Elections in Gujarat have again triggered a debate on India’s secular quest. Regardless of the claims by the two main sides in the fray – the BJP and the Congress — in the final analysis neither side really seems to care for that quest. If this claim sounds cavalier let’s look at the facts. One touchstone of Indian secularism is the media. It is true that many intrepid journalists along with a few serious newspapers and one or two TV channels did play a role in dousing the flames when the communal inferno in Gujarat looked menacing, nearly ready to engulf other sensitive regions of the country. But that’s not always enough.

Opposing slaughter and rape of helpless women is too often touted as sign of secular credentials. However, the truth is not so simple. In a country like Saudi Arabia, for example, which by no stretch of imagination is secular, the monarchy prescribes capital punishment for rapists and murderers. (Sadly enough it also prescribes severe punishment for victims of rape as was noticed in that country recently). Therefore, being civil is often not enough. It could be said that many newspapers did oppose the mass murder and mass rape of innocent citizens of Gujarat who happened to be Muslim by faith. But secularism? That is made of sterner stuff.

Let’s consider one or two examples of how evidently well-meaning journalists who like to proclaim their secularism from rooftops fell short of their calling when it was most needed. Take the example of our popular TV anchors who made their brownie points by wearing military helmets and reporting from the trenches on the frontline of the Kargil conflict. It was in a way the first war at home that was beamed directly into Indian drawing rooms. Pictures of body bags and alleged mutilation of fallen Indian soldiers by their Pakistani counterparts, an unconfirmed claim that remains difficult to digest even today, had a free run of TV channels as well as newspapers. In the Indian context, there is very little difference between jingoism and communalism. “Mian Musharraf”, a reference to the former army chief of Pakistan, may have thus had its origins in Kargil in July 1999 thanks to the reckless reporting from the trenches. Narendra Modi exploited it in 2002 in Gujarat when he began to describe the state’s Muslims as Musharraf’s children to instil hatred against them.

The nexus between militarist nationalism and religious zealotry is common to both India and Pakistan. Indian journalists and TV anchors in particular must watch the footage from December 1992 and listen to the slogans that had accompanied the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. “Our next stop is Lahore,” the mob shouted in unison. It is not difficult to discern a communal fault line that runs parallel with entrenched nationalist zealotry. As far as this brand of nationalism is concerned the BJP alone should not be given the blame. The Congress party has thrived on it for decades and the media has been culpable in propagating it. It was the BJP after all that equated Indira Gandhi with ‘Goddess Durga’ for her triumph in the Bangladesh war. (The media and many Indian intellectuals continue to describe Bangladesh as a rebuttal of the of Muslim League’s two-nation theory, forgetting that the new nation created with Indian support in 1971 was rooted in an even older communal event, Curzon’s partition of Bengal in 1905.) Young Congress leaders were sanguine during a recent election campaign in Uttar Pradesh that Indira Gandhi had performed a great feat by partitioning Pakistan. That their party performed poorly despite an attempt to play the BJP’s game is another matter.

It is true that some of the journalists who rushed to report the communal frenzy in Gujarat included those who had helped set the fire in the first place, not deliberately but by not being sensitive to the link between jingoism and communalism. Moreover, they took their time to put the spotlight on the mayhem that was mutating into a full-blown pogrom. And they were not alone in this. The Indian parliament could have easily postponed its budget day from 28th February, 2002, when the anti-Muslim violence was peaking, to any other day, say in the first or second week of March. Other instruments of financial emergencies, like a vote on account, have been used in India before under Manmohan Singh. That would have enabled everyone, from the political class to the media to stem the rot in Gujarat by giving them that much more lead time. But not a single MP from the left to the right rose that day to request a discussion on Gujarat. Once the budget speech was delivered, NDTV, a leading private channel, turned its focus on Ahmedabad and the rest is history.

So not a squeak from the MPs when they should have plunged into firefighting mode, considering that the Godhra carnage had occurred one full day before and there was every reason to fear an orchestrated “backlash”. So how shall we describe our key stakeholders in the constitution? Were they callous, or simply too beholden to their newfound international commitment to hear out a globally watched budget speech? In this sense the Congress party, which was in opposition when Kargil and Gujarat occurred, played a mysteriously silent role.

No wonder when he was pilloried in a TV debate about the swelling ranks of the Congress with former BJP leaders, cabinet minister Kapil Sibal could only state that the defectors had accepted Congress party’s secular principles. And he also conceded that the Congress decision to accept former Modi cohorts was driven by the fact that they had given up their communal thinking. In other words, at least theoretically speaking, Chief Minister Narendra Modi may well find himself being welcomed in the Congress party should his party suffer a shock defeat in the assembly polls, results for which should be out this week. All Modi has to do is to not repeat his crimes.

Not only did Sibal justify the welcome that was given in the Congress to former BJP leaders, some of them known to be involved in the 2002 pogrom, he went on to explain that the BJP itself had poached generously from the Congress stable. There are other characteristics that seem common to India’s main political rivals. They share their love for populist nationalism. Worse, both have had a share in popularising a misplaced legitimacy for the country’s singularly dangerous nuclear programme. Add to this lethal potion a penchant for neo-con economic reforms and there is very little left to choose between the two.

It is under these circumstances that the people of Gujarat have voted. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has spoken out against Modi’s style of government. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has described him or perhaps his party as merchants of death. And yet one is not too sure how anything would change in Gujarat should the Congress party score a surprise victory. The story will not end with Gujarat whichever way the verdict goes. The debate on secularism is expected to pick up steam in any case because general elections are not too far away. It is difficult to predict the results but we know that the outcome won’t be too different from the seamless change we saw in May 2004 when the Congress defeated the BJP but both had lost their percentage of votes.

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