URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/29581935.cms
The Times of India
Thursday, November 28, 2002
Section : Editorial
LEADER ARTICLE
Gujarat's Saffron Hues: Not the United Colours of India
KINGSHUK NAG
As campaigning for one of the most important polls in the history of India gets underway in Gujarat, political pundits are holding forth with their views on what will happen to the country if Narendra Modi wins the elections by a large majority.
Most of them are predicting that in the event of this happening, politics of the country will take a new turn and the day may not be far when a saffron flag may fly from atop the seat of power in Delhi.
While part of the arguments advanced cannot be denied, most of the analyses are purely political and do not recognise that each state in the country has a unique sociological composition that cannot necessarily be duplicated elsewhere.
Apart from the electoral system, it is this societal formation that goes far beyond caste that determines the dominant political ideology of a state. Thus, even if Narendra Modi with the help of his friend Praveen Togadia can paint the polity of Gujarat in colours of deep saffron, this may not happen everywhere else.
The key to the present saffronisation of the state lies not only in the activities of the members of the sangh parivar but also in the homogeneous nature of Gujarati society.
Hindu Gujaratis who form some 85 per cent of the five crore population of the state are more homogeneous than their co-religionists in other parts of the country. This homogeneity reflects itself in lifestyles, food habits, cultural inclinations and thinking processes. It not only encompasses the Brahmin and the bania but also the intermediate castes like Patels.
In most states such a parallel — of the intermediate castes coming up and in toto adopting the values of the upper castes — cannot be found. Strange though it may seem, there are only four kinds of surnames amongst Hindu Gujaratis — that of Brahmins, banias, kshatriyas and Patels. All other castes in recent years have adapted these surnames and each of them strives for a common identity.
This sociological homogeneity also mirrors itself in the political arena. Historically, the third front in different parts of the country came up as formations reflecting the aspirations of the intermediate castes. This includes the Communist Party and the socialist parties of bygone years and the Samajwadi and Lok Dal formations of recent years.
But Gujarat has always had a bipolar polity, with the interest of the intermediate caste either subsumed or reflected prominently by either of the two major parties. With such a homogeneity in thought processes, the need for an alternative third front was never felt.
All this does not add up to saffronisation and the key to that can be found in the history of Gujarat and, importantly, how it is sought to be projected now. The region was too far off from Delhi and Agra, the capital of the country in the mediaeval ages, to receive any beneficent effects of Mughal rule or profit from the inter-mixing of cultures.
The region around Delhi and Agra and to the east in Lucknow gave rise to Urdu, ghazal, kathak and even brought to prominence the caste of kayasthas. Being traditional civil servants they were open to both Hindu and Islamic influences and were instrumental in the evolution of a common culture. But there was none of this inter-mixing in Gujarat, even as large parts of the region remained under Hindu rule.
In the absence of this cultural interaction, the memories of Somnath have remained deeply ingrained in the subconscious mind of the Hindu Gujarati. Mahmud of Ghazni plundered the Somnath temple many times in the ninth century leaving behind a trail of death and destruction on the route he came in through and exited. The fact that the Hindu Gujarati does not have a history of resistance and has no mediaeval hero like Rana Pratap, Shivaji or even Tipu Sultan to fall back upon has only accentuated this kind of memory.
With the gradual decline of Gandhism (which offered a different take on life) and nothing else ideologically to take its place, the BJP and VHP have found fertile ground in the state to push their culture of saffronisation. An essential component of the VHP’s Gujarat saffronisation programme has been to revive the memory of Ghazni.
This present-day saffronisation in the state is relieved only by another prominent trait of the Gujaratis. Historians for long have debated what happened to the Indus Valley civilisation and where the inhabitants of this trading culture disappeared. One does not have to go far; running through the veins of the modern-day Gujarati is the blood of the Indus Valley denizen.
This has given the former a sea-faring disposition and a business and trading nature, which as is widely known is an essential component of the Gujarati monoculture. The pursuit of business and the making of money has been developed into an art in Gujarat and the community’s sensitivity on this matter is found nowhere else in the country.
Ultimately, it is this interplay between the business disposition of the Gujaratis and their homogeneous nature which has driven them towards saffronisation which will determine the long-term political fate of the state. And, yet, even if (at all) Narendra Modi can be a roaring lion in Ahmedabad, the same may not be the case elsewhere.
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