GHASTLY HAPPENINGS may at times create an unexpected opening, and
Gujarat's unveiling of the callous face of the Hindu right, which
should properly be called the un-Hindu right, may have done just
that. That face has caused minds to tick in the Congress, in the Left
parties, in several regional parties - and most significantly in the
large unaligned segment of Indian opinion (in all castes and classes)
that judges events as they take place. And while the unveiling has
clearly been accompanied by some emboldening in sections of the Sangh
Parivar, others in that Parivar or sympathising with it also seem to
have joined the ranks of the perturbed.

Gujarat's BJP Government, which did not protect the lives, honour and
properties of the innocent, continues to cover up its complicity,
refuses to enter rapes, murders and arsons on its registers, and of
course refuses to book the murderers, rapists and arsonists. It
refuses even to admit that something shameful happened after Godhra.

What happened in Gujarat may happen elsewhere; what happened to
innocent and helpless Muslims may happen to innocent and helpless
non-Muslims. Flashing across many minds, this thought has the
potential to unite many if not most non-BJP parties. The Abdul Kalam
episode has no doubt provided a distraction from this thought, and
from a crucial corollary of that thought, which is that safety of
life and secularism are two sides of the same coin. The Kalam
question seems also to have produced a unity of all non-Left parties,
including the BJP, for a specific purpose and moment. But the
diverting Kalam episode will soon be over, and the worry about the
safety and honour of the weak, unprotected and innocent women and men
of India will return to haunt the BJP.

And to provide an opening to the others. Of course, the task of
bringing together the Congress, the Left and a significant chunk of
the regional parties is exceedingly tough. The past divisions (those
over the Emergency and over V.P. Singh's departure from the Congress
were some of the sharpest) linger. There are differences on economic
policies. There is the hard challenge of power-sharing, especially in
States where the chief rivalry is between the Congress and the Left
or between the Congress and a regional party.

Yet, Gujarat has provided an impulse to overcome these hurdles. The
coming weeks and months will show whether the political leadership
spread across the Congress, the Left and the regional spectrum has
the wisdom to take advantage of the impulse.

This required wisdom can be broken down into four components. One,
political judgment - the ability to recognise a moment pregnant with
possibilities. Two, the good sense to acknowledge past and present
realities. (Thus, Congressmen can acknowledge that the Emergency
alienated many patriotic Indians, and non-Congress secular parties
can acknowledge that the Congress is needed for saving India from the
narrowness of the un-Hindu right.) Three, the patience and acumen to
negotiate win-win compromises among parties that have fought bitter
battles in the past. Four, a statesmanlike skill for using a
psychological moment to bring in elements long missing from the
Indian political scene.

For instance, an understanding that a Government's task in India is
not to set communities or castes against one another but to address
the need of citizens of all castes and religions for water,
electricity, roads, school and medicine.

In other words, the fight to protect every Indian's life can also be
a fight to better that life. Is it too much to ask the Congress, the
Left and regional parties to join hands to help India reach such a
goal, and to prevent the possibility of Gujarat repeating itself
there or anywhere else?

Yet, even this will not be enough. Any new Indian politics of secular
and democratic unity will have to extend its concern to the
subcontinent as a whole. Its ultimate goal will have to include the
defence and improvement of life in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri
Lanka and Bhutan as well.

The Congress, the Left, and their regional partners in the alliance
projected above cannot of course afford to drop the country's guard.
Hostility from neighbours will have to be firmly dealt with. But
politics after Gujarat can encourage a people-to-people as well as a
Government-to-Government effort for better relations on the
subcontinent, and aim for a gradual and measured transfer of the
subcontinent's resources from war machines to schools, hospitals and
roads, a transfer based on verifiable agreements and undertaken for
the sake of the deprived masses of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Perhaps I am being unrealistic. Perhaps I am over-impressed by
history's examples, such as Churchill's success in mobilising against
the Nazis the numerous Britons raised for years on the belief that
communism and the Soviet Union constituted the main menace to
Britain. Perhaps I am a dreamer uncorrected by experience or age or
by the evidence of what interests middle-class Indians in a
globalised, TV-crazy, movie-mad, cell-phoning age. Perhaps I am too
attached to an inherited preference for a relaxed, confident and
tolerant Hinduism.

Perhaps I have been excessively affected by the charring, quartering
and raping of individuals in Gujarat and by the inaction over Gujarat
of Messrs. Vajpayee and Advani, and unduly influenced by the
appraisal of some that Gujarat has been a watershed event. The merely
modest possibility of a subcontinental nuclear clash may also have
swayed me.

If so I can hope to strike a chord with others with similar hearts or
stomachs. To the rest, I make a limited, cold, practical and yet
difficult suggestion. Let the Congress and the Left treat Gujarat as
a reason for abandoning pre-Gujarat animosities, and also for
overcoming the misunderstanding created by the Kalam episode. Let
them attempt a partnership in the States and at the Centre and form a
front that would exert a gravitational pull on the regional parties.

But what about the risk of provoking the Hindutva right? Is it not
possible that the latter would respond with more of what was done and
not done in Gujarat? This is indeed possible, although a fight for
the safety of the innocent may also appeal to a few within the Sangh
Parivar, especially when waged on behalf of every Indian.

Still, the hazard of provoking the others is real. What should be
added is that the hazard of not standing up is immensely greater.
Those with doubts on this score should consult any book on the course
of events in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. They may also profitably
study how in the 1980s and 1990s religious extremism grew in
Afghanistan and Pakistan.