Hindu Fanatics win vote with anti-Muslim agenda
Hindu hardliners win vote with anti-Muslim agenda
**Security forces were deployed across the Indian state of Gujarat, the scene of mass sectarian killings earlier this year, after an overwhelming election victory for hardline Hindus who campaigned on an overtly anti-Muslim platform. **
The triumph for the BJP, which also heads the federal coalition government, has prompted fears that it will resort to the same tactics in a batch of important state elections next year, exploiting India’s explosive Hindu-Muslim divide in order to win votes.
The results were an endorsement for Gujarat’s demagogic stand-in chief minister, Narendra Modi, 52, who heads a government accused by human rights groups of failing to stop – and in some cases instigating – the killing, raping, and looting that swept the western state in the spring.
According to unofficial estimates, more than 2,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims, as men wearing the saffron colours of Hindu fundamentalist groups – which have links with the BJP’s right wing – were trucked into Muslim areas, and went on the rampage. Many thousands of Muslims fled their homes.
**I would be happy if I could say that riots are not a prescription for winning elections," said Yogendra Yadav, a political analyst. “The sad answer is that it has helped them.” **
Newspaper commentators – who have written about little else for weeks – portrayed the election as a historical contest between fanatical Hindu segregationists and India’s tolerant secular “civil society”, which takes its creed from Mahatma Gandhi. Mr Modi – who is being tipped as a future prime minister – began his political career in the RSS (National Volunteer Force), a stridently “Hindutva” group with paramilitary overtones which is linked to the BJP right.
**The Congress president in Gujarat, Shankersinh Vaghela, bitterly described the election as a victory for “aggressive Hindutva”. **
comment: secularism works they say oh really thousands killed and raped and many more thousands made homeless. then they say it just minor problem what nonsense this is a prime example in quote on quote biggest democracy on the earth that democracy secularism does’nt work just leads to more disaster!