[sacw] SACW #2 | 18 August 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire #2 | 18 August 2002

__________________________

#1. Pakistan: Interview with Ayesha Jalal on secularism, two-nation 
theory, Jinnah, Kashmir, and history as a discipline in the 
Sub-Continent.
#2. Indian Starts a Campaign Against Cash for Militants (Barbara Crossette)
#3. India: EC Does It - Resisting the BJP, the EC goes by its own 
reality check in Gujarat and says no to an early election (Murali 
Krishnan)
#4. India: Gujarat: Every Day Lost Is A Hindutva Vote Lost (Darshan Desai)

__________________________

#1.

The News on Sunday
The News International (Pakistan)
August 18, 2002
Political economy
first person

Ayesha Jalal: a qualified attitude of analysis

By Mohammad Shehzad

There is no history teaching in Pakistan as such. Students are taught 
the ideology of Pakistan with the result that Pakistanis in general 
have several peculiar ideas about history

Dr Ayesha Jalal is a Pakistani historian of international repute 
whose books on the history and culture of the Sub-Continent have 
consistently overturned previously held assumptions. She received her 
BA from Wellesley College in 1978 and her Ph D from Cambridge in 
1983. She was an associate professor of history at Columbia 
University, and is currently professor of history at Tufts University.

Jalal is the recipient of MacArthur Genius Award. Her works have 
explored creation of the Pakistani State, its struggle to become a 
democracy, India-Pakistan relations, and current changes in Muslim 
identity in the face of modernity and globalisation. She specialises 
in decolonisation, problems of sovereignty, identity, citizenship and 
democracy, Islam, and women and the State. She has been consistently 
publishing articles on these issues in the national, regional and the 
international press.

In a recent interview with Political Economy, Jalal gave her 
enlightening comments on secularism, two-nation theory, Jinnah, 
Kashmir, and history as a discipline in the Sub-Continent. Excerpts 
follow:

PE: Why is secularism treated like a dirty word in Pakistan?

AJ: The term is misconstrued in Pakistan to mean la-dini or 
non-religious, even anti-religious. So it has such negative 
connotations for certain segments of Pakistani society. The term 
originated in Britain where religion played an important role in the 
formation of national identity. Being secular in Britain never meant 
being anti-religious. The term used for someone opposed to religion 
was 'atheist', and 'atheism'--NOT 'secularism'--was the ideology of 
antagonism towards religion.

PE: Even religious parties such as the Jamaate Islami and the Jamiate 
Ulemae Hind demand secularism in India, but their counterparts in 
Pakistan oppose it vociferously. Why is that so?

AJ: Largely because the term is misunderstood and used without 
attention to its meaning in specific historic contexts. In India, 
secularism came to be associated with the Congress' claim to an 
inclusionary nationalism in which Muslims would have equal rights of 
citizenship in addition to freely practicing their religion, albeit 
in the private domain. So when the Jamiate Ulemae Hind demands 
'secularism', it is demanding rights for India's Muslim minority in 
substance, and not just in the formal constitutional sense. By 
contrast, in Pakistan, secularism entails derailing the religious 
parties' agenda to establish their supremacy in the political sphere 
and, thereby, over the State apparatus.

PE: Sometime back, in an interview with the daily Jasarat, the organ 
of Pakistani Jamaate Islami, the chief of Indian Jamaate Islami 
defined secularism as "non-discrimination on the basis of religion". 
Isn't that a good definition?

AJ: Secularism means much more than 'non-discrimination on the basis 
of religion'. As I pointed in a recent series of articles published 
in The Daily Times, it is useful to make a distinction between 
secularism and secularisation. Democratisation is an inherent part of 
the process of secularisation. However, in view of my answer to your 
earlier question, it is obvious why the chief of Indian Jamaate 
Islami defined 'secularism' the way he did.

PE: The creation of Pakistan meant that both India and Pakistan would 
live in peace. Do you think the two-nation theory (TNT), in this 
context has failed?

