There is no denial that the electoral verdict of the Assembly elections in Gujarat has become an agitating and even an agonizing issue for the entire nation and its echoes refuse to die into oblivion. No State elections – not even the epoch making one in Kashmir have ever been discussed so widely or with such great intensity as the events in Gujarat.

The euphoria and even the wild enthusiasm which Gujarat has evoked in every corner of the BJP camp - from the Prime Minister down to the rank and file workers - can be easily understood. The Gujarat verdict reverses a long series of disasters for the BJP in several States at the regional as well as local levels. Some of these states were erstwhile strongholds of the BJP and its allies particularly U P, Punjab and Maharashtra. In Gujarat itself, the ruling BJP lost heavily in the elections to the municipalities, the gram panchayats and even in the recent by-elections to the Assembly and to the Lok Sabha preceding the Assembly elections. In fact it was to reverse this trend in Gujarat that Mr. Keshubhai Patel was replaced by Mr. Narendra Modi. The Gujarat verdict has relieved the nagging worries of the leaders of the BJP and the deep depression of the street corner activists of the party.

The blatant communal campaigning by the ruling BJP that was so full of venom and hatred for the minorities; the blasphemous denunciations of several constitutional authorities like the Election Commission, the National Human Rights Commission and the Minorities Commission among others, created a furore among the intellectuals and the political elite. The national leadership of the BJP was hard put to defend the style of functioning adopted by Narendra Modi and his cohorts and its damage controlling exercises failed to convince its critics. The anti-establishment media had gone to town painting the BJP as a dark villain. The media became a victim of its own propaganda, paintng a very bleak future for BJP and predicting that the BJP would either just scrape through or even be defeated in the ensuing elections.

The arrogance of the BJP cheerleaders and the unbalanced utterances of the leaders of the VHP – especially Shri Pravin Togadia - shocked and scandalized both the media and the intelligentsia of the country. For several months the BJP high command suffered the charge that their party was either an accomplice or an interested witness to the slaughter of the innocents in Gujarat. They were aware that the charge of being involved was not entirely untrue and K P S Gill, the retired police officer from the Punjab was deputed to ‘control’ the Chief Minister for a few weeks. The juvenile outbursts of the VHP leaders did nothing to salvage the ugly image of the BJP. The ghosts of Gujarat haunted their top leaders at national and international forums. The world press badgered them with irrefutable facts and the logical conclusions drawn from these facts.

However, the electoral verdict in Gujarat has shocked the victors and the vanquished alike - both proclaiming the result to be ‘a landslide’ victory for Narendra Modi - with the BJP capturing 127 seats i.e., 70% of the 182 seats in the Assembly.

But a careful look at the figures of the BJP’s position in the Assembly in the last four elections in Gujarat, reveals a more balanced picture. A study of these figures shows that the 2002 verdict, far from being a landslide victory, is merely a marginal one. It is definitely not a turning point but merely an echo of previous victories as the following table will show. For the sake of clarity the figures are confined to the two major contestants of 2002.

Friends as well as enemies of Narendra Modi are barking up the wrong tree when they praise or condemn the so-called ‘crushing’ victory of the hard core Hindutva in Gujarat. The euphoria in the BJP ranks as also as the depressive nightmares in the opposition camp are just hallucinations. There is nothing much in the verdict to write home about. The earth shaking campaign of Mr. Modi brought the BJP a mere six seats more than the number reached by Keshubhai Patel after a quieter campaign in 1995. That year the BJP secured 66% of seats and this year Modi secured 70% . To say that Modi’s victory as a ‘landslide’ is, in my view an exaggeration.

Let us go a little behind these figures. In 1995, the three stalwarts of the BJP -Keshubhai Patel, Shankersinh Vaghela and Narendra Modi worked hard and long to pull down the edifice of the Congress which had been considerably weakened not by the BJP but by Chimanbhai Patel and his lacklustre successor Chhabildas Mehta. Between 1990 and 1995, Chmanbhai Patel kept jumping in and out of Parties - from the Janata Party to the Janata Dal to the Janata Dal [S] to the Janata Dal [G] to a ministry supported by the Congress from outside and finally joining the Congress. In order to keep himself in power, he had to trim his sails to the changing winds and currents of the political scenario at the national level.

In 1995, the BJP did secure a landslide victory when its seats jumped from 67 to 121, and its vote share from 27% to 42.5%. But the party organization of the BJP was not strong enough to withstand this victory shock and the resultant power struggle that ensued. Within a year the BJP was in shambles and was trifurcated. Narendra Modi was humiliated - in fact he broke down in the presence of his party’s MLAs and was kicked out and away from Gujarat for the next six years. Shankersinh Vaghela’s group pressed hard for a share in the power. When they were kept at bay, they formed a distinct group known as the Khajuria group, because Vaghela, afraid of defections from his group, took his MLAs and hid them in the town of Khajuraho known for its erotic temple sculptures. Under their pressure, Keshubhai Patel was forced to resign but Vaghela also had to stand aside. Suresh Mehta became the chief minister. But Vaghela was insatiable and the compromise broke down and the BJP passed through very hard times. Vajpayee and Advani were heckled at public meetings organized by the party. At one such meeting supporters of Vaghela were thrashed, and one of their MLAs, Atmaram Patel, was stripped of his dhoti while Narendra Modi looked on approvingly. The BJP was vertically split, Mehta was forced to resign and after a brief interregnum, Vaghela formed his ministry with the Congress supporting it from outside. He ruled for a year but failing to deliver the pound of flesh demanded by the Congress, was denounced by the Congress for his brazen corruption and despotic style of functioning. Vaghela was forced to quit but he put a puppet of his own on the throne. He had to go for mid-term election in 1998.

