So much bitterness and anger; is this the Gujarat I once knew?

What is it with Gujarat? How does it harbour so much bitterness and anger given its high economic prosperity, its tradition of tolerance, its championing of non-violence, and its globally connected people and culture? Why do Gujaratis keep losing their cool?

The latest bout of frenzy that has gripped the state is over the Aamir Khan starrer Fanaa. By all accounts, it is a simple love story of a blind young woman and her suitor, both incidentally Muslims. No issue there, at least we hope not. The problem for Gujaratis is that Aamir Khan is the leading man and they don't like him because they say he is against the Narmada dam. Various politically affiliated groups have ganged up to ask movie theatres not to show the film. If they do, the theatre owners will face dire consequences, the groups have threatened. Not just the BJP, even Congress groups have joined in. The distributors have blinked and the movie has not been released in the state. Once again, Gujarat has bafflingly bared its intolerant soul to the world.

Is Aamir Khan really against the building of the Narmada dam? He has never said so. All he wants is for the people affected by the project to be rehabilitated, which is exactly what the Supreme Court has decreed. And the guy has made out cheques of Rs 5 lakh each to the chief ministers' relief funds in four states — Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—to help the people affected. But, no, Gujarat still wants a ban on Fanaa. More, the agitating groups want all Aamir-sponsored products to be boycotted.

Thirty-five years ago, I had got down from a train in Vadodara station to begin a three-year stint in Gujarat. I was an eager young man out to discover new people and fresh insights at the start of my professional life. What I experienced there first surprised and then amazed me into altering key attitudes I then had about how people should conduct themselves in the pursuit of life and liberty.

I saw an astounding simplicity in the way people, especially rich people, lived. I felt a pervading sense of helping neighbours, especially those who were poor or handicapped. I learnt about cooperative movements, about how they had transformed whole areas of the state into extraordinary prosperity.

“Kai vando nathi,” or “no problem at all”, was a response I heard frequently to requests for assistance. When I had a road accident on the highway from Porbandar to Veraval one stormy day, I was nursed and sheltered the whole night by nearby villagers who had no idea where I had come from and with whom I couldn't communicate since I couldn't speak Gujarati. I witnessed collective popular anger for the first and only time when a spontaneously formed student's group called the Navnirman Samiti fought to have the then chief minister of the state resign on charges of corruption. They fought for an ideal but their methods didn't cause serious violence. As far as I can recall, no one died.

Perhaps I saw only a personal sliver of space-time in my sojourn in Gujarat. The reality of seething communal and other hatreds — of the kind we witnessed in 2002 following the burning of train compartments in Godhra—-probably lay beneath the surface of vegetarian non-violence all along. But I insist I did not find evidence of that in my daily life. Friendliness and tolerance of different views formed the dominant ethos in society.

Today, Gujarat remains one of India's most prosperous states. Its per capita income is 2.47 times that of the national average, on par with that of Punjab and Maharashtra. Gujaratis are perhaps the most globalised of all Indian communities, numerically and in geographical spread. And yet, the tolerance that I marvelled at when I lived there seems to have reached rock-bottom. The state today can't bear to hear dissent. Worse, its majority population seems to be convinced that democracy is all about majority opinion enforced by sheer force of numerical strength.

Not so, insisted the greatest Gujarati of all time, and possibly the greatest Indian of the modern era. He wrote in Young India in November 1929: “Numerical strength savours of violence when it acts in total disregard of any strongly felt opinion of a minority.” He agreed that in any institution or polity the will of the majority must generally prevail. But he always believed that when a sizeable minority objected to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified for the majority to yield to the minority. For, in a democracy protecting minorities is the flip side of majority rule.

Alas, he sounds quaint these days. Now it is Gandhi viruddh Gujarat.

Email: gautam@dnaindia.net