PE: The notion that there were two nations in India--Hindu and 
Muslim--emphasised differences at the expense of a shared cultural 
and historical experience. It was the failure to work out political 
accommodations based on a power sharing arrangement between the 'two 
nations' so that they could live with each other despite their 
religiously informed cultural differences, which led to the partition 
of India. A bitter and painful experience, it was hardly conducive to 
'peace'. If anything, it institutionalised the differences, making it 
even more difficult for the nation-states of India and Pakistan to 
live with each other in a spirit of mutual respect and accommodation.

PE: In one of his columns, journalist Ayaz Amir wrote that the events 
of Gujarat have vindicated the TNT. If the killing of 800 Muslims in 
Gujarat has proven the truth of the TNT, doesn't the killing of 
thousands of Bengali Muslims in 1970 disprove it?

AJ: This is a rather simplistic reading of the TNT. As I have shown 
in my book Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South 
Asian Islam, the communitarian discourse of the two nations was not 
always in accord with their political practice. There were class, 
regional and ideological differences between members of both the 
Hindu and the Muslim communities. Bigoted and violent actions of a 
section of one community against the other cannot be allowed to 
implicate the entire community. In any case, the TNT is not a 
mathematical theory that can be proved or disproved by a generalised 
reading of historical events.

PE: Do you agree with the notion that partition sowed the seeds of 
permanent hostility between India and Pakistan?

AJ: To some extent it did institutionalise the differences which bred 
hostility between members of the Hindu and the Muslim communities. 
But then even institutions are wont to change over time and there is 
nothing inevitable or permanent about Indo-Pakistan hostilities.

PE: Is it true that Jinnah did not want partition, and that he wanted 
to use this demand to extract maximum concessions from the Congress?

AJ: The demand for a Pakistan aimed at securing an equitable share of 
power for Muslims in an independent India should not be confused with 
the partition of India based on the division of the Punjab and Bengal 
along religious lines. Jinnah remained opposed to a partition of the 
two main Muslim-majority provinces until the very end.

PE: At the time of Jinnah minorities, particularly Ahmadis, did not 
face any discrimination. Jinnah himself appointed an Ahmadi as his 
foreign minister. Why has life been made miserable for them now?

AJ: Jinnah took an inclusionary view of the Muslim community/nation 
and did not endorse the opinion of those who even in the 1930s wanted 
to ostracise the Ahmadis from the Muslim community. The reasons why 
there has been instutionalised discrimination against Ahmadis since 
the mid-1970s can be found: 1) in the pre-independence history of 
Punjabi Muslim politics and 2) the exclusionary variant of the 
discourse on the Muslim community/Pakistani nation, which completed 
its ascendance in Pakistan during General Ziaul Haq's regime.

PE: Did Pakistan make a mistake by accepting Junagadh's accession to 
Pakistan? Did it undermine Pakistan's principled position on Kashmir?

AJ: In a formal sense, accepting Junagadh's accession did make it 
more difficult for Pakistan to justify its claims on Kashmir. But in 
substantive terms, India under Jawaharlal Nehru would never have 
agreed to parting with Kashmir simply because it had a 
Muslim-majority.

PE: Is it true that the tribal invasion of Kashmir (October 22, 1947) 
forced the Maharaja's hand and he ended up acceding to India, 
otherwise he was in no hurry to do so?

PE: It certainly provided India with the pretext it needed to force 
Maharaja Hari Singh's hand. The more important reason why the 
Maharaja's dreams of a sovereign Kashmir came to naught were the 
dynamics of the British decolonisation process in the Sub-Continent. 
Neither the Congress nor the British were prepared to view the lapse 
of paramountcy as conferring the right of sovereign status to 
princely states in India.

PE: How do you view the present and future status of history as a 
discipline in Pakistan? Please also comment on the status of social 
sciences at the higher education level in the country.

