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Journalism of Courage
“I wish it was over,” whines octogenarian Pancham Singh of Rangai Village on Vidisha-Sanchi Road when informed that the polling in Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency has been postponed due to torrential rain and floods. At Sanchi, one finds the local Congress election office locked. The man in charge is playing cards with some BJP corporators in a nearby shop. “What can we do in this weather?” he mumbles, apologetically.
A mood of despondency prevails in this bastion of Hindutva forces, which elected Atal Behari Vajpayee in 1991. Vajpayee had won from both Vidisha and Lucknow and chosen to keep Lucknow . In the by-election that followed Shivraj Singh Chauhan of the BJP had won and has held on to the seat since then. But this time neither Kargil victor Vajpayee’s “relationship” with the seat nor Sonia Gandhi’s origin seems to be an issue here.
“Chahen phool wale hon chahen hathwale, sab chor chor mausere bhai,” (Both the Congress and the BJP are thieves) says Chote Lal of Dhakna-Chapna village.The area is perpetually waterlogged during monsoon, he points out. “Work is yet to start on the Rajghat bridge the foundation stone for which was laid by Motilal Vora when he was the CM in 1986!”
BJP’s Chauhan, nicknamed as panv wale bhaiyya (a brother on his feet), is a nice man to know, say villagers in Karaiyya Havela. But their three-time MP has done little for the area’s development, they concede. Congress candidate Jaswant Singh, known as bade bhaiyya (big brother), no doubt wants to capitalise on this. He boasts of development schemes launched by Chief Minister Digvijay Singh through panchayat raj and zila sarkars (district governments). “The Congress will make you partners in progress,” he promises.
But it is difficult to convince the people. Even the shy, illiterate village women have realised that they can’t depend on politicians. In Kachhiara and Amkheda villages they have showed both the BJP and Congress candidates the door.
What do they think about Kargil? “Yes I haveheard there was a war there,” school teacher Raghunath says wryly. But he doesn’t know which party should be credited with it except that “no politician died there”.
One runs into Atal admirers in almost every Vidisha village but there are no Sonia haters. “Emperor Ashoka was an outsider, but Vidisha gave him its daughter, Devi,” reminds Shyamnandan of Budhani, apparently a Congress sympathiser. BJP supporters have also taken out another leaf from ancient history to counter this logic. “We don’t scoff at foreigners,” insists Bipin Behari of Bhesnagar, a suburb of Vidisha town. “We convert them to Hinduism!”
Bipin, a local Bajrang Dal functionary, points toward an ancient pillar standing in a dusty enclosure in Bhesnagar, now a suburb of Vidisha town. The inscription on the pillar records conversion of Greek Ambassador Heliodorus to Hinduism in the court of the Shungas two centuries before Christ.
An appeal to their Hindu identity may still retain some attraction in the area whose last rulers,the Scindias, supported the Hindu Mahasabha before they split their support between the Congress and the BJP. But theirs is not the rabble-rousing Hindutva of the VHP variety.
Vidisha did witness incidents of communal strife in the Bareli assembly segmnent, represented by the Congress candidate, and this should fetch him Muslim votes concentrated in Raisen and Bareli. But even the BJP hawks don’t project him as `anti-Hindu’. He is the founder of Manas Mandal, a religio-cultural outfit which organises congregations of religious leaders in the area.
Chauhan’s Congress rivals have brought up his private life to discredit him. When first elected from Vidisha, he had vowed to follow in Vajpayee’s footsteps and remain a celebate. Now he is married with three children. “How can you trust a man who betrayed his leader?” Congressmen keep asking voters. But their campaign has found few takers. As Lajwanti, sarpanch of Harisemra village, puts it: “No one is now amused by politicians washing their dirty linen inpublic.”
