mians,” as he often calls them, refuses to end.

After ordering the special investigative team to go after Modi and his ministers and top officials for their role in the 2002 pogrom, the Supreme Court has now instructed the Gujarat government to set up special courts to fast track the riot cases. Predictably, Modi sees the court intervention as a conspiracy of Congress and “Sonia Ben” as though judges of the highest court in the land were on the payroll of the governing party.

Meanwhile, the people at the heart of this debate are as bewildered as ever. The Gulbarg Society, the scene of much action on Feb. 27, 2002, is not very far from Gandhi’s ashram. This is where Ehsan Jafri, a former member of Parliament, was hacked to pieces and then set on fire as the top cops and officials looked the other way. Nearly 60 people, including women and children, were butchered or burned alive in the street that fateful day.

Jafri’s widow, whose petition prompted the court to issue last week’s orders, has moved to Surat. But the Jafris’ place and the whole lane has become a sort of ground zero for Gujarat’s Muslims. Curious visitors regularly turn up to have a dekko at the remains of what used to be a lively neighborhood.

At one end of the narrow lane is a little mound. This is where Jafri’s charred remains were buried by a local imam and others. It’s not easy believing this bestiality could have taken place so close to Gandhi’s ashram, a place that has come to celebrate and represent love, peace and kindness.

More tragic is the deepening gulf between the Hindus and Muslims.

This must be the only Indian city where people don’t wear their religious or cultural identity on their sleeve.

The two communities that have coexisted in peace and harmony and share strong emotional and cultural bonds spanning over centuries today live and work in two different worlds. More important, no effort is being made to bridge the divide. Of course, you can’t expect the politicians to turn healers. India’s vibrant civil society — intellectuals, artistes, media as well as ordinary people — may be better able to heal the wounds of the past and help reconciliation.

Kudos to the nation’s independent judiciary that has been proactively driving efforts to bring justice to the 2002 victims. While politicians continue to play their little games standing over the dead, India’s courts have time and again come forward to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

It’s this strength of the country’s institutions that makes the world’s biggest democracy also its greatest. This is why the Muslims of Gujarat, and of India, still hope that they will get justice some day — sooner or later.

Meanwhile, if Modi is indeed as smart as I think he is, he would repent and reach out to the Muslims by acting against those responsible for the 2002 outrage. This is the only way to prove his own innocence, if he is indeed innocent as his party claims. This is the way to heal Gujarat’s festering wounds. As Gandhi would tell you, there can be no peace without justice.

— Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator and can be reached at [email protected]