[Not coincidentally,
mass rioting broke out last week in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and
politically important state, after a legislator from Mr. Modi’s party
circulated a fake video of two Hindus being lynched by a Muslim mob. Forty-four
people were killed and 42,000 were displaced as villages were
sacked.]
 |
Sam Panthaky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Narendra Modi, the opposition candidate for prime minister of India, accepted a
portrait of himself on Tuesday on his birthday. |
AHMEDABAD, India — India’s most important election in a generation began in earnest
this month the same way consequential elections nearly always start here — with
a proclamation and a deadly riot.
In New Delhi, the
Bharatiya Janata Party announced last week that it had chosen Narendra Modi,
one of the most divisive politicians in India’s history, as its candidate for
prime minister in next spring’s national elections. Mr. Modi, the chief
minister of the western state of Gujarat, is an unapologetic Hindu chauvinist
who has been accused of mass murder.
Mr. Modi has tempered
his anti-Muslim tirades and replaced them with a message of development based
on a record in Gujarat that even critics acknowledge is impressive. But critics
also say he and his Hindu nationalist party have benefited from past violence
between Hindus and Muslims, using it to paper over Hindus’ historic differences
over caste and get them to vote as a bloc along religious lines.
Not coincidentally, mass
rioting broke out last week in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and
politically important state, after a legislator from Mr. Modi’s party
circulated a fake video of two Hindus being lynched by a Muslim mob. Forty-four
people were killed and 42,000 were displaced as villages were
sacked.
Riyazat Ali of Bawari
said he watched from a hidden room as a Hindu mob stormed his house, hacked his
brother to death and fatally shot his 18-year-old niece.
“I saw everything,” said
Mr. Ali, who has been living in a refugee camp in Kandhla for the past week with
his 11 children. “It was raining bullets inside the house.”
India may be the world’s
most populous democracy, but election campaigns here are often fueled by hate
and soaked in blood. By choosing Mr. Modi, a fiery orator who once peppered his
speeches with anti-Muslim slurs, the Bharatiya Janata Party has raised the
prospect that this election could be the deadliest in decades.
Hindus make up roughly
80 percent of India’s population and Muslims 13 percent, a share about equal to
that of blacks in the United States. Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s minister of
Home Affairs, said that there had already been 451 cases of sectarian violence
this year, surpassing last year’s total of 410. He warned that violence was
likely to intensify as elections approached.
Among the country’s vast
urban youth, Mr. Modi has rock-star appeal. Half of India’s population is under
25, and most have seen little more from their leaders than the soporific
near-whispers of octogenarians like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. By contrast,
Mr. Modi is a charismatic preacher of a resurgent India, a vision that millions
mired in a sputtering economy find intoxicating. To many Hindus, he is a
revelation.
To many Muslims, though,
he is an abomination. In 2002, less than a year after he was appointed the
state’s chief minister, riots swept Gujarat and killed more than 1,000 people,
mostly Muslims. Mothers were skewered, children set afire and fathers hacked to
pieces.
Some witnesses claimed
that Mr. Modi encouraged the violence, which he has denied. He has never been
charged, but close associates of his were convicted of inciting a riot.
“They want to create a
Hindu voting bloc that transcends caste, and they’ll use hate to do it,” said
Sumant Banerjee, a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla.
The riots only bolstered
Mr. Modi’s political standing. Months later, having consolidated the Hindu
vote, he led his party to a resounding victory in state elections. Since then
he has dominated Gujarat’s politics, the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad,
remains deeply segregated and most of India’s Muslims hate him.
Mr. Modi, 63, refused
requests over months for an interview (he rarely speaks to Western news
organizations). Jay Narayan Vyas, a leader of Mr. Modi’s opposition party, said
that Mr. Modi was not to blame for the 2002 riots and that his party did not
demonize Muslims.
“The B.J.P. philosophy
is justice to all but appeasement to none,” he said.
Mr. Vyas said that as
prime minister, Mr. Modi would bring wealth to India and tame its political
chaos. He said India needed a strong leader who “doesn’t allow democracy to be
a passport to misbehave.”
Mr. Modi will face off
against the Indian Congress Party, which has yet to name its candidate for
prime minister. Mr. Singh is widely thought to be too old, while Sonia Gandhi,
the party’s president, is said to be ill. It is still not clear whether Rahul
Gandhi, Mrs. Gandhi’s son, is interested in seeking the job.
As a child, Mr. Modi
worked in his father’s tea shop, and as a young man chose politics over a life
of religious devotion. He rose through the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, a right-wing Hindu organization associated with the B.J.P. that espouses
a muscular religious nationalism. Indeed, a former member of the R.S.S. assassinated
Mohandas K. Gandhi, the nation’s founding father, in 1948.
In a country where
family ties are paramount, Mr. Modi has remained single and is rarely seen,
even with close relatives. But his loner status has endeared him to many, as it
suggests that he has few reasons to solicit bribes, routine in Indian politics.
While never apologizing
for the 2002 riots, Mr. Modi has shifted his focus recently to development, and
he is now the darling of India’s business elite, who hail him for his ability
to cut through the country’s infamous bureaucracy and create jobs.
“The reason why Modi
needs a chance to lead is that he is the first politician since Nehru who has
articulated a clear economic vision,” said Tavleen Singh, an author and
commentator who was referring to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime
minister, and who argued that hate crimes were so routinely incited by Indian
leaders that no major party or politician was innocent.
Car plants now crowd the
outskirts of Ahmedabad. Top industrialists say they have located plants in
Gujarat because Mr. Modi got them land, steady electricity and a pliant work
force, a rare combination in much of India. Although Gujarat has just 5 percent
of India’s population, it accounts for 16 percent of its industrial production
and 22 percent of its exports.
A drive through Mr.
Modi’s constituency of Maninagar in this western city demonstrates both the
hopes and fears swirling around him. The neighborhood is a mostly middle-class
enclave of tidy homes and handsome apartment buildings with well-paved streets,
a functional sewer system and constant electricity.
In almost any advanced
country, Maninagar would be unremarkable. But in a country where roads are
often atrocious, more than half of the population has no access to toilets and
electricity is fitful at best, Maninagar is almost an idyll. Even the richest
neighborhoods in New Delhi and Mumbai lack such services.
Drive past M.S. Car
Repair Shop, however, and this scene turns decidedly darker. Here, the roads
are potholed and crumbling, the houses are tin-roofed shacks, trash is
everywhere and the stink of sewage is pervasive. The reason for the difference
in this small part of Maninagar? Religion, say its residents.
“Only Muslims live here,
and you can see for yourself that it’s not nearly as nice,” said Mohammad Yusuf
while repairing a punctured inner-tube on an ancient bicycle. “It should be a
lot better, but it’s not.”
A similar partition is
now taking place in the villages around Muzaffarnagar, where riots erupted last
week. Zareen Khatun, whose son found his father’s mutilated corpse at a
hospital, said she would never speak the town’s name again.
“We’ll never go back
there,” she said firmly.
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Ahmedabad,
and Nida Najar from Muzaffarnagar, India.
