Gujarat overcomes politics of ‘revenge and reprisal’

Soon after I landed in Ahmedabad this time, I asked the auto driver who would win the election. The prompt reply was ‘Congress’. The talkative driver went on to say that he had never voted for Congress. “I always voted for BJP but this time my vote will go to the Congress”.

I took the statement with a pinch of salt. On all earlier visits the same question had elicited the opposite response. Perhaps he was a Muslim or else he, recognising my accent, may have thought this would be the politically correct response. My experience of conducting surveys has trained me to be a sceptic and not take responses always at face value.

But over the next few days as I spent time with all kinds of people and visited different places, I began to wonder at the wave of intense anger against BJP throughout Gujarat. Or, was it my wishful thinking? Am I seeing what I want to see, and register what I want to register, or has Gujarat changed? Even now after my return from Gujarat, I don’t have a definite answer.

I had gone to Gujarat to help friends who had created a platform for safeguarding Democracy, the ‘Lokshahi Bachao Andolan’. My responsibility was to generate content and also address mohalla meetings. One late evening I asked a friend to take me out for coffee. Since I had not gone out of the office for two days, it was an excuse to get some fresh air. It was quite late and proper coffee shops were close, but roadside dhabas, illuminated with colourful lights were still celebrating life. We decided to stop at one, and have tea.

There were many groups sitting on charpoys (Khat) in the open space. It was like going to an orchard, where birds come back to their nests in the evening and chirp loudly. My friends Bharat and Dev, knew one or two persons in each group. I was impressed at their popularity. After shaking hands with all of them we had to settle down with one such group. I was told that this was a group of influential Patidars.

The discussion turned towards politics. All of them were anti BJP, agitated and emotional about the Patidar movement. They wanted Congress to win this time and teach a lesson to the government. As usual, the conversation was dotted with creative swear words. I had told them that I didn’t follow Gujarati, but every time the intensity of emotions increased, conversation slipped into Gujarati, and as it lessened, intuitively the conversation rolled back to Hindi. With tea I was enjoying a perfect Hindi-Gujarati harmonic wave.

Once when the conversation reached its high-pitch-Gujarati peak, all of them began speaking at the same time. What I could follow vaguely was that the role of Congress was under scrutiny; they were complaining that Congress was not putting in enough energy into the campaign. Suddenly, a Patidar, not more than 35 years old, broke the crescendo of heated discussion, addressed me directly, in accented Hindi and said, “Sir, my family and I have always voted for BJP. I could not even imagine voting for anyone else. For the first time I am going to vote against this party, I still can’t believe that I am going to do it. BJP is in our blood. I can assure you that my finger will naturally go to Kamal button, I will have to force it to press the button next to the Congress symbol; but I also assure you that this time, come what may, I will force my finger to vote for Congress.”

This young man was probably 20 years old in 2002. Was he used by RSS and BJP to kill and burn houses? Has he changed? Or is he just angry with them ? I could not gather the courage to ask these questions.

The second incident happened at a petroleum outlet. Dev had taken me out for lunch on his motorcycle. On our way to a restaurant, he stopped to fill the fuel tank. The queue was not too long but there were five or six motorcycles ahead of us. He, very deliberately, started discussing price rise with me, obviously in Hindi. He joked about it and others who were in the line before and after us, smiled approvingly. As our turn for filling in the tank came, he asked the attendant holding the nozzle what the rate was that day. The man loudly began to abuse the BJP and the government for the mess they had created. In a loud voice he dragged Modi, Ambani and Adani into his argument and openly used swear words.

I was not only shocked but also scared. A few years back such an incident would have triggered a riot in Ahmedabad. The oil pump would in all probability been set on fire. I still remember, in a market in Ahmedabad, when my son asked Shabnam, ‘where is abbu’, the shopkeeper at once began loudly informing people that a Muslim family had come shopping. We had to rush to our car and leave the place.

Whenever I come to Ahmedabad I am reminded of March 2002. It is always painful. After the carnage, the city passed through a prolonged period of trauma. All Hindu dominated localities had been cleared of Muslims, and yet people would not sleep at night even in these localities. Night vigil kept them awake. Rumours engineered by RSS ruled the roost.

I have always maintained that the ultimate target of fascists is to instil fear and a sense of siege in the majority community. Attack on minorities is just a stepping stone. Gujarat carnage and its aftermath confirmed this assertion. Those, especially the youth, who were used by RSS to kill, rape and burn were scared of backlash and revenge. They were sacred of Congress. RSS kept the kiln of fear afire, they actively propagated that if Congress returned to power they would be hunted and put behind bars and may even be hanged.

It seems this fear has taken 15 years to subside. Communal and caste fault lines are pushed into background once again. The reason is two- fold. First, Price rise; rampant privatisation of education and health sector, demonetisation and GST have pushed people to the brink of poverty. The second reason is that despite losing confidence in the EVM, people still believe they can teach a lesson to the BJP government.