NEW DELHI, 25 December 2007 — Elected unanimously yesterday as leader of Gujarat BJP legislature party, 57-year-old Narendra Modi will be sworn in today as the chief minister by Gujarat state Gov. Naval Kishore Sharma in Gandhinagar. The ceremony, earlier scheduled for Dec. 27, is being held today to coincide with former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s birthday.
With memories of Gujarat-2002 carnage still afresh, in which over 2,000 Muslims were killed, Modi’s return to power has, nevertheless, not evoked any outright condemnation from Gujarati Muslims.
“The community is happy because there has been no large-scale violence during the last five years,” said Amin Sayyed, a community leader from Panigate locality of Vadodara.
“Muslims believe in peace. We in fact say Modi should continue for next 10 years — we are benefiting from the economic boom. There were 78 shops run by Muslims in Raopura locality (of Vadodara), now there are 122 of them.”
Pointing to Modi’s campaign being devoid of comments targeting Muslims, Sayyed said: “He did not talk about Godhra (2002 train burning tragedy which led to communal violence) or revenge.”
Though it is not clear, whether Modi’s development-oriented campaign won him Muslims’ votes too, now that he is in the saddle rather than lash at him, Muslims would prefer that he sticks to this goal, the benefits of which would reach them to.
The election results show only a marginal increase in representation of Muslims in Gujarat Assembly. The five Muslim candidates fielded by Congress party, who have won, are: Javed Pirzada (Wankaner), Gyasuddin Sheikh (Wankaner), Faruque Sheikh (Kalupur), Sabir Kablivala (Jamalpur) and Iqbalbhai Patel (Vagra). In the 2002 assembly elections, Muslim candidates had registered victory from Kalupur, Jamalpur and Vagra constituencies. The BJP had not fielded any Muslim candidate.
Muslim survivors of 2002 strife, who are still forced to live in rehabilitation camps, are not at all pleased. They view Modi’s return as denial of justice for them.
As expressed by Ayeshabibi: “Now we do not know if we will ever get justice. His government has done nothing for us in five years, what do we expect from him in next five years?”
Meanwhile, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has begun interacting with her party leaders to analyze as to what went wrong with their campaign. The move of creating a split in BJP by giving tickets to BJP-rebels has also failed. Only one of the seven BJP rebels, Bauku Unghad from Babra who crossed over to Congress has won. The two Congress leaders who had crossed over to the BJP — Neema Acharya and Pabubha Manek — have won the elections from Anjar and Dwarka respectively.