AJ: There is no history teaching in Pakistan as such. Students are 
taught the ideology of Pakistan with the result that Pakistanis in 
general have several peculiar ideas about history. Taught to 
regurgitate what is in the prescribed Pakistan Studies textbooks or 
given to them in the form of dictated notes by the class teacher, the 
younger generation considers history a frightfully boring discipline. 
Some think history is about learning names and dates. At the same 
time there are those who bemoan the absence of history teaching in 
Pakistan, but have utterly dated notions about historiography. 
Without a present to speak of, the future of history as a discipline 
in Pakistan can hardly be a promising one. The social sciences also 
suffer from ingrained biases against the liberal arts in Pakistan. 
State controls the politicisation of higher academic institutions and 
the scarcity of both resources and qualified faculty has meant that 
such social science research as is done in higher educational 
institutions of Pakistan is not of high standard. There is also a 
serious problem of a gap in knowledge systems and almost no effort to 
keep up with intellectual developments at the international level.

PE: How objectively or otherwise has history been written in 
Pakistan? Prof K K Aziz says that history has been distorted and 
mutilated in Pakistan. How far do you agree with him?

AJ: I agree entirely. I would only add that the distortion and 
mutilation of history in Pakistan is not just restricted to 
inaccurate facts or acts of omission and commission. The deeper 
problem of history as a discipline are the ideological biases of 
state-sponsored nationalism and the rigid bureaucratic infrastructure 
in place to ensure its promotion and preservation at all levels of 
the educational system.

PE: How many historians of international repute has Pakistan produced 
so far? How has India fared in comparision?

AJ: Very few, but then that is hardly surprising given the fate of 
history as a discipline in Pakistan, to say nothing of the 
sub-standard education imparted to students in several institutions, 
both public and private. India, on the other hand, has done much 
better with the result that South Asian history as it is read, 
interpreted and understood in the West is primarily an Indian 
dominated enterprise.

PE: Do you think history books in Pakistan are full of hatred against 
Hindus? Are Indian textbooks the same as far as Muslims are concerned?

AJ: Some of the history textbooks that I have seen do inculcate 
anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices. Until quite recently, India in 
the name of secularism desisted from circulating textbooks maligning 
Muslims. But no such restraint was shown towards Pakistan. An Indian 
student can learn to be anti-Pakistan without hating Muslims in the 
interest of Indian secularism. With the BJP's rise to power, things 
have taken a different turn in India, but not without stiff 
resistance from historians as well as sections of the media.

PE: Have you ever thought of teaching history in Pakistan, where it 
is most needed?

AJ: I believe that I do teach history in Pakistan through my books. 
It may be that I will teach at some institution in Pakistan in the 
future. Given my own background and qualifications, I try to reach 
students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I do, however, 
think, that the balanced teaching of history, not just of Pakistan 
and South Asia but also of the world, is of vital importance for 
students between the ages of twelve to sixteen.

PE: What is the definition of a historian? A senior bureaucrat 
(retired) said at a public seminar that you are not a historian but 
an interpreter of the history. Do you agree with this statement?

AJ: You should have asked the retired bureaucrat the question and not 
me. As a historian, I research, record and interpret the past. For me 
that is enough to make me a historian.

_____

#2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/international/asia/18HIND.html

The New York Times
August 18, 2002

Indian Starts a Campaign Against Cash for Militants

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

Shabnam Hashmi never imagined herself leading an international campaign
until she came from New Delhi to New York in July to implore Indian-Americans
not to send money to militant Hindu organizations in India that she says are
leading the country away from secularism into Hindu nationalism and religious
violence.

What put Ms. Hashmi on the road with her one-woman tour -- she spoke in a
telephone interview from Atlanta after stops in the Midwest, Texas,
California and Seattle -- were the Hindu attacks on Muslims in the state of
Gujarat beginning in late February that left hundreds dead, according to
Indian government figures. Independent Indian and international human rights
groups have estimated that at least 1,000 people were killed, possibly 2,000
or more.

