The Two Faces of the BJP

Prior to the 1989 parliamentary elections, the BJP was among the most strident critics of the Congress Party. Indeed it had charged Congress of accepting a low UCC settlement in return for a $666 million contribution from UCC for its election campaign.6 As a supporter of the Janata Dal coalition that assumed office in New Delhi, the BJP demanded a review of the court settlement. Within MP, Babu Lal Gour, who became gas- relief minister under the BJP government, threatened to launch massive agitations if the victims' demands were not met.7 But Gour later became the architect of the BJP's anti-encroachment drive targeting poor Muslims. And in the 1992 riots some of the most serious violence against Muslims took place in his Govindpura constituency.

The BJP's stance on the UCC tragedy provided it with additional ammunition against the Congress Party during the election campaign; its populist stance on relief for the gas victims helped broaden its appeal to include disempowered groups. After coming to power, however, the situation changed. There were more claimants on state resources, which in turn complicated the BJP's decisions about how to use resources designed for relief. Moreover, the BJP's traditional constituency of Hindu shopkeepers and traders had nothing to gain from an activist stance with respect to the gas victims. Contrary to its promises, the BJP government neglected to involve voluntary organizations in the distribution of interim relief. Instead, it packed an advisory committee on interim relief with members of Hindu communal groups.

Furthermore, the state government's distribution of interim relief was slow, inefficient, and dishonest. Contrary to the government's promise that all eligible people would receive interim relief within a month, three months later only 42,000 claimants-less than 10 percent of those who were eligible- were receiving interim relief. A year later, then chief minister Sunderlal Patwa admitted that about 100,000 eligible victims were still not receiving interim relief.8 According to Khan, one reason for this delay was that public hospitals had not even examined hundreds of thousands of claimants. And as government officials admitted, about half the people to whom they sent notices never received them. Yet officials refused to disburse funds to these claimants.

Numerous gas survivors complained of extensive corruption in the distribution of interim relief. Rabiabia, a resident of a slum called JP Nagar, said that middlemen charged 1,000-1,400 rupees ($60-$84) for papers demonstrating her eligibility; the men who delivered notices to their homes also demanded bribes. Atiyabia, a BGPMUS activist, complained that the government refused to divulge the names of beneficiaries although this would have checked corruption. Many people attributed the government's secrecy to its use of relief designed for Muslims as a form of patronage of Hindus.

Recipients of interim relief also complained of difficulties in collecting their monthly payments. They had to collect their checks from distant places and spend hours waiting in line. One person was not authorized to collect funds on behalf of the family, so every month each family member would spend a day collecting a small payment. The government refused the BGPMUS's request to either deposit checks directly in the recipients' bank accounts or deliver the checks to their homes.

Given the way bureaucracies function, the corruption and delays that characterized the distribution of interim relief might be considered unavoidable. However, while the government effectively controlled the bureaucracy in other situations, it seemed indifferent to the fate of poor Muslims. Conversely, the lower ranking Hindu government officials who benefited from the politicization of the relief distribution process were important elements of the BJP's constituency.

The BGPMUS attracted several thousand people when it staged demonstrations in 1990 and 1991 to protest the faulty distribution of relief and the inadequacy of medical care for the victims. However, activists became discouraged by several developments. The new Supreme Court judgment announced on 3 October 1991 largely upheld the 1989 settlement. It declared that if the settlement fell short of the amount to be paid to the victims, the Indian government-rather than UCC-would pay the deficit. Although it removed UCC's immunity from criminal prosecution, the judgment once again denied victims the right to be heard. Rather than providing new guidelines for evaluating the extent of injury and death, it relied upon the seriously flawed estimates ordered by the state government years earlier.

The MP government arrived at ludicrously low assessments of the number of gas-related injuries. Shortly before the 1989 elections, when Congress realized that the Supreme Court decision would be reviewed, it ordered the MP government to assess the medical conditions of gas survivors. The doctors' conclusions were designed to exonerate the Congress government and confirm the Supreme Court's decision. The MP government's medical report stated that only 19 people had been permanently and totally disabled; 155,000 people whose records had been examined had suffered no injury at all.

