It was to be the “revenge of democracy”.
It was also to be the “political punishment” of Gujarat politicians, social scientists, civil society activists, bureaucrats and citizens.
It was supposed to be “Religion coming to the rescue of politicians”
It was also supposed to be an election where “many Gujarati voters view these very merchants of death as extra-judicial protectors of Hindus”.
It was supposed to be a ghettoised state where religion has divided people down the middle.
But then something went horribly wrong in this script that a bigoted media had been working overtime to spin.
The wisdom of the crowds trumped the stupidity of the elite few.
To appreciate how the wisdom of the crowds delivered Gujarat to Narendra Modi let us look at the voting patterns.
First in a repudiation to all those who questioned demoracy in Gujarat, an overwhelming 59.76% or nearly two-thirds of eligible voters in Gujarat exercised their franchise. This should put to shame even the oldest of democracies were participation rarely touches the half-way mark. With this phenomenal turnout Gujaratis have shown that democracy is vibrant in their state and they dont need certificates from armchair psuedo-intellectuals on their commitment to democracy.
Secondly for a state that has been repeatedly characterised as being structurally polarised 5 out of the 6 muslim candidates fielded by the Congress won the election. Those who won are Faruq Sheikh (Kalupur), Gyasuddin Sheikh (shahpur), Sabir Kabliwala (Jamalpur), Iqbal Sheikh (Vagra) and Javed Pirzada (Vankaner). The lone Muslim candidate who lost was a woman Shahnaz Babi who it is rumored was unacceptable to Muslims on account of her gender.?
Let us analyse what happened in these 6 seats.
Kalupur had a high turnout of 64%. It had 4 muslim candidates in the fray and 4 hindu?candidates. Congress polled 57.5% of the vote while the BJP polled 39.52% of the vote. Now contrast this with how the votes pared in 2002. 59% for the Congress’ Muslim candidate and 39.94% for the BJP. Thats not all, this is the BJP’s all time worst performance in Kalupur while it is the Congress’?all time best performance.
Shahpur had 65.9% turnout. It had 6 Muslim candidates and Muslim crusader Mukul SInha in the fray. The rest of the 11 contestants were Hindu. The Congress won with about 1.5% margin in a tossup election that saw sitting Minister Kaushik Patel lose. This is?the first time the BJP vote share dipped below 50% since 1995 while the Congress vote share remained almost static. Interestingly two other Muslim candidates one from the BSP and the other an Independent polled about 1% of the vote. (Btw Mukul Sinha got just 250 odd votes).
Jamalpur had nearly 60% voter turnout. A seat that has never been won by the BJP. It had only 2 Muslim candidates in the fray. The Congress polled 58.5% of the vote while the BJP 33.8%. This is the best vote share the Congress had since 1985 and a 5% decline in vote share for the BJP since 2002.
Vagra had a 66.7% voter turnout. The Congress has been winning here for the last 2 elections. It had 5 muslim candidates and 3 Hindu candidates. The Congress won with a vote share of 47.68%. With the exception of 1995 this is Congress’ worst performance matching its performance in 1990. Its vote share declined from 2002. The BJP’s vote share declined from 2002 as well but its best performance was not in 2002 but in 1990.
Wankaner had 63.65% voter turnout. This seat has flip flopped between the BJP and the Congress last 4 elections. Predictably it went back to the Congress. Congress won with a decisive margin of 16%. Last time BJP won with a decisive margin of 8%. The election before the Congress won a tossup with a margin of 2% against an Independent, the BJP was nearly wiped out in that election. 2002 saw the BJP’s peak performance here. With the execption of 1998 this is the BJP’s worst performance matching 1990.
Now for the lone losing Muslim womas candidate from the Congress. Junagadh saw a relatively lower turnout of just 51.55%. The BJP won with an overwhelming margin of over nearly 26%. Important to note that an Independent polled a high of 14%. The BJP saw a 7% decline in its vote share, its lowest in 3 elections since it started to win this seat.
So where is the evidence of the so called structural polarization ?