The attacks on Muslims in Gujarat and the destruction of 360 mosques followed
the killings by Muslims of 59 Hindu activists who were returning on a train
from the ruins of a mosque in Uttar Pradesh that had been destroyed by Hindu
mobs in 1992.

The anti-Muslim violence also raised concern among some American experts on
India, who now echo Ms. Hashmi's fears, especially because India's national
government is led by a Hindu nationalist party.

"The response has been very good," said Ms. Hashmi, a Muslim by birth but an
agnostic now. Her message about the dangers of condoning or supporting mob
violence, as the Indian news media report is done by Hindu nationalist
politicians and their backers in the United States, draws on a painful
personal history. In 1989, her brother, Safdar Hashmi, a street theater
director and writer, was killed by a hired mob after he lent his support to
striking industrial workers in India. She started a foundation in his memory
to aid artists and intellectuals.

Ms. Hashmi and her husband, Gauhar Raza, a government scientist who also
makes documentaries, went to Gujarat in April and came back with a 30-minute
video, "Evil Stalks the Land," which intertwines footage from the history of
Hindu fundamentalism and interviews with survivors of the Gujarat massacres.

Ms. Hashmi returned to Gujarat to spend three months talking to victims. She
says that she believes hundreds of women were raped and that many of them
were killed by Hindu militants in the kind of systematic assaults that
characterized ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda.

"There are a lot of Indian-Americans who are very disturbed at what's
happening in India," Ms. Hashmi said. "But at the same time, the amount of
money that is being pumped from America into these right-wing organizations
is terrible."

She echoed the conclusion of India's Human Rights Commission in citing the
World Hindu Council, along with other national and local Hindu organizations,
as among the groups responsible for the attacks in Gujarat. The council has
denied any link. Ms. Hashmi said Indians in the United States had to guard
against the possibility that groups here were funneling money to militants.
She urged Americans in and out of government to start investigating
organizations that might be supporting anti-Muslim terror.

In Washington, Robert M. Hathaway, director of the Asia program at the
Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, said Indian journalists were producing
enough evidence of the complicity of Hindu nationalist organizations and
their ranches abroad in the killings in Gujarat to demand some response in
the United States.

"Indian journalists seem to have uncovered some very damaging and what look
to me to be persuasive ties between fund-raising activities in the United
States and some of these groups who had some shadowy role in the Gujarat
violence," Mr. Hathaway said. But he added that for Americans the evidence
was still secondhand, "which is why I thought it would be useful to have some
sort of
investigation by people who do have the ability to look at financial
transactions and transfers."

In testimony in June to the United States Commission on International
religious Freedom, a body created by Congress, Mr. Hathaway, formerly the
South Asia specialist for the House International Relations Committee, was
critical of the extremely low-key reaction in Washington to the Muslim deaths
in Gujarat.

"Friends of India should have taken the lead in raising this on the floor of
Congress, with a constructive initiative, not some bash-India
initiative," he said. "Something that says, `If things like this were to
happen on a frequent basis, that does undermine the public and
political support in this country for the creation and maintenance of this
new relationship with India.' "

Mr. Hathaway also told the commission that the American ambassador in India,
Robert Blackwill, should have gone to Gujarat in the wake of the violence. It
would have sent a message, he said, "that we do care about Muslims as well as
going after terrorists."

_____

#3.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=1&fodname=20020826&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29

Outlook
Magazine | Aug 26, 2002
COVER STORY

EC Does It
Resisting the BJP, the EC goes by its own reality check in Gujarat 
and says no to an early election
MURALI KRISHNAN

Eventually, it took Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) J.M. Lyngdoh 
and his two fellow election commissioners three days of hot-footing 
in riot-ravaged Gujarat to nail Chief Minister Narendra Modi's lie 
about normalcy in the state. Their visit came close on the heels of a 
nine-member EC team's tour in Gujarat to assess the ground situation 
in 11 sensitive areas of the state which were witness to the worst of 
the post-Godhra riots. The team's conclusion was unambiguous: "No 
elections before rehabilitation."
In fact, early elections in Gujarat have now been officially ruled 
out. The EC plans a third visit to Gujarat but for now has clearly 
spelt out why free and fair elections cannot be conducted in Gujarat 
in the immediate future.