Consider these results in light of the evidence: 40 tons of deadly MIC were sprayed on the city of Bhopal. Over 125,000 people lived within a 3 kilometer radius of the city; a dose of 0.02 ppm of MIC is considered lethal. Although there was public outcry when the state government issued the report and many doctors contested the findings, the Supreme Court cited them in its 1991 judgment. UCC later justified the low settlement by referring to the results of the government survey.9 The BJP government defended these findings.

The "City Beautification" Campaign

It is impossible to understand the BJP's anti-encroachment campaign without first examining the prior role of the Congress Party in encouraging the proliferation of slums. Reminiscent of its stance on the UCC disaster, Congress laid the groundwork for the BJP's subsequent actions. At the national level, Congress had agreed to a low and unfavorable settlement from UCC; a Congress government in MP filed the report underestimating the injuries caused by the disaster. Similarly, it was a Congress government that allowed slums to mushroom in Bhopal. Although the actions of Congress appeared to be magnanimous while those of the BJP were cruel, an identical electoral logic underlay both the creation and the removal of slums.

MN Buch, a senior government bureaucrat, enjoyed an excellent vantage point from which to describe the Congress government's actions. In 1971-75 his string of professional responsibilities included chair of the housing board,
commissioner of town and country planning, and chair of the development authority. Buch blamed the ex-chief minister, Arjun Singh of MP's former Congress government, for the rapid growth of slums in Bhopal.

In 1984 Arjun Singh decided that one way to retain his seat was to liberally distribute pattas (land titles). So he passed an act stating that any officer who demolished a structure that had been built before 1983 would be imprisoned. After this act was passed, people would put up shacks during their lunch breaks. If you can imagine, 35,000 jhuggis [slum huts] came up during Arjun Singh's time. I had cleared the upper lake area because it is an important source of drinking water. He allowed 8,000 jhuggis to be built around the upper lake area alone! By allowing these jhuggis to come up, he effectively ruled out possibilities for any form of urban development.

Babu Lal Gour, another powerful government official, supported Buch's analysis. Gour's political history was unusually varied: as a factory worker he had become active in the trade unions affiliated with Congress, the Communists, and the BJP. A fiery advocate of gas victims' rights when the Congress Party was in power, he had become minister for gas relief under the BJP government in 1990. Gour reported that Congress had distributed 12,000 to 13,000 land titles to slum dwellers.11 By the late 1980s Gour had identified 160 locations in the city where over 50,000 people were living in illegal slums. Congress's most reprehensible act, he said, was to encourage settlements in JP Nagar, a slum bordering the UCC plant, when it knew that highly toxic chemicals were being produced there.

Gour explained that Congress had created a large-scale patronage network for electoral purposes. Within each of the slums, he said, there were middlemen who received perks from Congress in return for guaranteeing votes from slum dwellers. The bribes they collected allowed them to operate a vast underworld. Similarly, Congress had achieved control of the municipal corporation (city government) by allowing shops to encroach illegally on the main road. With kickbacks of 20 rupees ($1.20) a day from each shop, municipal-corporation officials had become strong Congress supporters.

Before describing the BJP government's eviction campaign, a brief description of Bhopal's slums provides some sense of the quiet violence that pervades slum dwellers' daily lives. According to the 1984 census, 20 percent of Bhopal's population lives in the slums. Since most slums are located in the thirty-six wards that the government has designated as gas-affected, few slum dwellers escaped the consequences of the gas leak. Slum dwellers live in kutcha (mud) houses that toxic gas could penetrate, leaving them no safe spaces, either within or outside their homes.

