"See the state of the Congress. They didn't have a leader to fight against us so they got somebody (S.S. Vaghela) from the BJP's scrapyard."

-Narendra Modi at election
rallies this past week

"There is a scramble in the BJP as to who will be the duplicate Sardar Patel. And now you have an aluminium Sardar (Narendra Modi) too."

-S.S. Vaghela at election
rallies this past week

UNAIDED VICTIMS

Flying High: Modi's posters are more in demand than Vajpayee's

Take off Tactics: Vaghela has combined a catch-all appeal with a well-oiled Congress campaign

High-Pitch Campaign: The 80,000-strong turnout at Sonia's Surendranagar rally stunned the BJP

The December 12 assembly elections in Gujarat has been described as a "battle for the soul of India". Should that claim be taken at face value, irrespective of whether the BJP wins or the Congress, India's soul will evidently be very scarred after the proverbial last vote is counted. As D-Day approaches the war of words between the two contending parties, the BJP and the Congress, and their respective commanders-Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Congress state unit President Shankersinh Vaghela-becomes louder by the minute. National leaders from Delhi and state satraps from as far afield as Bihar are flying in to intensify the bitter struggle. Political slogans and posters are heard or seen on virtually every street in Gujarat. The state is a theatre of war, with an emphasis on both those words.

The war became a trifle too real on Tuesday, December 3. That was the day two unidentified assailants shot at Jaideep Patel, a key leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (vhp)-the BJP's ideological partner in the poll campaign-in Ahmedabad. Patel was injured but not mortally. Nevertheless, the murder attempt exposed just how brutal electoral politics in contemporary Gujarat is.

The BJP opened the final phase of the campaign this past week with characteristic fire. Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, party President M. Venkaiah Naidu, General Secretary Arun Jaitley and Union ministers Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan, Uma Bharati and Karia Munda criss-crossed the state on the four helicopters and one plane the BJP has hired to ferry its stars.

November 30 was, in effect, the inaugural day of the final lap of the most longdrawn electoral contest in recent memory. Between them national and state BJP leaders addressed as many as 50 meetings that day. With cricketer-politician Chetan Chauhan and film stars Hema Malini and Vinod Khanna-also Union minister of state for tourism-joining them, the coming days made the microphones and public address systems work overtime.

POLL MALL

"If the BJP loses, there will be celebrations in Islamabad." Narendra modi

"It is a choice between manavta and danavta, good and evil." S.S. Vaghela

CINE ADVANCE

Sunil Dutt (Cong): "BJP divides the people, while Congress unites them."

Hema Malini (BJP): "Society needs a dynamic leader like Modi."

Modi's support cast is Advani, Jaitley, Sushma, Mahajan, Togadia and, to a degree, Vajpayee. Vaghela's support cast is Sonia, Laloo, Kamal Nath.

9 Number of aircraft hired for the Gujarat elections

POWER JET: Congress has hired four copters; BJP has chartered four helicopters and a plane.

The BJP has drafted 23 non-state leaders for the campaign in Gujarat. By December 12, the party would have organised 300 public meetings. The number of smaller, street corner meetings can only be guessed. Aside from these the vhp is organising over 200 dharma sabhas (spiritual meetings). Being addressed by figures such as vhp General Secretary Pravin Togadia and veteran preacher Acharya Dharmendra, these ostensibly private gatherings are patently poll related.

Not surprisingly, the recurrent theme of the BJP campaign is Hindutva and the personality cult around Narendra Modi. From terrorism to pseudo-secularism to Gujarati pride, old chestnuts are everywhere. In Rajkot and Bhuj, Advani dared Pakistan to a "fourth war"-which, over the past year, the entire BJP brass has promised but resolutely refused to fight. With astonishing originality, Swaraj railed against those who "burst crackers when India loses a cricket match".

Despite the shrill voices, nobody in the BJP attracted the sort of crowds Modi did. Even at the party headquarters in Gandhinagar, campaign material-posters, banners, festoons and so on-that featured Modi was disappearing fast. However, district units were not as keen on images of Advani or even Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

It is quite clear that the election will be won or lost on the personal standing of Modi. The individual has completely overwhelmed his party. The Opposition is quite another matter. The institutional strength of the Congress was apparent as party chief Sonia Gandhi stormed Gujarat on December 3 and 5.

In keeping with Vaghela's soft Hindutva line, she began with a ritualistic prayer in north Gujarat's famous Ambaji temple. She then addressed a massive meeting of over 80,000 supporters in Surendranagar. The turnout stunned the BJP. The Congress was very much in business.

Sonia's was a measured attack, pointing out that the BJP had no proprietorial rights on patriotism or religious sentiment. She called upon her listeners to choose between vikas (progress) and vinash (destruction), between the Congress and the BJP. Vaghela and Ajit Jogi, the chief minister of Chhattisgarh who had been brought in to swing the tribal vote, were more denunciatory.

Jogi tore into Vajpayee for his failure to neutralise the Pakistan threat. There was none of the genteel left-liberalism the Congress reserves for its press conferences in Delhi. Later, as Sonia watched, Vaghela told a Vadodara audience: "Vajpayee needs a special injection in his knees to enable him to curb terrorism." This is certainly not a polite election.

THE BURNING ISSUE: Officially Godhra is not a poll issue but, like theseVHP workers, few can ignore it

Jogi is one of the dozen-odd Congress chief ministers helping Vaghela in his battle with Modi. So crucial is Gujarat to immediate political fortunes that Vilasrao Deshmukh (Maharashtra), Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan) and S.M. Krishna (Karnataka) have taken a break from governance for old fashioned canvassing. As many as 20 national Congress leaders have been co-opted. They will help address 250 public meetings.

Unlike 1998, when the Congress' Gujarat unit was on poor street, the party is flush with funds. Bolstered by Vaghela's enormous clout with local business houses, the party has been able to hire three helicopters for its star campaigners and match the BJP poster for poster, blitz for blitz, ad spend for ad spend.

To curb factionalism, the Congress' traditional bane, all the state's constituencies will have one or two non-local leaders camping there to oversee the campaign and douse any internal fires. Politicians of the level of former Union minister Jagdish Tytler and Maharashtra's Minister of State for Home Kripashankar Singh are looking after individual constituencies. It is a measure of just how seriously the Congress is taking Gujarat.

This is no ordinary election. It is the most ideologically riven battle since the titanic Lok Sabha contest of 1991. Nothing represents this "larger conflict" more than the fact that people as diverse as Laloo Prasad Yadav, general of Bihar, and Vishnu Bhagwat, former admiral of the Indian Navy, are addressing meetings for the Congress; or rather, against the BJP. Lending a gentle edge, if that oxymoron be permitted, to the Congress' message is Sunil Dutt, the film star-politician who has enormous goodwill among Gujarat's Muslims.

In the end, this clutter of individuals and issues, sloganmongering and showmanship may be unnecessary. The election has boiled down to a referendum on Narendra Modi. He will take his party to either the heights of ecstasy or the depths of despair. Vaghela knows where he would want his arch-foe to end up; it is time for the rest of Gujarat to make up its mind.