This decision has virtually dashed Modi's hopes of holding early 
polls and cashing in on the communal polarisation following the riots 
in the state (see Every Day Lost is a Hindutva Vote Lost).
Refraining
from announcing any poll schedule, the EC enumerated the following 
reasons for not holding early elections:

* Displacement of a sizeable section of the population has 
taken place from riot-affected areas;
* Revision of the voters' list is essential and it will take time;
* Rehabilitation of riot victims has been sadly inadequate; and
* The minority community continues to live in fear.
Ever since Modi dissolved the assembly in July and pressed for early 
polls, the EC has been resolute that it would not buckle under any 
BJP pressure and be pushed into holding early polls. This, despite 
the constant heckling by senior BJP leaders who've gone so far as to 
say that the EC has no option but to conduct early elections.
Through all this, the EC has stuck to its guns. In fact, it has been 
extremely critical of the ineffectiveness of the Gujarat 
administration in restoring normalcy in the state. Senior bureaucrats 
and police officers were at the receiving end of a severe 
tongue-lashing from Lyngdoh for doing little to protect, let alone 
better the condition of the riot victims.
Lyngdoh's tone and body language during his Gujarat visit was an 
indicator of the shape of things to come. On his return to Delhi, the 
CEC testily declared, "It was quite muddy there as you must have seen 
from the pictures...it was literally muddy."
>From the very outset, Lyngdoh was determined that the EC should gauge 
for itself whether conditions in Gujarat were conducive for the 
conduct of free and fair polls. It is for this reason that the CEC 
factored in all aspects of the post-riots situation to draw his own 
conclusions. "We had a check-list to determine if the poll-worthiness 
of Gujarat was in place," a poll official of the first team told 
Outlook. The salient points on that check-list were:

* Scrutinise voters' list to see if those missing from 
riot-affected areas had returned;
* Check if identity cards and other verification papers were in 
place to establish the identity of voters;
* Assess the level of rehabilitation provided by the Gujarat 
government to riot victims. To wit, were houses rebuilt, 
compensations paid and are localities secure;
* Inquire whether intimidation of traumatised voters continues 
since this may come in the way of their exercising their franchise 
freely and fearlessly.
* Gauge the extent of displacement of riot victims; and
* Establish the number of cases registered by the police 
against politicians and rioters.
On all six counts, the EC team discovered that action was woefully 
lacking. Precious little had been done by the state election office 
to update voters' lists after the riots. The state government's 
record in rehabilitating victims and providing succour to those 
affected by the communal carnage was also very poor.
Fear and uncertainty of their future, the poll panel found, loomed 
large over the members of the minority community, who were unsure 
whether immediate elections were the answer to their problems. Their 
anguish was both physical and psychological. Having been driven out 
of their homes, they had no address to speak of.

