Election 2014 with India Legal mag in Banaras -- a unique journey across the Ganges with India Legal's Badhwar

                                 Start of an era

A folk refrain floats through my head as I start this copy. It goes: “Bum bum bol raha hai Kashi.” (Kashi hails Lord Shiva). Kashi (Banaras) is Shiva’s very own city. And he knows it. He speaks through every incantation, peers at you from bill boards and temple engravings and posters and calendars. You can feel him watching Elections 2014 from the bustling Nadeshan Road that leads ultimately to Mogul Serai, to Chandauli, Ramnagar, Patna and Kolkata. Peeping, Spiderman fashion, from behind gigantic Mulayam Singh, Kejriwal, Modi posters and billboards marked “Jai Ma Sheetal Drinking Fountain”. Walking with you in Sigri, Lahurabir, Mamoorganj, the Indian version of thoroughfares, where gigantic water tanks compete for height with St Miriyam School, prominently displaying the infant Jesus with his Mother, and a towering MacDonald arch that soars above the Doordarshan relay tower. Navigating past tidal waves of saffron BJP caps and Aam aadmi topee-clad youngsters passing leaflets in front of glazed Renault and Yamaha showrooms. Glancing at a bill board, “Angrezi bolna seekho,” (Learn English). Dodging rickshaws, autos, SUV’s, sedans, push carts, beggars, mounds of filth and putrefying garbage, showrooms with mannequins sporting low cut blouses and saris right out of New York’s Park Avenue. Bowing in Lahurabir, the bustling main market adorned with jewelry shops, to the Kashi Anathalayaya, the city’s first orphanage for women, to the Poorvanchal Netralaya (eye hospital) right next to a resplendent Hero cycles display store.

And wherever we turn we know that awaiting us will be Banaras’s serpentine, labyrinthine gullies studded with stalls, redolent with incense, which alternates with the malodorous whiff of the fatally polluted Ganges to which all the alleyways descend through powerful stone-made steps.

We pray the Shiva does not open his Third Eye. We do not want a city, described by Mark Twain as more ancient that civilization itself, a town where poet Allen Ginsberg mediated, turned to ashes. Nor do we want to see this city, which has become the Kurukshetra  - the mother of all post-independence wars for a symbolic tectonic transformation through India’s 16^th general election has been waged here - be destroyed by Shiva’s wrathful eye.

For everything that’s wrong with India or right with India is also right or wrong in Banaras. There is much to be destroyed: Poverty, filth, human degradation, sloth, corruption, communal passions. There is a lot to be preserved: poetry, philosophy, communal brotherhood (this is an area of 16 lakh voters, of whom three and a half lakh are Muslims), resplendent architecture, the mellifluous Bhojpuri language, reformists, universities, artists, singers, patience, loud raucous laughter, rock-hewn temples, countless masjids, from where muezzins call out above the ring of rickshaw bells, and the morning and evening aartis —cling-cling-ding-ding-clap-clap. Sanskrit, Urdu, the magnificent ghats, the ever burning fire-pit of Manikarnika ghat, from which sparks are taken to ignite the funeral pyres of those lucky enough to be cremated there for, as they say, people come to Kashi, not to prolong life but to attain moksha.

And a river flow through it all.

 The mighty Ganges—Ma Ganga—that sustains life and civilization in most of north India. She is the lifeblood of UP’s Poorvanchal region – Mirzapur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Sonbhadra, Deoria, Azamgarh and Jaunpur –  sending 23 members (of a total of UP’s 80) to parliament and 117 to the 403-member UP assembly.

The blessed region gave India her greatest saints, musicians and philosophers: Tulsidas, Mangal Pandey, Prem Chand, Gautam Buddha, Guru Nanak, Girija Devi, Bharatendu Harishchandra, Birju Maharaj, Bismillah Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Kapila Vatsyayan, Rajendra Prasad, Kaifi Azmi, Jaishankar Prasad, Rahi Masoom Raza and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Small wonder that the next prime minister of India should want to become part of this lineage. Narendra Modi chose this as his constituency and Kejriwal chose to oppose him for the same reasons. This was a presidential election. The first India has seen albeit within the framework of a parliamentary system. You win from here in a prestigious fight and you rule the heart of UP and capture the Hindi heartland, which sends the maximum number of members to parliament. It was Modi’s most brilliant tactical move.

One of Banaras’s living legends, Pandit Chhannulal Mishra, who at age 78 can mesmerize you with khayyal and thumri, and dadara and folk music, summed it up well when he decided to become one of Modi’s proposers at his nomination. He sang “Votava sabka ho zaroori” (Every vote counts). He tells me, in the confines of his riaaz room: “Mata Ganga ko nirmal karna hai. Yeh dharma ki larai nahin hai. Yeh karam ki larai hai. (The issue in this election is cleaning up the Ganges. This election is not about religion but about duty and action.”

