As the body cannot be sustained in pain, so the mind cannot be
functioning with deadly fear. Ordinary Indians affected by the
continual carnage in Gujarat, beginning with Godhra, must squarely
recognise this wholesome physical malady. The reality of the
extensive extent and potential of pain to the human body-both Hindu
and Muslim-inflicted by religio-political organisations like the RSS,
VHP and Bajrang Dal are shared by the common people of India in the
nook and corner of their physical self. That such organisations,
described as the Indian version of fascism by no less a person than
Jawaharlal Nehru, have laced with the State in Gujarat and the state
of India raises questions about India's future political and social
contours. The model of the State that Gujarat is offering about the
now two month carnage is scary, to say the least, for Indians-in
class and community terms as well as individual episteme ones. Since
the mischievous distortion of the use of state levers during the
communal riots in 2002 in Gujarat offers a new model of governance,
one's mind grops in the dark for the future. Since history is one aid
for it, one harks back to it, not to Geology or memory for discovery
of the births of mythological heroes. Mythologicals do create the
conditions of a warlike society. Actual history also does so in their
name as well. But near-history need not rest on mythology and so one
is saved the dubious task of looking for it in the present case. The
pogroms in Gujarat remind one of fascism.

Some of the things that have come to light in the last two months
about the bloody pain and fear challenge practically all assumptions
of a liberal democracy. So the current exercise is part of a defence
of retaining the liberal polity. Unlike at the Centre the BJP is the
sole ruling party in Gujarat. If India has not witnessed such pogroms
at the all-India level it is not owing to the 'benign' Vajpayee but
to the fact that he is not the leader of the majority party in
Parliament. So one will have to wait, hopefully not, for that
occasion to actually visualise this. The emerging scenario of
Gujarat's Modi-sthan will need a camp in his name as a place of
pilgrimage for the RSS-sponsored Bharat. In practical terms this can
come up with the forthcoming elections. Modi can here be lionised as
the avtar who saved the Hindus-Bania-Brahmin-Patnidar who form the
dominant Gujarati middle class supported by the inclusion of the
Scheduled Castes (during the second wave of violence against the
Muslims) and the tribals (who were included in the Hindutva fold
during riots in the wake of Advani's rath yatra in 1992). Those who
do not accept him will be forced at the point of bayonet (many Hindus
who tried to save their Muslim neighbours were so terrorised). In an
incident it is reported that a Muslim was running with a small child
on his shoulders. The hoodlums stopped him. He said he was a Hindu
boy. He was allowed to go. The moment the child said 'abba' the
hoodlums ran after him. This implies that only those-Hindus and
Muslims-will remain who get a certificate by the RSS. This is the
response of the BJP and RSS combine to the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan,
Adivasi and Muslim) strategy of the Congress for poverty alleviation
and extension of the democratic governance. What a slide in terms of
electoral strategy this from uplifting the poor to making them the
gunpowder! The first feature then is of a distorted Hindutva polity
which is anti-liberal, anti-poor and controlled by a Hinduised social
compact. The anatomy of the new compact is that the poor engaged in
the looting even during the curfew hours, but the loot went to the
rich.

Second, the role of the police in communal riots has been noticed as
one of the by-standers in this case of helping the pogroms. In the
case of Gujarat those police officers, like Harsh Mander, who take
oath to defend secular India as enshrined in the Constitution will
have no place. The politics of commitment to the roots of the BJP's
Hindutva has more meaning than the politics of commitment where the
commitment is to the Constitution. Defence Minister George Fernandes
leads a farcical peace march and that is followed by the communal
violence again. In the initial stages the Army was not used by the
Modi Government to quell the rioting. In earlier reports on the
communal carnage it is known that whenever the Army was called in the
situation came under control. The Defence Minister says in Parliament
that what happened in Gujarat was ordinary. This takes away
confidence in the Defence Minister of the government. It is also
putting the Army in bad light for it implies that the Army could
accept communal carnage in Gujarat as an acceptable level of violence
in the internal matters of the country. Thankfully, George Fernandes
is not the Army chief!

