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Will communalism work again?

After promising to seek re-election on a development platform, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is back to doing what he is best at — stoking up communal sentiments as a political mobilisation strategy. He evidently trusts his own demagoguery and his ability to argue his way out of a tight spot. What he said, in a December 4 election speech, with reference to the cold-blooded murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a fake encounter staged by the Gujarat police near Ahmed abad on November 26, 2005, has been variously reported in the press. It was clearly an implicit justification of the atrocity. In his reply to a notice issued by the Election Commission of India on December 6, Mr. Modi has contended that the quotations attributed to him in reports published by The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, and The Statesman were not to be found in the CD containing his election speech, and that the ECI’s notice to him was based on “unverified and false media reports.” The relevant part of the speech, he has claimed, was “entirely against terrorism,” with no explicit mention of anyone’s religion. But what is most notable about Mr. Modi’s reply is the manner in which he has sought to turn the tables on the Congress — by maintaining that he was only exercising his fundamental right of free speech in responding politically to Sonia Gandhi’s December 1 attack on him and those running the Gujarat government as “liars, betrayers, and merchants of fear and death.” He has also claimed that Digvijay Singh referred to Gujarat as a State that had unleashed “Hindu terrorism.” The suggestion was that the ECI was adopting double standards in not acting on the complaints made by the State BJP unit and in not sending notices to the Congress leaders.

Mr. Modi’s aggressive defence seems to have worked, at least for now. The Election Commission was due to come up with its decision on Sunday — almost certainly a reprimand or censure of the Gujarat Chief Minister for his communal remarks. But it has now been obliged to look at the wider context and proximate events, especially as the Congress, going back on a lawyerly denial by Kapil Sibal, has honourably owned up that Ms Gandhi’s “maut-ke-soudagar” remark was indeed a reference to Mr. Modi, among others. So ECI notices have gone out to the Congress president, to the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, and also to BJP M.P. Vijay Kumar Malhotra, asking them to respond to the Commission’s prima facie view that they had, in reported remarks, violated the Model Code of Conduct on different counts. Election analysts are suggesting not merely that the Gujarat contest has tightened but that the popular mood has turned against the BJP because, among other things, Mr. Modi’s attempt to shut out ‘normal issues’ and make the Hindu-Muslim divide the dominant, if not the sole, election issue has failed. What the Gujarat strongman is seeking to do is to convert the ECI’s show cause notice to him into communal capital. The big question is whether it will work.

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