It’s evening and at the first-floor BJP office in the crowded market in Jetpur, party workers unwind amid the constant ringing of cellphones. The campaign is hurtling on at full speed in this part of Gujarat, which goes to polls in the second phase on December 16. “This time,” says taluka general secretary Alpeshbhai Soni, “Narendrabhai (Modi) is fighting on the plank of vikas (development).” Then he reels off figures of funds released by the Modi Government for development in this tribal-dominated area, most prominently under the ‘Van Bandhu Kalyan Yojana’.But in Jetpur in Vadodara district, the BJP’s choice of candidate may be more evocative than its rhetoric. The party has denied the ticket to its incumbent MLA, who wrested the Pavi-Jetpur seat for the party in this Congress bastion. The Congress’s Mohansinh Rathwa had been elected MLA since 1971 for seven successive terms before he lost in 2002. This time, the BJP candidate is a newcomer, Jayantibhai Rathwa. His calling card: he is implicated in several cases of the communal violence in 2002. “Jayantibhai helped the rioters,” says Alpeshbhai. “That’s why he is famous here, for his fight for Hindu dharma”. The Pavi-Jetpur seat is one of the 15 seats, most of them tribal-dominated, that the BJP won in 2002, the first election after the communal violence that year. Congress and BJP workers, even the man at the tea shop will tell you that this area was awash in a Hindutva wave in 2002. The political fallout of the communal violence is said to have been particularly dramatic in two districts—Panchmahal, in which Godhra is located, and adjoining Vadodara. They will also tell you that there’s no sign of a wave this time. As a result, even the BJP is constrained to play it both ways: it has given the ticket to a riot-accused but his campaign harps on “development”. “It’s a 50:50 fight this time,” hedges Miteshbhai Patel, a reporter with a local newspaper and self-professed BJP supporter. Why did the tide turn so dramatically in favour of the BJP in 2002 in Central Gujarat’s tribal belt? And what explains the apparent waning of the saffron surge five years later? At the neat, red-roofed complex of the Adivasi Academy, off the road from Jetpur to Chhota Udaepur, the group of post-graduate students who come to the Academy from across the tribal belt is articulate and forceful. They tell a story of seduction and abandonment. Five years ago, according to this narrative, through rumours and CDs, the tribals were instigated to wreak violence on the Muslims, most of whom originally belong to Godhra. In this, the BJP was helped by the groundwork done over almost a decade by the RSS, be it through the distribution of trishuls or Ganesh idols. In fact, Ganesh puja was uncommon in these parts but over the last five years or so, Ganesh Chaturthi has become one of the two festivals celebrated with the most money and fervour; the other is Navratri. But after the communal violence of 2002 was over, the story goes, the Adivasi became the fall guy. “People here were exhorted to commit violence as ‘Hindus’. But suddenly, after the violence, we were back to being ‘Adivasi’. The media gave us a bad name, and the BJP left us to our devices,” says Arjun Rathwa. The accused in a large number of cases that have been re-opened because of the Supreme Court’s intervention are tribals. Some are out on bail, but many still crowd Sabarmati Jail. There is anger as well due to other broken promises. The road is mostly absent in these parts, and so is electricity, despite the much-hyped ‘Jyotigram’. The Narmada canal flows through the area but those who live here do not get any water from it. Despite all promises to the contrary, and some token programmes of distribution of pattas, tribal land is still being appropriated by the Forest Department. While migration was always a significant phenomenon because of the lack of employment opportunities, it has become dramatically more large-scale and organised over the past few years. “It was never like it has been for the last 2-3 years. Now, 2-3 private luxury buses filled with migrant labour take off for Saurashtra and Kutch in the migration season. Entire villages are being emptied of their young men,” says Sonal Rathwa who teaches at the Adivasi Academy. Of course, if the BJP did not deliver on promises of development, neither did the Congress in the long years when it was in power in the state. It is because of this reason perhaps that a cluster of 13 villages in Naswadi tehsil in this district has decided not to vote in this election. In these villages, there is no road and no teachers in the schools. The ill must be carried by friends and relatives to faraway hospitals. But beneath the cynicism for politics and resentment against both political parties, the undercurrent in tribal Vadodara and the absence of a wave suggest that the BJP will find it tough to repeat 2002’s sweep of central Gujarat this time at the hustings.