In each of these seats where Muslim candidates have won, there is?a different story to tell. Except for Kalupur where the vote shares mirror 2002 and the population divide, in the rest of the seats if there is anything common it is that the BJP had done worse than before and in some cases it was at its worst performance.
In closing while the Muslim vote may have consolidated in favor of Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress, the same can hardly be said of the Hindu vote consolidating in favor of the BJP which saw its vote share decline.
Offstumped Bottomline: To call Gujarat structurally polarised is a slur to the nearly two-thirds?who participated in this election.
With a majority favoring Narendra Modi?the mainstream media must learn to respect the wisdom of the crowds rather than insinuate its judgement.
Unless the psuedo-intellectuals in the media admit to their elitist stupidity and apologize to Gujarat they will be cast by the wayside into irrelevance.
Filed under: Gujarat Polls 2007, Uncategorized
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[...] Offstumped placed an observative post today on How the wisdom of the crowds trumped the stupidity of the elite fewHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
English media is now wholly exposed.
We have a saying in Bengali: A person whose both ears are cut off have no shame, thus walks freely.
English media has become similarly shameless today.
Offstumped, it will be good if you can also do a similar kind of analysis like this:
http://bharatindian.indiainteracts.com/2007/12/25/hilarious-media-articles-on-gujarat-elections/
“Qaum ka gaddar, Maut ka haqdar” (Betrayer of the community, deserver of death). This threat has been issued to ALL INDIAN ENGLISH MEDIA BY ISLAMIC JIHADIS THRU THEIR CONDUITS . Not to write/Talk against muslims but use “SECULARISM” to attack Hindus .People like TEESTA SETAVLAD cannot survive for long without active backing from ISI and also Western intelligence .
SECULAR VERSUS COMMUNAL
This pair of labels has attained the widest currency of all political words. We face a peculiar problem here. The meanings which these words have acquired in India’s political parlance are not even remotely related to the meanings which the dictionaries assign to them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that although these two words belong to the English language, their meanings in India have become exclusively Indian.
The word secular is defined in the dictionaries as “the belief that the state, morals, education, etc. should be independent of religion.” But in India it means only one thing — eschewing everything Hindu and espousing everything Islamic.
Every one who wants to qualifying as secular should subscribe to the folowing articles of faith :
the Muslims in India after independence have become a poor and persecuted minority;
they are being deprived of their fair share in the fruits of development;
their religion and culture are not getting legitimate expression in public life and media;
they are not being given employment in public and private sectors in proportion to their population; and
the preponderance of Hindus in the security forces puts in grave peril the lives, honour and properties of Muslims.
Every Hindu politician or pen-pusher who aspires to pass the test has to
proclaim that Islam stands for equality and human brotherhood;
celebrate the prophet’s birthday with fanfare and throw an iftar dinner at the end of Ramzan;
attend Urs of sufis and Urdu mushairas;
support the claim of Urdu to be the second state language in all states where Muslims are in a minority;
admire whatever passes for Islamic art and architecture;
relish Muslim cooking and appreciate Muslim dress and demeanour;
abuse Israel and applaud Arab countries.
He should also keep quiet or look the other way when Muslims
breed like rats;
refuse to give modern education to their children;
push their women into purdah;
practise polygamy;
start street-riots at the slightest pretext;
rejoice over every Pakistan victory and every Indian defeat in sports; and
invite and protect infiltrators from across the borders. And he should not whisper a word when Arab governments pour petro-dollars and professional preachers of Islam into this country in order to convert the weaker sections of Hindu society.
Even these positive services rendered to Islam are not sufficient for a Hindu politician or pen-pusher out to earn the secular certificate. One is not secular unless one harbours and expresses a pronounced anti-Hindu animus. One should lodge an immediate protest against the least little expressionm of Hindu religion or culture in public media and at government functions. One should frown upon every government dignitary performing a pooja in a Hindu temple or going to Hindu place prilgrimage. One should accuse all educational, cultural and research institutions of hiding Hindu communalists. One should put the blame squarely on the RSS for every communal riot. And so on, the list of one’s grievances against Hindu society should be as long as one’s love for Islam and Muslims.