JP Nagar covers a territory about a quarter mile in length and fifty yards in depth. Its population density is about 792 people and 152 huts per hectare. Most people who live in JP Nagar are unskilled workers who earn 15-20 rupees ($.90-$1.20) a day.12 Families live in one or two room small, dark, damp huts without electricity, running water, or bathrooms. The water that runs from roadside taps is contaminated by effluents from a nearby paper mill. Most of the unclaimed space around the slums is used either for dumping the city's garbage or as latrines, since public toilets are almost nonexistent. The filth of the surroundings, coupled with the weakness of people's immune systems because of their exposure to toxic chemicals, means that they are highly susceptible to disease. Women whose eyes and lungs have been damaged by the chemicals experience terrible pain while cooking over smoky wood stoves. While the evictions entailed a kind of suffering different from their daily lives in the slums, insecurity and degradation remain continuous.

In 1990 the BJP began an anti-encroachment drive, clearing the streets and sidewalks of illegal shops. This met with little resistance since it was not characterized by obvious communal bias. The BJP amply compensated proprietors whose shops were removed, and it generally did not demolish entire shops but merely the store fronts that protruded onto the streets. However, shops with BJP flags and insignia were either untouched or generously compensated. While patronage of party supporters is a staple of Indian political life, the next phase of the government's campaign proved to be more unusual and dangerous.

On the morning of 26 May 1991 about 200 armed policemen descended on a slum at Retghat and demolished 75 jhuggis, some of which were a hundred years old. For the next four days officials would accompany bulldozers to different parts of the city to demolish more homes. Since the government had not notified slum dwellers of its plans, residents were unprepared and offered sporadic resistance. However, when a demolition squad reached Fatehgarh on the morning of 31 May, it found 50 women holding kerosene cans and threatening to immolate themselves if their homes were destroyed. Other women refused to leave their huts. The government discontinued the
demolitions for three days. On 3 June officials returned, heavily armed, and arrested 60 women. Four days later all the huts in Fategarh and many huts in Sajda Nagar had been demolished, and 20,000 people had been evicted.

Once again Muslim slum women were at the forefront of largely spontaneous protest. Two women committed suicide by drinking kerosene when the government ignored their threats and demolished their huts. They had taken refuge near the lake just after the gas leak, for the higher elevation and proximity to water provided some relief from the discomfort they had experienced at lower altitudes. Opposition to the demolitions did not seem to generate comparable passion from the men with whom I spoke. According to Gour, the government bribed some men to quell resistance.

The major organized opposition to the government's anti-encroachment drive came from the BGPMUS, which obtained a stay order in court on the grounds that the government's interference with housing patterns among gas-affected people would complicate pending litigation. For some days the government ignored the stay order and continued demolition work. Given its responsibility for the proliferation of slums, Congress was clearly uncomfortable about the entire issue, and middle-class support for the evictions may have helped silence Congress.

Given the squalor slum dwellers lived in, was the BJP's eviction campaign avoidable? The slums polluted Bhopal's principal source of drinking water, and the illegal shops that protruded onto the streets were traffic hazards. While relocation may have been necessary, the cruel manner in which it was conducted suggests that both electoral opportunism and anti-Muslim sentiment were at work. Even the BGPMUS stated that it would have accepted relocations if conducted in a humane and timely fashion. It also emphasized that slum demolitions affected many victims of the gas disaster.

Relocation had worked well before communalist electoral pandering intensified. Buch reported that in 1971-75 he had ensured that the inhabitants of 12,000 slums would all be relocated to homes within 2 kilometers of their work sites. Furthermore, he had successfully enlisted the cooperation of slum dwellers by informing them of the government's plans eighteen months in advance. He had also been careful to ensure that no community was inordinately affected by the relocation.

The worst abuses in the BJP's anti-encroachment drive occurred in relocating 628 families, 228 to Badwai and 400 families about 13 kilometers from downtown Bhopal to Gandhi Nagar, The bus stop nearest Gandhi Nagar is a mile away. The first bus in the morning arrives in Bhopal long after people must report to work. Commuters must take three wheelers (tempos), which cost half of their daily wage.

When the government moved people to the large open field known as Gandhi Nagar, it gave each family 1,000 rupees [$60.00] along with six bamboo poles, five straw mats and a plastic sheet. Despite the abundance of land, it allotted each family a plot of land that measured only twelve by
twenty-five feet. The move was imposed just before the monsoons. When I visited Gandhi Nagar in June 1990, people told me that it had rained for four consecutive days after they had moved, damaging their flimsy huts. A number of children fell ill and their families had to travel back to Bhopal for medications.

