AP News, December 7th, 2007
In the narrow alleys where Muslim families cowered from murderous Hindu mobs, the survivors still fear one man above all others.
Narendra Modi's bearded face stares from street corners, T-shirts, key chains and mugs in the western Indian state of Gujarat, where he's in a grueling re-election campaign for the top post five years after a wave of anti-Muslim violence left more than 1,000 people dead.
Human rights activists, independent panels and even some Hindu nationalists accuse Modi of doing little to stop the killings, and there's perhaps no other politician in India who evokes such strong emotions. The vote, which begins Tuesday, is seen as a major test for Hindu nationalism, a movement that swept India at the turn of the millennium before fading in the last three years.
In a country that prides itself on its religious diversity and its secular constitution, many see the rise of Modi and his pro-Hindu agenda as a terrifying chapter of intolerance. They say he is a dangerous firebrand and all too comfortable inciting the politics of hatred and violence.
"When I see his face or hear his voice, I get so mad," said Urmat Bibi Pathan, 60, a Muslim whose son was killed in the 2002 violence. "If Modi came here I would say: 'I blame you. Everything was done by you.'"
Modi's supporters counter that he is the architect of Gujarat's economic miracle — the state reportedly attracted more than 25 percent of India's total investment of $69 billion last year.
"Modi is such a good person," said Ramesh Patel, who runs a cloth mill in Ahmadabad, the state's biggest city. "Now business is growing very well. He has done everything for Gujarat."
But despite his achievements, for many of India's 1.1 billion people — 14 percent of whom are Muslim — Modi will always be defined by the anti-Muslim violence that swept Gujarat in 2002 after 59 Hindus were killed when a train car burst into flames in Godhra, a town in the state.
Hindu nationalist groups blamed the blaze on a Muslim mob — an allegation that was never proven — and launched a three-month pogrom against Muslims across Gujarat, the home state of revered independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. The violence was among the bloodiest episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in India, which has seen periodic outbreaks of religious violence since the partition of the subcontinent into majority Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan at independence from Britain in 1947.
Modi has maintained his administration acted responsibly during the massacre, but has never issued an outright denial. His staff denied several requests for an interview.
He has not shied away from using the massacre to his advantage — in a previous election campaign soon after the killings, Modi's posters showed the flaming train car from Godhra. And in his stump speeches, he often said Hindu attacks against Muslims were understandable and accused Muslims of supporting arch-rival Pakistan.
Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, recently called the Modi administration "peddlers of religion and death," though analysts believe she's reluctant to directly mention the 2002 violence for fear of angering Hindu voters.
The United States has been skeptical of Modi as well, refusing to issue him a diplomatic visa in 2005 because Indian investigators held his administration responsible for the violence.
Modi won his previous two elections in landslide votes. While he's the favorite again, this campaign is far tighter. The vote will be held in two phases — Tuesday and again on Dec. 16 due to the huge voting population in the massive rural state.
Members of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, say he is a future prime minister in the making.
He began his political career with the country's largest militant Hindu movement, the RSS, the parent organization of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The RSS was influenced by 1930s German fascism and has been widely accused of stoking religious hatred with its aggressively anti-Muslim views.
After the 2002 violence, Modi became a leading face of "Hindutva," the doctrine that predominantly Hindu India should be governed by Hindu beliefs. That philosophy ruled the national government while the Bharatiya Janata Party was in power from 1998 to 2004, but has sputtered since Gandhi's Congress party came back to power in 2004.
Some see the race in Gujarat, a BJP stronghold, as the party's last stand.
"If they lose Gujarat, they lose everything," said Tridip Suhrud, a political scientist in Ahmadabad, the state's biggest city.
Suhrud said losing Gujarat would be a "huge loss of face" for the BJP because it would mean voters failed to connect with both "Hindutva" and the party's trumpeting of its economic gains.
Those include pushing through the kind of major infrastructure projects that often get stalled by political infighting elsewhere in India, such as the giant — and controversial — Narmada Dam, which allowed for more hydroelectric power in the state.
"In five years, he has done more than the Congress party did in the past 40 years," said Vijay Shah, owner of a framing business in Ahmadabad. "Modi is the leader to take Gujarat to the next stage."
For survivors of the 2002 violence, that's a frightening prospect.
"If Modi wins," said Mehboop Sheikh, a Muslim tailor who barely escaped a rampaging mob, "it could happen again."
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On the Web:
Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat, http://www.bjpguj.org
Congress Party, http://www.congress.org.in
