Democracy's dark side
Mr. Narendra Modi has surpassed even optimistic forecasts made for the Bharatiya Janata Party's performance to win 117 of the Gujarat Assembly's 182 seats. Although the tally is 10 seats lower than it was in 2002, the BJP's vote is estimated to have marginally increased.
It swept three of Gujarat's four regions. It's only in central Gujarat, which saw the worst violence during 2002 -- and where the BJP had won 38 of 43 seats -- that it suffered big losses
The BJP's victory defies "normal" electoral arithmetic, based on caste, class, ethnicity and region. It's also unusual because the RSS and VHP didn't campaign for the party.
The BJP's return to power under Mr. Modi is a triumph of intolerance, communalism, hyper-nationalism, and ruthless social regimentation based upon hatred of the underprivileged. It represents a setback for democracy, public decency and constitutional values. But it cannot invest the BJP with legitimacy.
Mr. Modi has proved a diabolically successful demagogue, who can descend to any level to win votes. He set the ideological and political agenda, and ran a warlike hate-filled campaign, eclipsing other BJP leaders, including LK Advani.
The extensive use of the Modi mask by his followers only visually underscored the election's nature as a referendum on him. He won it unambiguously.
A great myth is that the election was fought over "development". In fact, Mr. Modi played the communal card from the beginning through the Ram Setu issue and "terrorism" -- shorthand for Muslims.
The communal tone became shriller when he shamelessly justified the cold-blooded killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh. But Hindutva shadowed the campaign all the way. Mr. Modi's very persona exudes communalism.
The Congress didn't mount a halfway credible challenge to Mr. Modi. It completely ducked issues concerning the 2002 violence, whose victims continue to be excluded and brutalised. It carefully avoided any reference to the pogrom, and to the state's culpability.
Since it came to power nationally, the Congress has done very little for the victims. In Gujarat, it adopted a "soft Hindutva" posture, and competed with Mr. Modi on his own terrain. Each time he cited Godhra, the Congress would invoke Akshardham.
Even worse, the Congress recruited anti-Modi BJP rebels, many of them deeply implicated in the 2002 carnage, such as former junior Home Minister Goverdhan Zadaphia. It give tickets to many, thus damaging its own secular credentials.
It's only in the very last leg of the campaign that the Congress took a spirited anti-communal stand, with Ms. Sonia Gandhi deploring the "merchants of death." But this came late and was unrelated to the party's basic strategy and most of its campaign.
There's speculation on whether Ms. Gandhi's remark cost the Congress loss of support. The loss was at best marginal. In any case, the remark was apt.
But Mr. Modi mounted a disgracefully dishonest defence of his violation of the electoral code of conduct and didn't tone down his murderous rhetoric even after the Election Commission mildly reprimanded him -- and in an unconvincing show of even-handedness, also snubbed Ms. Gandhi.
The Congress also failed to take on Mr. Modi on human development, poverty, income and regional disparities, and livelihood questions. Gujarat's high GDP growth hasn't helped abolish mass deprivation. As many as 74 per cent of its women, and 46 per cent of its children are anaemic.
Gujarat's society remains hideously iniquitous. Agriculture is thriving, but child labour is rampant in the fields. Hazardous industries flourish as nowhere else. Coercion drives growth through crony-capitalist Special Economic Zones and private ports, which involve forced land acquisition.
The Congress had no alternative to offer to such maldevelopment or to Mr. Modi's celebration of elitism. It failed to build on the gains it made in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when it won a majority of Assembly segments.
The only silver lining for the Congress is that it recovered its traditional base amongst the Adivasis. It did better where it distanced itself from BJP rebels, as in central Gujarat.
Its too-clever-by-half strategy of trying to win Leuva Patel support through the pro-Keshubhai rebels came a cropper in Saurashtra-Kutch, where the BJP improved its tally from 39 to 43 seats (of 58). Only one of the "rebels" won. So did only one of the 10 Kolis the Congress fielded.
Ultimately, Mr. Modi won because of his demagogic appeal based on militant Hindutva, Gujarati hubris, and a despotic personality that respects no democratic values, but is admired for its decisiveness.
Mr. Modi "gets things done" by any means. If Bt-cotton is to be promoted to please agribusiness, it'll be rammed down the throats of peasants -- no matter that 500 farmers have committed suicide. If fertile land is to be procured for a toxic chemicals plant, it will be forcibly acquired. If labour unions demand the minimum wage, they must be smashed.
The admiration this ruthless decisiveness evokes among the middle classes is similar to the spell that Hitler and Mussolini cast because of their "efficiency": the "trains run on time."
This speaks to a cult of personality, and of a quasi-fascist personality at that. Why else would thousands upon thousands of Modi supporters choose to suppress their own identities by wearing masks moulded after his face?
The bulk of the Hindu middle class doesn't feel even an iota of remorse for what happened in 2002. This speaks of a deep social pathology. Gujarat has clearly graduated from a Hindutva laboratory into a large-scale Hindutva factory under the longest spell of BJP rule anywhere.
Communalism serves many functions in Gujarat: disenfranchising Muslims, consolidating upper-caste domination, and enforcing oppressive social regimentation against the labouring poor.
Gujarat is one state where the upper-caste elite has successfully -- and violently -- suppressed any Dalit or OBC self-assertion since the 1980s.
Mr. Modi will now seek a larger, national-level role for himself. The Sangh Parivar will find it hard to contain him. That task has fallen to all those who believe in secularism, freedom and inclusive growth.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
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