You don’t need a pollster to tell which way the wind’s blowing in at least two villages in Gujarat’s Panchmahals district: the entirely Muslim Popatpura and the entirely Hindu Jalkukdi.
Over 60 km and a seemingly unfathomable religious divide separates the two villages, but the run-up to the election united them in at least some respects: both villages remained immune to the campaign fever; yet both villages recorded healthy voter turnouts today.
In Popatpura, a stone’s throw from Godhra, more than 250 Muslim families vowed not to allow any political party to enter the village for campaigning. But they knew whom they were voting for.
‘‘All political parties are devils. This time, we had to choose between a small devil and a bigger devil. The BJP undoubtedly is the bigger devil, so we voted with a vengeance in favour of their opponents,’’ said Azambhai, who owns a highway restaurant. Around 80% of Popatpura turned out to vote.
Though there was no violence in Popatpura after the February 27 Godhra carnage, the mass killings elsewhere in Panchmahals and the branding of Godhra’s Muslim residents as criminals scarred the villagers. ‘‘I didn’t feel like voting but then I had to, or else the BJP would make all-out attempts to eliminate Muslims,’’ said Babubhai, another villager.
In Jalkukdi, which falls in Lunawada constituency, more than 55% of the 150 Hindu families had voted by afternoon. BJP candidate Kalubhai Maliwad—who spent seven months in prison for allegedly instigating riots—didn’t visit the village even once during his campaign. The BJP didn’t even bother putting up a Godhra poster here.
Yet, the villagers poured of their houses to get their fingers inked. Reason: to avenge the killing of a village youth reportedly by Muslims near Pandarwada. ‘‘They (Muslims) don’t deserve any sympathy. They talk about riots in Pandarwada but who started them? They killed a youth from our village and the subsequent violence was a reaction to that,’’ says Raju Damor, adding that the entire village would vote for the BJP.
Jalkukdi village, which is on Gujarat’s border with Rajasthan, is one of the poorest and least developed in the state but its residents were not worried that no BJP leader, not even Maliwad, dropped the D-word.
‘‘When you are unsafe, what’s the point of talking about development? We want security from anti-social elements and only the BJP can give it,’’ Natubhai Pagi, a village elder, said.