India takes the right fork

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

IndiaÕs ruling Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] has won a sweeping victory in Gujarat state that strengthens its shaky central government and promises success in forthcoming state elections and, probably, in a national election scheduled for 2004.

But the price has come high. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, considered a moderate and until recently its principle vote-getter, has had to bow to radical elements who made the election a test for a ÒHindutvaÓ strategy. ÒHindutvaÓ [ÒHindu-nessÓ] is an ill-defined term used by Hindu revivalist groups, generally interpreted as an effort to construct an Indian society purged of its Islamic, Buddhist, Christian and Western elements. Its contradictory interpretations have preoccupied Indian politics without resolution.

Gujarat plays a pivotal role in Indian politics and in intellectual life. It is the ancestral home of Mohandas Gandhi and many other prominent leaders of the struggle for independence. It is also the origin of a large section of the Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom, Africa, and North America. Considered until recently one of IndiaÕs most prosperous regions, GujaratÕs 50 million people over the past year had seen some of the worst Hindu-Moslem conflict.

There has been widespread criticism of the state governmentÕs inability to control ø the media and human rights groups accuse it of complicity Ñ the rioting which followed a grisly incineration last February of a train with 60 Hindu pilgrims returning from a pilgrimage to a disputed religious site, apparently by Islamic terrorists. There were weeks of rioting in which more than a thousand people were killed, mostly Moslems. The stateÕs chief minister, Narendra Modi, is a firebrand of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], a paramilitary Hindu revivalist group that has sometimes seen the BJP as its political offspring, sometimes bitterly criticized BJP leadership for ÒmioderationÓ. There is also the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's (VHP), a religious affiliate of the RSS, which a decade ago set off bloody Hindu-Moslem rioting when it destroyed a mosque at Ayodhya, arguing it had been built by IndiaÕs Moslem Moghul emperors on the site of an ancient Hindu temple. Indian archaeologists disputed the claim as mythological.

In any event, the Hindutva victory in Gujarat will be seen by many of IndiaÕs 150 million Moslems ø as it was by the Moslems in Gujarat ø as threatening. Reports from Gujarat indicate radicalization of some of its younger Moslem minority. But in the contest for the majority Hindu vote, even the Congress Party opposition took Òa soft Hindutva line.Ó

If, as most Indian political observers believe, the success of ModiÕs strategy becomes the pattern for BJP campaigning against the opposition Congress Party, it seems certain to exacerbate India-Pakistan relations. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs L K Advani, seen as a hardliner and eventual replacement for Vajpayee, is walking a tightrope between his appeal to Hindutva advocates and the secular elements in the governmentÕs coalition.

The BJP victory will be exploited by the radical Islamic elements throughout the Subcontinent. Indian authorities maintain that Indian Moslems have not been penetrated by radical Islamicists, and carefully attribute all terrorist acts in India to Pakistani infiltrators. But the bonds of pre-Partition [1947] family, caste, and cultural ties which linked Moslems in India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, and Sri Lanka still continue to exert wide influence.

On the state-to-state level, relations between India and Pakistan continue to deteriorate. India did announce a pullback of its forces deployed forward on the Indo-Pakistan border after a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament Dec. 13, 2001 came close to annihilating the leadership. But this week Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Muhammad, a group Pakistan Pres. Pervez Musharraf outlawed, was freed by a Pakistan court on a legal technicality. Azhar was one of three men India released after an Indian airliner was hijacked in late 1999 and flown to Kabul, where the then Taliban government helped negotiate a settlement. Azhar is on a list of 20 whom the Indian government wants Pakistan to extradite to face terrorism charges, its prerequisite for taking up negotiations on other issues.

Daily clashes continue in Kashmir despite a surprise upset in elections there that recently turned out the corrupt local state government. India continues to insist that Pakistan infiltrators are the source of the insurgency which pens down a half million Indian security forces. New Delhi recently reported capture of ground to air missiles with Pakistan manufacture markings, proof they say of official IslamabadÕs connivance.

Despite strong American urging, the Indians refuse to pick up talks with Musharraf, rejecting an opportunity at a meeting South Asian nations originally scheduled in Pakistan. Vajpayee says India will not talk to the Pakistan until the terrorist infiltrations end. And in Pakistan, Musharraf remains balanced between cooperation with the U.S. in its war against terrorism and the penetration of those terrorists.