I firmly believe he was right having tested his wisdom on the ground. I have covered elections for the last two decades. But except for pockets in West UP, where caste and communal factor played a role, I have never seen an election fought so solidly on issues of governance and corruption. Perhaps this can be attributed to the youth and women. There were 12 crore first-time voters this time – about 90,000 voters between 18-22 years became eligible to vote in each Lok Sabha constituency this year. Of the 81.4 crore voters, nearly 66 percent of the total women electors voted in this election as compared to 55.82 in the 2009 poll.

Pandit Chhannu Lal Mishra’s concern about the Ganges reflects India’s malady. As the Ganges is polluted, so is India—by caste, corruption, a culture of impunity, corruption, religious intolerance, disdain for democratic institutions and the ecology and institutional rot. Cleaning up the Ganga is symbolic of cleaning up India. And the voters, having voted 15 times without success, want to succeed this time in bringing in a leader who they think can do the job. And they believe that leader is Modi.

At Lanka Gate, Banaras’s equivalent of Hyde Park, just outside Banaras Hindu University, founded by another illustrious son of Kashi, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, I randomly interview dozens of people from all walks of life. (Remember, too, that Banaras has a huge population of “outsiders”—Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Rajasthanis, Tamilians, Malayalis—you name them. In that sense Banaras is a mini-India apart from being one of the holiest places for Hindus and Muslims—a Vatican and Mecca combined. I will summarize the gist of the consensus that emerged from these interviews as well as other from different parts of Banaras area:

Was this a communal, Hindu-Muslim campaign? No. It was one of the cleanest and most secular campaigns ever conducted by the BJP. There was no mention of the Ram Mandir or other anti-minority pet peeves.

Do Muslims fear Modi? Why should we? There are nearly 4 lakh of us here and almost 3 lakh in each Poorvanchal constituency. There are enough Hindus who look after our welfare. Besides, most of the 60,000 Shia votes will go to Modi. If we become Mosi voters, why should he do anything to hurt his own vote bank?

What are the main issues? Filthy city, polluted Ganges, political corruption, inflation.

Who will you vote for? Modi, Modi Modi.

Why? Because for the first time we will be directly electing an Indian Prime Minister from our city. And we want a strong and stable person at the center, who can clean up the Ganges. A weak coalition government as we have seen cannot do this.

What about Kejriwal: A good man. An honest man. But he ran away from Delhi. And he fell prey to greed by forming a government when he didn’t have the majority.

What about Mulayam and Mayawati: We have seen enough of their caste politics. It has not helped us get jobs or move faster. We are tired of regional parties and coalition governments, not allowing the prime minister to govern.

What if the BJP had selected some other candidate? We would not have voted for it because we had Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP from here and he did nothing for us or this filthy city.

Why would Modi succeed? Because he will become Prime Minister from here. This is like a direct election. And he has done wonders for Gujarat.

How do you know this? Isn’t this propaganda?  (Many voices both Muslim and Hindu): We have no power supply here and can’t work our weaving handlooms so our families have migrated to Gujarat, where there is power all the time. Modi government has given us a livelihood. (Or) We have lived in Gujarat, the roads are better, there is employment, onions are cheaper, the police is less corrupt, our women are totally safe at night, the babus listen to us, there are better bus services and jobs.

What about the 2002 riots? No one can keep living in the past. There have been no killings and more peace in Gujarat since 2002 than other parts of India. The local politicians from Congress, SP and BSP keep trying to frighten us to get out votes. How long can they fool us?

What if Modi is lying and you have taken a wrong decision? We are voting not to change only Banaras but also India. If we are able to kick all the others out for not performing then we will do the same for Modi and we are sure he is aware of this.

It becomes obvious that what is new about this election is that Modi has something new to sell – a dream. A dream, yes, but a palpable one, nonetheless, to a new class of voters, who are tech savvy, who are aspirational, who want to go beyond owning cell phones and TV sets, who are fed up with wimps and dynasties ruling with small coteries from the center through a system of doles and handouts, and regional leaders who sell not dreams of better days to come but slogans of poverty.

Let me end with a paragraph from a New York Times blogger, V Mitchell: “It is truly the greatest show on earth, an ode to a diverse and democratic ethos, where 700 million+ of humanity vote, providing their small part in directing their ancient civilization into the future. It is no less impressive when done in a neighborhood, which includes destabilizing and violent Pakistan, China and Burma.”