November 11 is the anniversary of Armistice Day, the day in 1917 when guns went silent after the "war to end all wars"-World War I. On November 11, 2002, Gujarat "celebrated" this moment of peace with the perversity that has defined it for most of the past year. It declared a renewal of hostilities.

Addressing an impressive public meeting at Anand, Shankersinh Vaghela, state Congress unit president, launched the party's election campaign with a blistering assault. "Hindutva," he declared, "isn't a monopoly of the BJP. No party can rule by sowing the seeds of communal hatred. When Narendra Modi sells himself as Sardar Patel he is insulting not just the Sardar but the people of Gujarat. The time has come to avenge the insult."

At about the same moment, Chief Minister Modi was rousing a crowd in Godhra, Ground Zero as it were of Gujarat's Year of Terror. In so many ways, Modi sounded like a clone of Vaghela's, "The time has come to avenge the injuries that the Congress has inflicted on Gujarat's pride. My only aim is to restore Gujarat's pride which the Congress has hurt by painting the Gujaratis as villains across the world ... I have come to seek your blessings for the success of this mission."

For Modi and Vaghela, the December 12 assembly election is not a regular democratic test, it is not a personal referendum, it is not a do-or- die battle. It is, quite simply, a Neanderthal blood feud. If the Congress wins, it will not merely form its 16th state government; it will reach a turning point in its six-year exile from power in Delhi. If the BJP triumphs, it will reverse a trend of defeatism-and give the new generation in the party its first taste of blood. The battle has gone so far that it is difficult to believe the actual election is still a full month away. By the time he reached Godhra, Modi was on the ninth leg of his Gaurav Yatra. Since September 8, he had been on the road for 23 days, covering 4,200 km, addressing 400 meetings, big and small, touching 146 of the state's 182 constituencies. The opinion poll (see accompanying story) may indicate a cakewalk but Modi is taking no chances.

It was Modi's first visit to Godhra since the incineration of bogie S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27. Fifty-eight Ram sevaks had been killed by a Muslim mob in that incident and an irate mob had manhandled Modi when he reached the platform of death. The following day statewide riots had broken out. The Modi who arrived in Godhra on November 11 was a changed man, in a changed environment. He was Hindutva's pop icon, waving to the crowd one moment, ridiculing Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf the next. The response was electric. It was the same in Vadodara at midnight. Modi's automobile rath took one hour to cross a distance of just 4 km as enthusiastic crowds cheered him.

So has the Congress thrown up its hands and walked away? Far from it. On the very day at Anand, it presented a model in mass mobilisation. From all-India General Secretary Kamal Nath to former chief ministers Madhavsinh Solanki and Amarsinh Chaudhary to senior leader Ahmed Patel, Vaghela had a whole phalanx to back him. The crowd comprised an unusually large number of Muslims, who see in Vaghela their only hope of unseating the BJP. The Congress is far from being in a commanding position-but the rally at Anand represented a great turnaround for a party whose members could barely hold a small meeting in the polarised atmosphere of a few months ago.

Here lies the great paradox of this Gujarat election. While Modi continues to be a crowd puller, there is no corresponding lack of fervour in the Congress. If anything the morale of the party is far higher than it was before the assembly elections of 1995 and 1998. On those occasions, the ground-level worker was completely demotivated and the eventual results justified his pessimism.

This time it seems so different. As Siddharth Patel, Congress MLA in the dissolved Gujarat Assembly and son of late chief minister Chimanbhai Patel, puts it, "The Congress is in the best possible shape in a decade. It has found its roots once again." Clearly, the party is banking on the belief that a majority of Gujaratis are tired of Modi's rhetoric on Hindutva and Gujarati pride and are poised to vote on "bread-and-butter issues"-like the collapse of a series of cooperative banks, which has affected a million depositors and four times the number of dependents. Erratic power supply is a sore point for farmers. One BJP MLA confesses, "Narendrabhai's top task over the next month has to be maintaining regular power. It can upset everything." Says Congress leader Narhari Amin: "People are tired of the chaotic situation that the BJP and its allies have created in the aftermath of Godhra." Whatever the passions of February-March, the hope is that business-minded Gujaratis will vote for good governance.

The election is being fought at three levels-caste/religious identity, party organisation and personality. When it comes to caste equations, the Congress hopes that its traditional vote bank of Kshatriyas, Harijans and Muslims, besides some OBC sections, will carry it through. OBC and upper-caste Kshatriya groups comprise a quarter of the state's 34 million voters. In contrast, the Patel community makes up only 20 per cent. The Kshatriya constituency is also Vaghela's social and political base. If he is to win, the Kshatriya groups, backward or upper caste, have to vote en bloc, something they have rarely done.