Throughout all this political upheavals, the loyalty of the Gujarat voters towards the main stream BJP remained unshaken. Even under such adverse circumstances, with Modi in exile and Vaghela in the enemy’s ranks, Keshubhai returned to power with a convincing 64% of seats and 45% of votes to his credit. Despite much more favourable circumstances- a united party, a discredited and divided opposition and an electorate inflamed by the Godhra and post Godhra landscape - Mr. Modi has only slightly improved upon that performance in. It is a very creditable performance no doubt but it is not an extraordinary performance. Nevertheless, Mr. Modi has secured not only a strong and stable majority in the Assembly but also a clear and decisive majority of votes that very few leaders have been able to achieve for their party.

But then Gujarat was always a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP, and all other parties occupied only a marginal space. The Congress ideologues in Gujarat have denounced smaller parties like the NCP and the Socialists for jumping into the fray and dividing the anti-BJP votes in at least 20 constituencies. But they have overlooked the fact that they themselves rejected the overtures from the very same parties for electoral alliances so as to ensure one to one fight contests.

The BJP vote may have increased the percentage of votes polled by 5% but so has the Congress vote gone up by 4%. Mr. Vaghela who fought as a separate entity has now merged his forces with the Congress. It is interesting and important for Gujarat that both the major parties have gained voters’ support at the cost of smaller parties and Independents who have lost heavily. These smaller parties lost 80% of their seats - their number went down from 12 to 2. In the absence of more details, it is not possible to study the shifting loyalties of the voters because the areas of victories and defeats for both BJP and Congress have shifted though the overall balance of power remains more or less unchanged.

The shock that the media and the observers have experienced is largely due to the expectations and calculations projected by the media and which have proved to be baseless. For weeks on end, experts and sephologists hammered on their empty pronouncements ornamented with so called survey and figures, which made even some of the BJP leaders nervous and worried. After the verdict the tables have turned against the media. With plenty of egg on their face the media is now apologetic and jittery but it has not shown the courage and honesty to confess that it failed to recognise stark ground realities. In politics facts do not matter so much as perceptions. A few fatal blunders by the Congress High Command also helped in ensuring a victory for BJP. The decision to fight alone was the first. The thoughtless decision to hand over the party organization to its erstwhile enemy Vaghela was the second mistake. As the master architect of the BJP in Gujarat, Vaghela has been denouncing Congress leaders for over 20 years. In such a context it was naïve to expect a new recruit to the Congress party, that Vaghela was to be respected by the veterans and trusted by Congress activists. Thirdly, the Congress High Command decided to fight the Gujarat electoral battle by proxy. Instead of entrusting the campaign to its local cadres, its local contacts and depending on local know-how, an outsider like Kamalnath was put in charge of the Gujarat elections. He knew next to nothing of the ground reality in Gujarat and was forced to admit that he never realized the strength of Hindutva in Gujarat.

What else is Gujarat? Gujarat is a recognized communal riots-prone-zone. Gujarat supplied the largest contingent of the Karsevaks who demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992. Gujarat is the only state in India where the BJP single handedly captured power in 1995 and has maintained its hegemony in spite of the very poor track record of six of its ministries, three elections and frequent impositions of Governor’s Rule. But Kamalnath is not honest even in his confession. The Congress party, under his guidance, hoping to defeat the BJP with its own weapons adopted a soft Hindutva posture. They invited several so called Sants and Mahants to campaign for them. Afraid to ruffle communal feelings, they scrupulously kept their own muslim members away from their party platforms. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi launched her lecture tour from a temple and she touched the feet of several Hindu and Jain priests. All such gimmicks recoiled heavily on the party. This behaviour created dismay and it lost the Party several supporters without gaining anything in return. The choice of Congress candidates was governed by nepotism and flattery rather than merit. The relatives of the veterans got 15 ‘tickets’ and 11 of them lost because they had hardly any support in their constituencies. Even a staunch Congress leader like Jinabhai Darji canvassed for non-Congress candidates on account of such faulty distribution of tickets.

The verdict has been pronounced and vox populi vox Dei. But the far more important question is where do we go from here? What will be the impact of the BJP’s Gujarat victory on the votaries of Hindutva and on their communally sensitive programmes?. Nine states in India will be electing their Assemblies during the ensuing year and Lok Sabha elecions are due in 2004. Will Gujarat with all its horrible riots and mutual hatreds, overshadow the political debates in the near future? The BJP-VHP combination and more especially the lunatic fringe in both these organizations will naturally insist on repeating Gujarat with all its terrible implications everywhere in India. Shri L.K. Advani in his address to his party stalwarts has raked up the issue of the Ram temple at Ayodhya. But we should not allow our imagination to run riot. History might be repeating itself but politics rarely does. In politics a week is a long time and a month is another age. Each State in India has its own peculiarities and no two States are alike. Shri Vajpayee put his finger on the spot when he declared that Gujarat cannot be repeated because Godhra cannot happen again. But the temptation to return to its roots is very strong for the BJP rank and file and the tail may wag the dog forcing the hands of the high command to concede what is seen as the winning formula evolved in Gujarat. This may be a victory for the BJP but a disastrous defeat for Indian Democracy and its liberal spirit that is being shaped so slowly and so painfully.

Professor Nagindas Sanghavi, retired professor of political science, is a political analyst and a respected columnist in the Gujarati press.