The poll results are out - Narendra Modi has won Gujarat elections again. His victory is being touted as 'historical' by the media. It surely is historical in more ways than one. People of the state have elected him Chief Minister in spite of the Tehelka expose` on his involvement in carnage of Muslims in the state, in spite of his openly admitting to getting Sohrabuddin killed in fake encounter, in spite of Sonia Gandhi calling him & his party 'maut ke saudagar' in one of the election rallies (I am no supporter of Sonia either & detest this kind of political circus jargon. Also, this name-calling has apparently helped his popularity as per this post-election analysis on rediff.com) and in spite of media openly writing about his religious fanaticism.Modi's win does not come as a surprise to me. I have seen Laloo/Rabri being brought to power over & over again in Bihar or for that matter Jailalitha too in TN. The charges against leaders in both cases being that of corruption. I don't condone corruption, but I definitely consider it to be a lesser crime than merciless killing of people in the name of religion. But looks like the junta of Gujarat doesn't seem to mind Modi's wrong-doings or they think killing people is just a part of life (as evident from the crowd's response on Sohrabuddin's killing in one of the election rallies). Yes, I acknowledge that he is a good administrator and seems to have taken several steps for the betterment of the state. But the fact that he is a religious fanatic and was involved in state-sponsored killings of Muslims overshadows it.
For me Modi's win means re-establishment of the fact that we live in a pseudo-secular country and that minorities in our country remain just that - minorities. It is the vote of majority of population that eventually matters.
Picture courtesy: http://www.narendramodi.org/bio.htm
2 comments:
Did not know that you had interest in politics.
Your observation is correct that it remains open that Modi plays religion politics. But the interesting fact is that inspite of public display of the same & availability of information, he won.
Now either the "junta" thinks that the other party is worse or the cushy feeling that "India is secular" is false. I hope it is the former.
RK
Not really interested in politics, I just write about issues that bother me - and it's more like a lay person's perspective. Anyway, the reason for his win are both - that Cong did not have a good Chief Ministerial candidate in Gujarat & that we definitely are NOT a secular country. If you go just by numbers (I've commented this on another blog too)- even if half the Hindus vote for Modi & none of the Muslims do, he would still have a convincing win. So, no surprises there.
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