The Patels of Gujarat have been the greatest beneficiaries of its land reform movements and its agricultural and industrial successes. Through the 1990s, they have backed the BJP, and Keshubhai Patel, their tallest leader, became the party's first chief minister in 1995. This time, the big problem is Modi, who replaced Keshubhai 13 months ago, simply doesn't get along with his predecessor and has no natural base among the Patels. More than caste, the chief minister is betting on an overarching Hindu identity seeing him through.

The caste differences are only a pointer to the one nagging fear in Modi's mind-infighting within the party. It has been very apparent in the meetings held to decide the BJP nominees. Aside from Keshubhai, Union Textiles Minister Kashiram Rana, an OBC from Surat, doesn't trust Modi. Both could do with being placated. Pravin Togadia, VHP general secretary, and Team Modi's non-playing captain, has tried to broker a compromise between Keshubhai and Modi, but the truce is largely theoretical. If Keshubhai insists that a large number of sitting MLAs be repeated, it could prove a minor hiccup for the BJP. The party's hopes rest on how far it can go in clipping unpopular sitting MLAs and presenting a fresh face.

Anti-incumbency at the local level is sharp in some pockets. If merit is the yardstick, then at least a fourth of the sitting 113 BJP MLAs will have to be axed. Asserts Rajendrasinh Rana, state party unit chief: "Allocation of tickets won't pose much of a problem for the BJP." Few believe him. On his part, Modi feels the recent round of religious tensions have sufficiently radicalised sections of Hindus. In particular, tribals were active participants in the riots in south Gujarat and, as a result, may back the BJP in larger numbers than ever before. The Patels are similarly placed in south and central Gujarat. That apart, Modi hopes any disenchantment on the part of Keshubhai will be offset by the appeal of Togadia. Both Togadia and Keshubhai are Patels from the Saurashtra region. This election is Togadia's chance to show he is a mass leader, not a paper tiger.

For the Modi groupies, all these factors are inconsequential. For them, the mammoth crowds thronging the route of the Gaurav Yatra say it all. "Even in Saurashtra," they argue, "Patels and Kolis gathered for his meetings." "In this election," smirks an observer, "there is only one issue: Modi." This election is Modi's to win-or lose.

Depending on how you look at it, Modi is either a "one-man machine fighting against pseudo-secular and anti-Hindu forces out to bury Gujarat's pride"-or a one-man pan-Gujarat hate force. A powerful orator- though, to be fair, Vaghela matches him word for word, invective for invective, innuendo for innuendo-he has become a mass phenomenon in a cadre-based party unused to such oddities. Casual observation suggests his rallies are disproportionately attended by the young-in the, roughly, 18-35 age group-and women.

Modi has positioned himself as not only the man you vote for if you want a good government but the candidate you back if you dislike Musharraf, want to efface terrorism, teach Gujarat baiters across the world a lesson. It is a bizarre campaign plank. To call it a gamble would be understating it. Ahmedabad political writer Chandrakant Baxi likens it to N.T. Rama Rao's campaign just before the 1983 assembly election in Andhra Pradesh, "The Gaurav Yatra is a throwback to NTR's early days, when he travelled in his Chaitanya Ratham, campaigning against the injuries inflicted by the Congress on Andhra pride." That year, the ochre-robed NTR swept the election and earned himself the epithet, Saffron Caesar. Can Modi script a sequel?

As things stand, even the Congress privately concedes he has an advantage. In central and north Gujarat, where the Congress did well in the 1998 assembly poll, the BJP functions and rallies have elicited a "better than expected" response. In the Saurashtra-Kutch belt, where the BJP won a staggering 50 of 58 seats in 1998, the ruling party will be hard put to repeat its feat. Despite taking the Narmada and Mahi waters to 1,500 villages and several towns of this water-starved region, Modi will have to deal with ground-level unpopularity. This was the zone devastated by the earthquake of January 26, 2001. Rehabilitation is still an issue here.

Political punditry in India revels in reductionism, in analysing caste equations and regional preferences, party factionalism, anti-incumbency, indices of opposition unity. There are times when it is all pointless, when the voter has decided far in advance and the issue is settled before the first vote is punched in. Gujarat, despite Vaghela's valiant efforts, may just be in that situation. Should that be so, Modi's chief problem will not be the Congress but his innate sense of over-confidence. He has less than a month to make or mar his destiny.