‘Gujarat model not about vikas but majoritarianism, politicisation, surveillance’

To him, the ‘Gujarat model’ is not the success story Modi blusters about, but the pillars of communal polarisation — “that peaked in 2002 with the pogrom… the riots were the “recipe of electoral success for the BJP”, he recalled — resulting in Hindu majoritarianism, the politicisation of state institutions, including the police and judiciary, a political economy implying crony capitalism and growing inequalities and, of course, populist techniques of communication. “Everything we see today (of India),” he remarked, “was there before (in Gujarat).”

Jaffrelot undertook a constituency-by-constituency case study of Gujarat, which unearthed that “where riots occurred, BJP won seats in 2002, whereas it did not win almost any seat where there were no riots”. In other words, polarisation by sparking violence worked.

He also maintained that “fake encounters” between police and Muslims between 2003 and 2006 continued to polarise. Since 2014, he stated, this has manifested in lynching of Muslim farmers, ‘love jihad’ campaigns, and such like.

In short, he explained that the polarisation modus operandi was invented in Gujarat and upgraded to the national level, and elaborated that after the 2002 riots, “the policemen who had done their job had to be side-lined, those who were complicit had to be promoted” — and that is precisely what happened! It was a conversion of the state police “into an instrument of a political agenda”.

Jaffrelot added: “It’s largely true of the judiciary as well.” In effect, he underlined, the two pillars of the rule of law “have (since 2003) been completely undermined in Gujarat”. In addition to that, “the rule of the vigilantes”, as he called it, prevails.