Among other institutions of the state is the judiciary. The Modi
Government has taken the position of inquiring about the views of the
judges of the High Court to see who are pro- or against the
government. This goes against the independence of the judiciary. It
is not even the notion of the committed judiciary that one heard
about during the time of Mrs Indira Gandhi. Here in comparison Mrs
Gandhi's position was in relation to the commitment to the social
goals of the Directive Principles of the Constitution. In the case of
Modi it is to the creation of the Hindu Rashtra. This leads to
witch-hunt. This witch-hunt is on with regard to ordinary citizens
who have either helped or are assumed to have helped Muslims in their
locality. Hitler's SS boys had this kind of an anti-Semitic and
anti-democratic role. This at a macro-level is reflected in the fact
that most of the relief camps that have been set up in Gujarat are
run by Muslims and not by Hindus. Only one relief camp was run by
Hindus. That has been closed on the orders of Modi. To this must be
added the controversy generated by the Human Resource Minister about
Aryans being the original inhabitants of India, and all others being
the hateful 'other'.

Now theories about the Gujarat carnage show up the aspect of lying at
official quarters on it. First, that this is a premeditated internal
Muslim plan. Second, that these incidents are spontaneous. Let us
have a closer look. The Vajpayee Government was being pressurised to
allow the VHP to organise their pujan on the site of Babri Masjid.
The VHP 'sevaks' from all over the country were going there. If
Vajpayee had been firm and not dilly-dallying, like P. V. Narasimha
Rao in 1992, the need to mobilise the VHP 'sevaks' would not have
taken place as the demolition of Babri Masjid would not have. At
Godhra the dispute was a follow-up of the hooliganism of these
travellers. It is reported by an activist of the RSS that at that
time these hooligans took away the daughter of the Muslim vendor who
was being mercilessly beaten by the hooligans of the coach at Godhra.
The nearby basti is that of poor Muslim rickshawpullers. Learning
this they came to the site and engaged in the avoidable tragedy of
the train coach being burnt. That there was no planning in this local
incident is also reported by the police officer who was investigating
the incident. The Home Minister now is saying that there is a case
for regarding these as spontaneous and not planned. He is
contradicting Modi. So the fault is not in our stars but in
ourselves, Mr Vajpayee. Hindus and their mythologicals are being
wrongly rendered into a warlike society as much as you wrongly
imagine the Muslims to be warlike. You believe that the world over
Muslims are the sources of terror. Hindus in India are also being
terrorised by the state to be so. It was and is your duty to be the
leader of the nation and not the leader of the RSS pogrom of its
nation-in-the-making.

Greater foresight is needed from him if one has to retain the second
general theory of the destabilising role of the ISI and Pakistan in
trans-border terrorism. Internal inter-communal harmony is the need
of the hour. So is the need for democratic governance and not
deceitful governance. Difference and democracy are the watchwords.
Where difference is the mark of pulsating life of Gujarat's and
India's productive potential, fascist pogroms are the cancer of the
body politic. Beware Mr Vajpayee, you can fool the people sometimes
but not always. In 1991 I was a witness to the following exchange
between an old tribal woman and a BJP worker. The woman was standing
in a queue to get kerosene. A BJP worker came with its poster of
Sita-the picture of the actress who played the role of Sita. The
woman asked the worker: if once the Ram Raj came will the kerosene
queues go away? Embarrased, the worker ran away. It is also noticed
that the tribals, who are sought to be incorporated, are actually far
away from the Hindutva political baggage. Tribals are at the farthest
margins of the caste system but not so from the Hindu moneylenders
jealous of the Muslims affluence, as in Tejgadh. If at the
anthropological level the different communities are co-mingling, why
divide them? And do so in such a manner that people stop speaking for
fear of reprisal from the bosses of the RSS and 'parivar' boys.
Intercommunal harmony is the watchword to fight Pakistan's nefarious
game. The last thing that should happen is Modi-stan as the RSS's
real.
Future polity would be fascist with the eerie silence of the
graveyard. This Rational is sought to be made the Real. Or, Modi is
the RSS' Rational. Hindutva is threatening to be the grave of
multicultural identities.