Anwar Ahmad

In the star-crossed subcontinent, only an incident stands between sanity and savagery. Thus, one moment we were marvelling at the wisdom of the Indian voters in spurning BJP's communal politics and voting for secularism and a fair deal. The next, we were appalled by the viciousness with which humans can wreak vengeance on fellow humans.

When it is sequenced, the current communal carnage will be recorded as having begun with the madness at Godhra, Gujarat. According to the BBC, Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists returning from Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, were chanting pro-Ram Mandir slogans as their train pulled into the station. They taunted and beat up some Muslims. As the train pulled, it run into a Muslim mob which stoned and, apparently, stopped, savaged and finally set it afire. This mind-numbing barbarity left 57 Hindus, mostly women and children, burnt to cinders.

The home minister of the BJP-ruled Gujarat state said the attack was pre-planned. Fingers were pointed at the opposition Congress party and, as always, Pakistan. Prime Minister Vajpayee appealed to the VHP to suspend its mass mobilisation campaign, of which the ill-fated train was a part, to launch the Ram Mandir construction on March 15 at the Ayodhya site of the demolished 16th century Babri mosque. A warning against building the temple came, ironically, also from the Union Home Minister L K Advani -- whose 1990 Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya was BJP's political high, had set the stage for the 1992 Babri mosque demolition and put him among the prime accused.

But what happens on the ides of March is of distant interest. Attention is presently focused on the horrific reprisals. That the VHP's "peaceful strike" call turned every bit as barbarous as the Godhra massacre must have surprised only the napping authorities. Bands of marauding Hindu youth (the future!!) roamed the streets, reported the BBC, seeking Muslims "to slit their throats". Their mosques and properties were attacked, looted and torched, with scores, mostly women and children, roasted alive.

Among them was Ahsan Jafri, a former Congress MP and his family of 19. His frantic phone calls failed to bring the police or fire-fighters to their rescue. Near Godhra, 68 Muslims were clubbed together, doused with kerosene and torched -- 30 died on the spot. Hindu women and children huddled for safety, terrified Muslims begged for mercy and neighbours hurled stones, fire-bombs and hatred at each other. Burnt human remains littered the streets. Over 450 have perished, mostly Muslims.

This indescribably mind-numbing catastrophe had been waiting to happen. It can be traced back to the Babri mosque demolition, or militant Hindu revivalism that spanned the last century, or Muslim separatism that ran parallel to, and fed off, it, or as far back as one likes. There is, indeed, too much history in the sub continent (as in the Middle East). Reliving and redoing it, as the BJP (and Israel) is finding out, is courting disaster.

But the immediate cause of the conflagration lies in the BJP's duplicitous attempt to play, simultaneously, both the Masjid and Mandir cards in the recent state elections. To mollify the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, it "postponed" the electoral pledge to build the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Prime Minister Vajpayee also negatived his earlier resolve to find a political settlement before March 15. The Masjid-Mandir dispute, he said, could only be settled in court.

The BJP must also have been edified by a rather surprising call by the Shahi Imam, Syed Ahmad Bukhari, to the Muslims not to vote at all as all parties had used them. This was against the post-Congress Muslim strategy of voting for the candidates most likely to defeat their BJP opponents. If the Muslims abstained, BJP's opponents would lose around 17% of the UP electorate. Apparently, they opted to join in scripting what is being billed as the beginning of BJP's end.

Contrarily, the BJP banned the Students Islamic Movement of India but spurned the demands for banning militant Hindu outfits (VHP, Bajrang Dal, etc) thereby attracting charges of duplicity. Then, as the elections neared, its Mandir agenda was taken up more vociferously by the VHP, its ideological sibling, which was already working to the March 15 deadline. VHP carried out "warning marches" from Ayodhya to New Delhi, mobilised its cadres and began giving final touches to the Mandir's structural components and idols being crafted in various places. That thousands of its activists had gathered in Ayodhya before and during the poll was no coincidence.

But the die was cast by Mr Vajpayee himself. Just before the polls, he said the BJP could, and would, win even without the Muslim vote. This pique and belligerence-riddled statement was politically destructive and, ironically, wholly unnecessary. It could do the BJP no good -- except, possibly, rallying some wavering Hindu votes to off-set the anti-BJP resolve of the Muslims which this snub could only cement.

Amid this primed communal powder-keg, BJP's prime election slogan was that a vote for it was a vote to fight Musharraf and Pakistan. To their credit, the voters showed far more wisdom than the BJP had given them credit for. They may, or may not, have voted against BJP's hate-Pakistan rhetoric. But they certainly against its mal-governance, communal and caste preferences and, above all, confused but upper-caste friendly socio-economic policies.

The success of socialistic and lower-caste Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties in the UP, the most populous (160 million people) and one of the poorest Indian states, is an indictment of the unqualified submission to the gods of global capitalism and free-market. The same message was sent earlier by the poor in backing the incumbent communist government of West Bengal.

The resilient communists (opposed both by the Congress and BJP) have yielded mixed results during their long rule. And, the capacity of the Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties to deliver socio-economic justice to the poorest of poor is also questionable. Indeed, there is no structured and easy-to-apply socio-economic alternative on offer to the free-market global capitalism.

Nonetheless, the criminal situation of food surpluses coinciding with starvation cannot endure morally, politically or economically. The anti-BJP vote, thus, was more a cry for socio-economic justice and good and fair governance. It needs to be heeded not only by all Indian political parties but by their counterparts in Pakistan (Bangladesh, Nepal, etc) and the economic wizards of its military government. There is much more to an economy than dollar-reserves and book-balancing. The multiplying and lip-served poor, for instance.

No country in the world with the kind of poverty and population that exists in the subcontinent has made it through the market alone. For the "all wise" market, those who cannot afford food, clothing, shelter, or the "luxuries" of health care, education and clean water, simply do not exist. No demand, no supply. This obliterates at least 50% of the South Asians subsisting below the poverty line. In such a criminally unequal situation, unfettered rule of the blessed market can only make things worse. During the last four years, for example, the average income of the 20 richest countries has shot up from 18 to 37 times that of the 20 poorest. Income disparities are similarly increasing within the countries.

This cannot mean a return to communism or, even, full-blown socialism. It can also not be an excuse for retaining the bloated, inefficient and corrupt state structures. It simply means that, while allowing the rich and middle classes to profit from carefully selected privatisation and deregulation, the poor need to be provided adequate safety nets and resource access. They desperately need state (and state-induced private/corporate) support to have a fair chance of breaking out of the grinding poverty cycle.

This can only happen if the corruption haemorrhage is stopped, the rich pay their dues and, above all, guns yield to butter. Yet, there are no signs of that happening. The stung and smarting BJP has again jacked up India's defence outlay to a criminal Rs 650 billion (against Pakistan total annual budget of Rs 750 billion). Even though already over-stretched, Pakistan's vow not to be trapped in an arms race comes with the caveat of reappraising its defence needs. Clearly, neither the Indian democracy nor Pakistan's dictatorship can read the writing on the wall. Such is the "leadership" of the blighted subcontinent.

The writer is a freelance columnist

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