It is inevitable that when large-scale violence, which has the open or tacit support of the state, takes place, Gujarat 2002 is recalled — just as Gujarat 2002 itself drew parallels with Delhi 1984. Such comparisons, by their very nature, are hasty, casual and therefore not wholly accurate, even though politicians belonging to the three major national parties, which have in their own ways presided over these three blots on India’s recent history, are partial to making such comparisons. They do this in a bid to absolve themselves of their own responsibilities as actors in such orgies of violence and to appear morally superior and politically more credible than their rivals.
There are significant differences between the violence in Nandigram and Gujarat of course. For one, the violence in Nandigram was confined — as CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat underlined — to one block of West Bengal. The 2002 killings in Gujarat, in contrast, were far more widespread — according to a state intelligence bureau report, communal violence had affected 24 of the 25 districts in Gujarat, although of course it was in places like Naroda Patiya that it was concentrated. Gujarat’s violence also involved a hugely greater number of people, and had a communal focus rather than the more defused targeting of those perceived to be political opponents, as in Nandigram. So when the CPM leadership attacks the NHRC for terming Nandigram the “worst scar on the face of the nation” and says that “superficial comparisons with Nandigram tend to undermine and trivialise the trauma and the suffering of the Muslim minorities in Gujarat”, it has half a point.
Having said that, there are disturbing commonalities too, and not just in the fact that the two political parties — the CPM and the BJP — claim to be parties with a difference. The first commonality is, of course, the sheer scale of the domination that both parties have exercised, and continue to exercise, over their respective states: West Bengal and Gujarat. Of course the BJP in Gujarat is still a long way from achieving 30 years of uninterrupted rule, which the CPM has managed to do in Bengal; but 12 years and three consecutive and handsome election victories is almost halfway there. The important point to note is the relatively unassailable electoral entrenchment both parties have achieved in these states: in the 2002 Gujarat assembly election, the BJP won 126 out...
