Doomed From Within.(relations between Hindus and Muslims, Gujarat, India)(Brief Article)

Varshney is director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His book "Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India" was just published by Yale University Press.

In recent years, relations between Hindus and Muslims in India have played out along the same fault line: a battle between the secular, multicultural vision espoused by Mahatma Gandhi, and the intolerant, monoreligious view held by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse, who killed him. The fact that bloody riots have racked the state of Gujarat, and in particular its business capital, Ahmadabad, is in that sense ironic. Gujarat was Gandhi's home state, and Ahmadabad his adopted city. After he returned from South Africa in 1915, until he left on the famous Salt March of 1930, Gandhi made Ahmadabad his home, nurturing a large array of civic institutions, developing an enormous mass following and leaving a formidable legacy of voluntary social service and communal harmony.

At the same time, the bloodshed has largely been confined to Gujarat for a reason--one that holds out hope for religious amity in the rest of the country. Violence and bigotry have been spreading throughout the state for the past three decades. For the most part, this can be traced to the steady decline of the once mighty Congress party and its allied organizations, and their replacement by Hindu nationalist groups. In some important ways, this represents a local phenomenon.

In the first half of the 20th century, influenced by Gandhian ideology, Congress routinely participated in social reconstruction, which entailed civic activity such as grass-roots work for Hindu-Muslim unity, "Buy Indian" campaigns, nationalist education and the uplift of women, tribals, peasants and "untouchables." As Congress grew more powerful politically, that civic role declined. The more governments the party ran, the more it attracted people interested in sharing the spoils of power, not cadres committed to ideology and grass-roots work. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its allied organizations stepped into the void. Unlike Congress, they have the aim of promoting Hindu solidarity across the various castes, not Hindu- Muslim unity; their right wing is virulently anti-Muslim. They now run ideological camps for youth, schools and dispensaries for tribals and lower castes, and organizations for women. Through this extensive network, the Hindu nationalists have penetrated Gujarat more than any other state.

The fact that Gujarat is, economically, the fastest-growing state in India ...