And the trauma of what they went through was still to wear off. 
Observes an EC official: "We were meticulous in our task. When we 
made unscheduled stops, we found that the situation was certainly not 
conducive for holding elections."
Moreover, the draft electoral rolls in Gujarat, after a door-to-door 
enumeration in November last year, were to have been submitted to EC 
scrutiny on February 27-the day Godhra happened. But all the work 
done came to naught because of the riots that followed. The EC team 
discovered that the voters on the list were not in the localities 
they once inhabited or in the relief camps they were supposedly 
staying in.
Adverse conditions still prevailed in many of the assembly 
constituencies visited by the EC teams. Whether it was Godhra or 
Dahod, where the poll panel's counsel S.K. Mendiratta conducted a 
stock-taking, or in Bhavnagar and Kheda, where deputy election 
commissioner A.N. Jha's team fanned out, or even in Mehsana and 
Sabarkantha, there was a subterranean yet unmistakable message-anger, 
insecurity and alienation were the dominant feelings of the common 
people and these were conveyed to the visiting EC teams. Alongside, 
there were also desperate pleas for financial help.
Though the EC is yet to arrive at an exact figure on the actual 
displacement in Gujarat, guesstimates are that the demographic 
balance is likely to have changed in at least 65 assembly 
constituencies. "Over 12 districts were badly hit in the riots and 
almost 1,000 villages affected in all," says a poll official. Which 
means some 35 lakh voters from the Muslim community may not be able 
to exercise their franchise were elections to be rushed through.
In fact, officials in the state secretariat told Outlook that it 
would be difficult for the state government to justify assembly 
elections at this stage. The postponing of panchayat elections thrice 
in the Gandhinagar taluka, Banaskantha and Kheda (scheduled to have 
been held in March 2001) give away Modi's double game and put paid to 
his definition of free and fair polls. Whether it's the drought, the 
earthquake, the communal riots or the current monsoon season, the 
Gujarat government has its excuses ready for not conducting panchayat 
elections. They were first called off in March for three months, then 
again in June for a further three months.
The state government's own order of March 13 on the postponement is 
telling. "The state is affected on account of the recent widespread 
communal disturbance which has resulted in loss of life and property 
and resulted in a number of families migrating from panchayat areas. 
In the present circumstances, it is not possible to hold free and 
fair elections of the district and taluka panchayats in the state."
Officials also point out that the state government had not provided 
the EC team figures on the number of people who have returned to 
their homes. Says an official: "The government is on record stating 
that an exhaustive survey would be needed to ascertain if everyone 
has come back." Gauging the pulse in Ahmedabad and Vadodara, Lyngdoh 
and the two commissioners were able to arrive at a fair assessment of 
families yet to be rehabilitated. "You can imagine what could have 
happened had we fanned out and visited other places as well," remarks 
a poll official.
Like the earlier EC team, Lyngdoh and his two commissioners refused 
to follow the itinerary drawn up by the state administration.The CEC 
and his team visited camps, shanties, shelters and remote localities, 
resulting in a barrage of reprimands to the administration from the 
CEC. Vadodara's deputy commissioner Bhagyesh Jha was publicly 
criticised for deliberately misleading Lyngdoh on details of the Best 
Bakery tragedy where 12 persons were killed, whereas bureaucrats and 
police officials too were castigated in an hour-long closed-door 
meeting at the state guest house.
"Cut short the rhetoric on police action and give me details about 
deaths during the riots," he demanded of the city police commissioner 
D.D. Tuteja. "Have you arrested or taken action against any MLA or 
MP?" Lyngdoh continued. And when additional director general 
(intelligence) R.B. Sreekumar interjected to say, "If we have to hold 
elections, we require more forces." Pat came Lyngdoh's reply. 
"Reconcile this for me. You say the situation is normal and yet you 
require more security forces!" The state chief secretary G.S. Suba 
Rao was not spared either. Refusing even to shake hands with him, 
Lyngdoh refuted strongly the top official's claims of normalcy 
returning to the state. "You call this normalcy? Have you seen the 
relief camps? Why don't you spend some days there?" Lyngdoh thundered.
And this was what cemented the EC's decision not to allow early 
elections in Gujarat. In doing so, it has proved that the commission 
is above political pressure, applies its own mind and conducts 
elections only when it is convinced that conditions are conducive for 
free and fair polls. In the EC, it seems, the BJP as well as Modi 
have finally found their match.

_____

#4.

