A riot in Delhi, and one in Gujarat

There are two riots from modern India that have been attributed to political parties.

The Congress is blamed for allowing the murder of some 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. The BJP is thought to have stood by and done nothing while mobs killed a little over a thousand people, mainly Muslim but also Hindu, in Gujarat in 2002. This was to avenge the killing of 59 Hindu pilgrims who died after their train was firebombed. There was a third major riot, which happened after the fall of the Babri Masjid in 1992, but that is seen more as a free-for-all, and across parties and states. This week the BJP again had to face up to the past when its ally in Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar, did not attend the party’s gathering in his state. The reason he did not was that he has Muslim ministers, and Muslim voters in his constituency, whom he does not want to lose. And Nitish is worried that he will, if he even so much as appears on stage with Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat during the 2002 riots, and still in the same job.

When Modi arrived in Bihar, advertisements were published mentioning Gujarat’s contribution made to flood victims in Bihar. This angered Nitish Kumar, who said it was barbaric to boast about helping those who were dying. But it is unlikely he would have been so touchy had the advertisement been made on behalf of someone other than Modi. This shows how worried Nitish is about the poisonous image that Modi has with his state’s Muslims.

But in Delhi, the prime minister of India, a Sikh, is from the Congress. And the Congress also regularly wins elections to govern Punjab, whose majority is Sikh. So clearly the Congress has done something to overcome its image as being bigoted against the Sikhs, and Sikhs themselves are willing to accept the party. Why is this so?

The answer is simple: Congress has apologised for its action, or inaction, during the butchering. The appointment of Manmohan Singh as India’s leader, while it is probably entirely due to his merit, is also seen as a balm offered to Sikhs. This might not amount to much, given the amount of trauma the Sikhs would have gone through and the actual damage to so many thousands of families, but they recognise the effort the Congress is trying to make.

The BJP, on the other hand, is still seen as the party that is prejudiced against Muslims, and the reason for this is also clear: it has made no apology for its inaction during the violence, and it has stood by the man who refused to say he had done anything wrong. Being in charge of a state when a thousand people are killed and billions in property is deliberately destroyed is a good reason to apologise, but Modi does not do this because he likes the image he has in certain sections of Gujarati society as being tough on Muslims.

This image does not travel particularly well because, as Nitish shows, most parts of India are repelled by it. But Modi has chosen to stick with it, and for that the BJP continues to suffer.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2010.