For Congress, secularism is a dead horse in Gujarat

The way the Congress went after Narendra Modi, calling him maut ka saudagar, one thought secularism was its to die-for principle, to be nurtured for all times to come. To ensure it, the party would sacrifice anything. There could be no better battleground for this than Gujarat. But that hardly seems to be the case anymore. We now have it from no less a person than Rashid Alvi, official spokesperson of the grand old party, who said the riots of 2002 would not necessarily be a major issue in the campaign for the elections to the State Assembly elections due in 2014. [caption id=“attachment_274715” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi. Image courtesy ibnlive.com”]  [/caption] Such tectonic shifts would not have come about simply because Alvi wanted to make an off-the-cuff at his media briefing because he had nothing else to say to grab space in the print and airtime on TV. It can only be a well-thought out decision, all the pros and cons properly weighed, with the state-level leadership of the party involved. The coming assembly election is not going be to an ordinary one for Narendra Modi. Even the Bharatiya Janata Party is hardly likely to even toy with the idea of Modi not spearheading the poll campaign, or even suggest that any other person can or would be the chief minister. The BJP’s best bets — what with Time magazine touting him as business-like development man — rest with this man. At this moment, there are no caveat emptors with that party. Unless Modi himself opts out for better opportunities at higher levels or takes time off to write his autobiography. Think of it, such a thing would be interesting for his followers deify him and his rivals paint him in sordid colours. A man of few words, he may have something interesting to say about himself in his own words. What takes the cake is the point made by Alvi. The Economic Times quoted him at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday as saying, “It is not necessary that the 2002 riots will be an issue. Whatever happened in 2002 was very shameful. We do not want to politicise such incidents.” We need to get one thing clear. If there is anyone who is fighting relentlessly for secularism in this country, it is not the Congress. Nor for that matter, any other political party, bar the rigid, doctrinaire Left parties, the CPI and the CPM. People like Mulayam Singh Yadav have their own strange notions, as was evident from what he told me at a brief conversation days after the NDA did its Pokhram II. The conversation went somewhat like this: Me: Vajpayee government could not have pressed the button unless preparations were fully made for the blast. It is not possible to have started from scratch soon after them coming to power. That means the government of which you were the defence minister had rolled the ball long ago. Mulayam Singh Yadav: The only problem is we’d have used the blast for secularism. They did it for communalism. I am still scratching my head to make sense of that averment. But it seems that he was blathering. This conversation was soon after he addressed a press conference organised by Abu Azmi, at the Ambassador Hotel, Churchgate, Mumbai. Now back to the Congress, and it does not want to politicise the riots. Has that party tried ever to apply the salve and bring the communities together, there in Gujarat and elsewhere, or has it, by looking at everything through the ‘us versus them’ prism, only widened the chasm where it existed? This Alvi view, not contradicted so far, only implies that it is indeed the official view point of the Congress, cleared from the top, for run-ups to any elections, state or national. Foundations have to be laid well in time to craft strategies failing which, losses are on the plate. It is a fact that all of Gujarat does not love Narendra Modi, for there are enough Congressmen to critique him. It is also a fact that Narendra Modi’s reprehensible conduct during the riots – it is yet to be established if he was actively promoting the riots targeting Muslims or was, Nero-like, allowed the place to burn – is as responsible as the Congress in polarising the state. Congress seems to have realised that the secularism it has been touting in Gujarat is providing diminishing returns and that its brand of secularism is only anti-Modi rhetoric, not cutting any ice with the voters for it to be a serious plank any more. Apparently, in so far as Gujarat is concerned, the 2002 riots is already a dead horse. So it would not berate Modi for his deeds, misdeeds, or non-deeds of 2002 and thereafter after the burning of the train at Godhra. It would thus, hopefully, help cool the air a bit so that even those who back Modi because the Congress says he is the devil incarnate, may moderate their stand to begin asking if it should it have happened at all – first the heartless arson in Godhra and the mindless but retaliatory violence across Gujarat. Gujarat has had a number of communal riots and has learnt to live with it. Riots are cyclical, and I had seen how venomous the two communities can be when reporting the 1985 riots which saw a combination of caste issues due to Madhavsinh Solanki’s unbending stance on reservations and an unexplained riots. I also saw, till the 2002 riots began, that the two communities had backed down. They did not love each other perhaps, but they kept a business-like relationship till Godhra happened. But there hardly has been a phase of a communal divide that lasted a precise decade as has been since 2002. Blame the politicians for that. And don’t bless the Congress for wanting to stand down now. It comes not because of any lofty ideal but out of convenience. That convenience is also called expediency.