It146;s about more than elections

There is a dilemma here, especially for those of us who have not taken up position inside the saffron camp. Yes, with over a lakh people still huddled in relief camps, the BJP8217;s talk about elections is grotesquely cynical. Quite evidently, the party hopes to profiteer from the death and devastation in Gujarat. It expects to ride back to power on the communal polarisation it presided over in the state. But what if Narendra Modi wins the vote the next time elections are held in Gujarat? What if the political opposition is unable or unwilling or both to credibly challenge his politics of hate?

The BJP8217;s proposal gambles on more than a gutless opposition in fact. It also banks on a set of popular notions about what constitutes democracy. It trades on the reducing of the democratic process to the events on election day. And the reducing of the popular mandate to a brute majority. A fixed majority, based not on opinions but on accidents of birth.

After more than five decades of the democratic experience, we the Indian people are happy to call ourselves a democracy mostly because elections are, by and large, free and fair. We hold up the potency of the anti-incumbency factor, the routine voting out of governments, as evidence of the health of the system. This obsessive focus on the electoral exercise has a consequence 8212; the chronic over-reading of the election result. It also extracts a cost 8212; so long as they cobble a win on election day, governments can get away with murder in the years in between. That is exactly what the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi tried to do in 1985. It is, quite literally, what Narendra Modi8217;s BJP hopes to do in Gujarat.

What if Modi wins the election after the carnage? Will it be the final word in the story so far 8212; of state abdication and complicity in the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat? Must all the critics of Modi, then, be silenced 8212; the National Human Rights Commission, the Minorities Commission, the national media, non-governmental organisations, political parties of the opposition, and the terrified survivors in Gujarat? Will all the evidence of the state administration8217;s guilt gathered by independent agencies be nullified? Must everyone immediately cease to hold the government accountable for the purgatorial images that stalked our newspapers and television screens? Because the majority has spoken in Modi8217;s favour. After all, what could be more legitimate, more final, than the people8217;s verdict? Indeed, in a democracy, what could possibly be more democratic?

Surely the democratic process must be about more than mere success in the elections. It must be more than the rule of the majority. It is also about fundamental rights for all and the rule of law, the alert vigil mounted by the press, the stern pressure exerted by a vibrant opposition. The institutionalisation of checks and balances. The quickness of justice and the certainty of punishment. The cleansing of the electoral process of the criminal and the corrupt. In principle, it must offer space for everyone to be in the majority one day. A system that condemns some people to be in a permanent minority cannot be a genuine democracy.

We must assert democracy to be about the guilty men of Gujarat being brought to book without fear or favour. We must insist that the government acknowledges its responsibility to assure the life and liberty of all sections of the people, even the minorities, especially the minorities.

So what if Modi wins the elections after the carnage? Modi will still be culpable. As Rajiv Gandhi was, even after the massive mandate following the Sikh massacres.

Of course, that other question remains far more difficult to answer. Why, in the first place, would Narendra Modi win the elections after the carnage? This is a question that must be confronted by the political opposition in Gujarat today that shows no signs of the imagination required to articulate a positive agenda or the will to mobilise popular support for it. It must be investigated in the longer term by the institutions of civil society that have failed to bridge the growing distance between communities in the state. It must be explored by the people of Gujarat who have allowed their fears and insecurities to be preyed upon for political gain.