The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Saturday, December 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India

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50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

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M A I N N E W S

Will BJP make it this time?
Girja Shankar Kaura
Tribune News Service

Ahmedabad, December 6
Will the BJP do it again?
This is the question in the minds most of the people here in this affluent city of Gujarat which goes to poll on December 12 amidst charges and counter-charges being traded between the two main political rivals — the BJP and the Congress.

While the Narendra Domodardas Modi-led BJP will be looking to retain its hold on the state which has been trouble-torn not only in the recent past but even before that, the Congress will be looking at making a come back in Gujarat. The Congress ruled the state for almost 35 years since its inception in 1960 and it was only as late as 1995 that the BJP was able to break the Congress stranglehold.

Whether or not many will like it, the fact is that it was the rathyatra taken out by at present the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, in 1989 and its culmination in the demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 that helped the BJP make inroads into the Congress bastion.

Riding high on the Hindutva wave and revival of the Hindu sentiments, especially since Gujarat provided a large number of karsevaks during the demolition of the Babri masjid, the BJP finally came to power under two-time Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel in March 1995. Since then the state has come to be known more for being the “laboratory of Hindutva”.

Except for a month and a half’s break, the BJP has managed to stay in power ever since then despite many a controversy which have dogged it over the past seven years.

More recently, allegations of irregularities in the relief work for the victims for the quake which hit the state in the year 2000 and the carnage after the killing of 56 karsevaks in the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 28 have rocked the BJP government in Gujarat.

The carnage which went on for days claimed the lives of thousands from the minority community and all that the government said was that it was a natural lashback rather than organised killing of those from a particular community.

From among the BJP chief ministers, there have been five of them in a short span of seven years. Mr Modi has been the most controversial especially due to the turning of a blind eye by his government to the carnage that went on after February 28.

He has in fact come to be one of the most hated by many here and even most admired by others who feel that there was nothing wrong in what he did post-Godhra. For most, who had been suppressing their feelings of “Hindutva”, he is the “new mascot” of the BJP.

If nothing else, that will go to the credit of Mr Modi than dividing the state along the communal lines. His recent remarks have only further deepened the divide which the BJP hopes to take advantage of to come back to power in the state which it feels is the real “Hindu state”.

Incidentally, imposition of President’s rule on five occasions so far has been one of the marked features of Gujarat. Frequent outbreaks of communal violence and feelings against a particular community have played a vital role in determining the path of politics in the state over the years.