VADODARA, Aug 19: A dispassionately played political game is as much behind the communal conflagration in the Panchmahals as the passionate affairs and elopements that sparked it off. Playing the game together are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, and the end they seek is the political clout they have lost.The region saw an unprecedented rout of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections despite the wide network of its supporters, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. Of the 13 Assembly seats in the region, BJP got only two; nine went to the Congress, one to the Janata Dal, and one to the Samajwadi Party. And Congress took both the Lok Sabha seats.Accenting the party's humiliation was the fact that it was in this very region that it had used the VHP and Bajrang Dal to humble its biggest rebel at that time, Shankersinh Vaghela, by ensuring his defeat in the 1995 Lok Sabha election though he was the official candidate.Now, the local VHP and Bajrang Dal units are trying to regain the power to bargain with the party and the Sangh Parivar, something they lost because of the defeats. They are trying to do so by raising the communal bogey, with which they had built up the network in the first place.Randhikpur and Sanjeli are not the only towns in the Panchmahals region where inter-community elopements have taken place. This has happened in at least half a dozen other places. One reason thos incidents did not flare up is that the police responded swiftly. But there is no foolproof guarantee of peace.For sources in the BJP said that VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders in the region feel slighted at not being given a big enough bite of the power pie despite their working to ensure a victory for the party in the Randhikpur Assembly seat. They are trying to attract attention and make their nuisance value known by creating communal trouble. And they are not listening to BJP leaders. In Sanjeli, the man believed to be the chief planner of the attacks on Muslims aspires to be sarpanch of the local panchayat.With several of its decisions having been challenged in court, the panchayat is likely to be dissolved soon. Fomenting communal passion is the man's way of consolidating the Hindu vote in preparation for fresh election.What makes it easier for him to do this is the fact that Muslims in the region are few, but are much better off than the Hindu tribals. The Muslims are mostly land-owners, the tribals mostly farm hands.Many of the younger tribals have been to school or college and are averse to manual labour. But without jobs, they are a frustrated lot, and are taking to a life of crime, as bootleggers, land-grabbers, or smugglers of forest produce.It is this same class that also falls for extremist ideologies, be that of the VHP or any other organisation.
