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Enforce the rule of law

IN A SALUTARY intervention, the Election Commission has asked the Gujarat Government not to allow the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's proposed `Vijay Yatra', which by its very nature and content is bound to exacerbate communal tension and inflame the already tenuous socio-political atmosphere when the State is well into the election mode. That an event that outraged the nation's secular conscience and undermined its pluralist mosaic — the pulling down of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 — should be hailed as a `victory' and celebrated as such is reprehensible enough. Now the VHP, true to its Hindutva ideology and in a vigorous pursuit of its declared intent to try and "consolidate" the majority community's vote in favour of the BJP and its new mascot, Narendra Modi, for the Assembly elections, is all set to weave the gory images of the Godhra carnage into the event commemorating the `Ayodhya victory'. The incendiary potential of such a vicious mix of communally explosive events and the serious implications it will have for the conduct of a free, fair and smooth poll are painfully clear, given especially the ground reality that Gujarat is yet to be completely free from the consequences of the communal riots that rocked the State post-Godhra and left several hundreds killed and thousands of families, mostly Muslims, homeless. As the constitutional authority charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the democratic process is carried out in a free and fair manner, the poll panel just cannot allow the socio-political context to be vitiated by any act that promotes communal hatred and social disharmony.

In fact, the `yatra' the VHP has planned, and which it insists on staging in defiance of the Election Commission's injunction, is only an extension of the series of 10 yatras Mr. Modi had undertaken over a period in the name of upholding Gujarat's `Gaurav' and the latest of which concluded only a few days ago. The burden of Mr. Modi's campaign throughout his `yatras' had — true to the narrow politico-religious majoritarian construct by which he and his party swear — a distinctively provocative anti-minority focus and was peppered with highly derogatory epithets, leaving no one in doubt about his game plan of cynically exploiting the communal divide (which the Sangh Parivar had caused post-Godhra under his benign regime) in a desperate bid to retain his party's hold on the levers of governmental power. It is evidently a part of the overall strategy that the VHP take over from Mr. Modi and mount its own typically-abrasive mobilisation campaign, with the perceived political gains from it flowing to — who else? — the BJP. After all, this has been the pattern, whether it is the revanchist campaigns such as Ramjanmabhoomi or any other programme aimed at pushing the majoritarian agenda, with each constituent of the Sangh Parivar playing a clearly defined role that fits into the carefully integrated ideological matrix. For its part, the VHP has sought to sustain the fiction that it is only an `apolitical' outfit having no direct stakes in the polls and, on that basis, to maintain that it need not be bound by the rules of the electoral game or the code of conduct. What is quite ominous, even if not surprising, however is that the BP leadership has stoutly defended the VHP's `yatra' and disapproved of the poll panel's action. But as the party running the Government in Gujarat, with Mr. Modi as the caretaker Chief Minister, and heading the coalition at the Centre, the BJP cannot abdicate its paramount responsibility of ensuring that the laws of the land are enforced. It would have to uphold the authority of constitutional functionaries, by conveying its categorical disapproval of the provocative challenge posed by the likes of Praveen Togadia, whose actions amount to a virtual declaration of war against the rule of law.

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