When I returned to Gandhi Nagar six months later, the government had installed some electric poles and water pumps, dug drains, and constructed kutcha [mud] roads. However, the improvements were still grossly inadequate. A small market charged highly inflated prices so the residents were forced to travel to Bhopal for food. Despite government assurances, transport was erratic. In the four hours that I spent in Gandhi Nagar, not a single bus passed. Many residents suffered health problems requiring them to visit hospitals three times a week. Although a mobile van made daily trips to Gandhi Nagar to dispense medications, people claimed that the van often
lacked the medications they needed.

Rajiv Lochan Sharma, a doctor who had worked closely with the victims of the gas disaster, said that many of the people who had been evicted to Gandhi Nagar had suffered lung damage requiring more elaborate treatment than they were receiving.13 He feared that in many cases the move to Gandhi Nagar would be fatal. A woman in Gandhi Nagar commented bitterly: "We understand why they have brought us here. There is a kabristan [Muslim graveyard] on one side and a shamstaan [Hindu cremation ground] on the other. In our condition, we won't last long. And it will be cheaper to dispose of us this way."

"Why shouldn't these people be moved?" Babu Lal Gour had asked rhetorically. "After all, the accident took place seven years ago; at that time even I was affected but I am living my life normally now. How long will they harp on this issue?" In contrast, women spoke of their trauma at being rendered homeless for a second time and of their children's recurrent nightmares. One of the most tragic consequences of the relocation was that it destroyed the sense of community that sustained victims of the disaster. Deep divisions emerged between those who opposed the evictions and those who were bought off, as well as between those people who lived in recently constructed multistoried buildings as opposed to a much larger number who were moved to Gandhi Nagar.

What were the BJP's motivations in undertaking the slum evictions? Electoral considerations cannot be overemphasized. In 1990 the upper lake area from which families were relocated to Gandhi Nagar had elected Arif Aqueel, a Muslim man, as member of the legislative assembly. I interviewed him in Hamedia Hospital where he was recuperating after terminating a hunger strike protesting the treatment of slum dwellers.15 Aqueel said that if the evictions had succeeded in relocating all of the 60,000 slum dwellers who had been targeted, that would have significantly shrunk the anti-BJP Muslim constituency and enlarged the pool of Hindu voters. As it was, a BJP candidate defeated Aqueel in the next round of legislative assembly elections.

The links between the BJP's eviction campaign, its appeals to the middle classes, and the gas disaster are deep and invidious. The gas disaster enabled the government to undertake its "city beautification program," which consisted of redecorating parks, installing new street lights, and rehabilitating old monuments in areas cleared of illegal encroachments. Jabbar Khan alleged that by August 1991 the state government had already spent 13,350,000 rupees [$801,000] it had received from the central government for disaster relief on "city beautification." When I asked Babu Lal Gour how he could justify such expenditures he neither denied the allegations nor expressed remorse. He claimed that gas victims would be the major beneficiaries; for example, new streets lights would be soothing to the visually impaired. In the name of city beautification, the state government failed to provide gas victims with the most basic amenities and deprived them of their houses.

The anti-encroachment drive also enabled the BJP to project itself as a party of law and order that, unlike Congress, was willing to take decisive action even at the risk of unpopularity. The strong-arm tactics it employed in the demolitions were a warning to groups most likely to oppose its policies-Muslims, women, and the poor.

By removing 628 Muslim families to the outskirts of Bhopal, the BJP implied that there is no place for Muslims in a BJP-ruled state, exemplifying what it was capable of doing at the national level. Many Christians in Bhopal felt that the BJP's message was also directed at them. Indira Iyengar, a Christian woman, led a delegation to visit the chief minister to oppose the government's anti-encroachment drive.17 She said he had implied that her motivations were somehow subversive and unpatriotic.