The definition of communal is a logical corollary of the above definition of secular. The dictionaries define the word communal as “pertaining to community, owned in common,, shared.” But Hindus in India have only to say that they belong to a community and that they share a culture in common. They immediately provoke secularists of all hues to come down upon them. In fact, the word Hindu itself has become a dirty word, almost an obscenity in India’ political parlance. Woe betide the Hindu who dares say that India is his ancestral homeland and that his religion and culture also have a case. He will be immediately denounced as a Hindu chauvinist. A Hindu who blunders into reading Indian history with his own eyes who finds that his society has suffered immeasurably at the hands of Islamic imperialism, and who cries out that this aggression should now stop, makes the Leftists mad with fury. They brand him as an enemy of public peace and national integration. They find in him a fiend who is plotting a genocide of the “poor Muslim minority.”
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/12/hilarious-media-articles-on-gujarat.html
Yossarin, what I found most interesting are two things: (1) That a certain percentage of Muslims, especially those better off, younger and educated, voted for Modi whereas those constituencies tend to be the older, uneducated and poorer Muslims that Congress can exploit-convert easier into votes. Still, you know how the media went to those places to ensure some quote like “We can not get job here anymore, we can not get our kids into school”.
(2) That Modi’s victory has made him pariah no more. Besides Naveen Patnaik (BJD), Sukhbir Badal (Heir to the SAD throne), Manohar Joshi (SS), Om Prakash Chautala (ex-ally INLD), and George Fernandes/Jaya Jaitley (JD-U) were all present. I read somewhere Jayalalithaa attended, not sure though, although it makes no difference since she attended back in 2002. Clearly, the UNPA is heading for a major crash and burn and allies, with the exception of Nitish Kumar, are starting to look at him differently.
Modi won, and not just won, he did it with a bone-crunching Knockout.
It conjures up image of Muhammad Ali, with that vicious grin on his face and a cocked fist, standing tall over the once-mighty Sonny Liston, lying on the floor, hands raised over his head as if surrendering, after Ali knocked him out.
http://a1259.g.akamai.net/f/1259/5586/5d/images.art.com/images/-/Muhammad-Ali-vs-Sonny-Liston-Open-C10031761.jpeg
But the story line is more like Ali V Foreman, ‘rumble in the jungle’. It was the fight that was supposed to END Ali’s career, it was supposed to be the fight that would END ALI. the media had their man picked and favored the then world champion, George Foreman. Ali was just a ‘has-been’ champion, Foreman was favored by the establishment, heck he was the boxing ESTABLISHMENT. Even Ali’s most ardent fans found it difficult to believe he could withstand Foreman’s bone-breaking knock-out punches. Ali took the punches that Foreman could muster without responding initially, sapping his energies, and then Ali knocked a tired Foreman out in a thrilling 8th Round. Sound familiar ?
Modi too was in the fight of his life. He had the Nehruvian Establishment against him, the trinity of COngress lead by Gandhis, the might of the whole Liberal media, and the psuedo-secular NGOs. Like he says himself, he took all the poison inside, took all the punches, and he rallied in the end, with a bone crunching knockout!
And the winner is, by a unanimous decision, in the RIGHT corner, ladies and gentelman, Nardendra Damordas Modi !
Let me share something of prime importance, I know of some voters who could not vote as they mis placed their voter ID cards, now the alternative is your PAN Card or your passport, which was not allowed by the SECULAR election commission, the result that the urban areas ( where BJP would have swept in any case) had a lower voting percentage. People in Gujarat are openly talking not only of the biased policies of the UPA and Media, but also of the Election Commission and comparing this to the five years when the BJP was in power at the centre, EC was a complete independent organization with no interference from the goverment at all.
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE WE CAN MAKE IS BY VOTING IN LARGER NUMBERS, THAT WILL NAIL THESE SICKULAR FAGGOTS ONCE AND FOR ALL, REMEMBER 2009 IS NOW 366 DAYS AWAY, SO DIG OUT THE EC ID CARD, AND MOST IMPORTANT VISIT YOUR WARD OFFICE TO ENSURE THAT YOUR NAME APPEARS IN THE VOTERS LIST…