Outlook
Aug 26, 2002

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020826&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=2
GUJARAT
Every Day Lost Is A Hindutva Vote Lost
Delayed polls would mean Modi losing out on the Godhra advantage
DARSHAN DESAI

His rhetoric resounding with repetition, stamina exhausted, 
government set to be relinquished and now the very purpose for doing 
all this seems to be slipping out of his hands. And with it time, his 
password to political survival, is fast flitting away. For Gujarat's 
beleaguered Chief Minister Narendra Modi, every day lost is a Hindu 
vote lost.
There is more than one reason why CEC J.M. Lyngdoh's delaying an 
early poll will upset Modi's applecart. First, it would dilute the 
already petering Hindutva effect, the reason for pushing for early 
elections. Then, it would provide dissidents in the party more time 
to spread their wings.
Ditto for the rejuvenated Congress which, under its new chief and 
Modi's bete noire Shankersinh Vaghela, would have much more time to 
organise itself. Vaghela has electrified Congress workers, who are 
stunned to see him marshalling huge crowds in BJP bastions. The new 
Congress chief is raising issues on the BJP's poor governance. While 
Vaghela says, "I'm fully prepared whenever the polls are held," a 
close associate of his points out, "He just needs more time, and then 
he'll be difficult for the BJP to handle."
It was during the heat of the communal disturbances that the bright 
spark of elections struck Modi. When everyone's attention was on the 
fallout of the riots, Modi was touring the length and breadth of the 
state converting inaugurations of government schemes into public 
meetings. Between the last week of March and mid-May, he covered all 
the 182 constituencies telling government-organised crowds that the 
"five crore people of Gujarat would decide who would be their next 
chief minister and not Pakistan, Dawood Ibrahim or the national 
English media". He also added for good measure that "a systematic 
conspiracy is on to tarnish the image of the people of Gujarat". 
Everywhere, his speeches were interspersed with the BJP's famous line 
about pseudo-secularists glossing over the problems of the majority 
community in favour of the minority.
If wishes were horses, Modi would have had an election in the state 
as early as May or June when the Hindutva discourse was at its peak, 
and public ire over the Godhra carnage was still fresh. "It was this 
public sentiment and a fear psychosis stemming from the belief that 
there might be a strong Muslim backlash which the BJP wanted to 
exploit before it was late," observes political analyst Achyut Yagnik.
A delay in the election would mean that other issues, like the impact 
of the riots, the severe water scarcity and the government's 
inability to supply adequate electricity to farmers and the overall 
economic recession would come into focus. With the government's 
finances severely strained, solving these problems would be difficult.
State BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana, however, argues, "It is the 
media which thinks that the delay in elections beyond October would 
blunt our edge. The undercurrent is very clear. The common man in 
Gujarat was shaken by these incidents and will remain with us. Their 
sentiment (of Hindutva) would sustain even beyond the elections, 
whenever they are held."
At the time when Rana was denying there was any dissidence in the 
party but only "natural human difference of opinion", there were 
smiles on the faces of the dissidents as they celebrated the 
Independence Day with a strong perception that Lyngdoh will take the 
wind out of Modi's sails on Friday. Former minister of state Haren 
Pandya, who recently resigned obliquely in protest against Modi's now 
fabled autocratic nature, is not going to sit quiet.

Pandya's mentor and former chief minister Keshubhai Patel is still 
smarting from the humiliating manner in which he was ousted to make 
way for Modi. He has also vented his anger over Modi taking credit 
for his good work while he was chief minister.Recently, Patel had two 
of his supporters, who run snack bars in Gandhinagar, release a 
half-page ad in a leading Gujarati newspaper listing out "The 
achievements of the Keshubhai Patel regime".
Meanwhile, it is no secret that Modi has more foes than friends in 
the state BJP. His detractors also include party chief Rana and 
general secretary Nalin Bhatt. It is in this context that Vaghela 
told Outlook: "Keshubhai Patel dug the grave of the BJP. Narendra 
Modi will bury the body."

______

#5.

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#7.

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#8.

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