How Modi transformed Kutch after the Bhuj quake of 2001 -- Atish Patel

At 8:46 a.m. on Jan. 26, 2001, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake shook the state of Gujarat, killing 20,000 people and toppling around 339,000 homes.

Over a decade later, Kutch – the district in the western Indian state hit hardest by the calamity – has transformed into an economic boomtown with flat new roads, an airport and tax-free zones that have attracted hundreds of businesses and created thousands of jobs. The state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, has touted the region’s development as one of the successes of his government. 

But anthropologist Edward Simpson argues in a new book that not all the changes in Kutch following the earthquake have been for the better, and that in the years following the quake, divisions between Hindus and Muslims in Kutch have widened.

In “The Political Biography of an Earthquake,” published in the U.K. earlier this month, Mr. Simpson also makes the case that the disaster offered Mr. Modi, Gujarat chief minister since late 2001, an opportunity to strengthen his position in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. This year, the BJP, presently in the opposition at the federal level, announced that Mr. Modi was its choice for prime minister ahead of national polls next year.

The Gujarati-speaking 42-year-old author, who teaches at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the book, which will be available in India next year. Edited excerpts.

Edward Simpson: I stayed in [the Kutch coastal town of] Mandvi for two years between 1997 and 1999 researching Muslim seafaring traditions. When the earthquake hit Gujarat, I phoned up people living in Bhuj [a town in Kutch flattened by the earthquake] to see how they were, what they were doing and what the conditions were like.

That was what really sparked my interest in doing the research. I wasn’t really interested in disasters until that point. It was the narratives and the suffering of the people I knew that drew me to it.

Mr. Simpson: In the aftermath of an earthquake, the nongovernment sector is often organized along religious or political lines, as it is in peacetime and non-disaster time as well. So some religious organizations tended to support their own communities over others.

The VHP and the RSS were already established in Bhuj at the time of the earthquake, so through existing networks they were able to mobilize resources. They were incredibly quick to act and very well prepared and bought to many people the sort of relief and comfort I suppose people needed.

They were very efficient with funeral rites, very efficient with the distribution of food – much more so than the state.

If I have a critical perspective on the actions of these groups, it is on how, during reconstruction, these organizations were allowed to become private partners of [the state].

Villages were being built by these organizations and that’s how they built their support base. They could set rules on who could live [in reconstructed villages] and who couldn’t.

Mr. Simpson: It is controversial to think about something that killed so many people as a blessing. But I will also say that I’ve heard people in Kutch describe it as a blessing in disguise, including people who lost loved ones in the disaster.

The rate of change has been such that it’s a very different place and there is far more money in Kutch than there was before.

Many people became much richer because of various compensation schemes and the price of land. In this way, the earthquake had some really quite dramatic effects on the household economy for many people – not for everyone of course. And I think that is the blessing that people are talking of.

For the media, the blessing is the industrialization and infrastructure, but I’m not so convinced that people in Kutch are talking about that. Most of the region in Kutch that has been industrialized was not affected by the earthquake.

Mostly the roads and factories are quite far removed from the lives of many people affected by the earthquake. I think a lot of industrialization would have happened anyway, but the earthquake was a facilitator, something to speed up the process.

Mr. Simpson: Mr. Modi’s repeated presence in Kutch [as part of reconstruction efforts] has done much to sideline his former rivals in the region.

The BJP has presented the reconstruction of western Gujarat as a rip-roaring and unproblematic success – a vindication of their policies. It is one of my aims in the book to show that there is much more to the story than that and success is itself a political and subjective measure. How success is measured and counted is something that people in Gujarat should be critically and openly discussing.

In Bhuj, watching that town being rebuilt, the ways in which divisions have been forced into new urban design — and not only by deliberate political will, but also by bureaucratic processes, by Muslims wanting to live closer together for reasons of fear, which was quite often the case around 2002 and 2003 –  I think Bhuj now is a more polarized town than it was before the earthquake.

Mr. Simpson:  I don’t think there’s much of a similarity, but Krishnavarma has been very useful in creating new kinds of political ideas in Gujarat. Krishnavarma is part of the school curriculum and many of the key buildings in Bhuj are named after him. There has been a concerted effort to promote [a man] who promoted the use of violence to bring about the freedom of India.

Krishnavarma represents a very different kind of Gujarati freedom figure to those who have come to be synonymous with Gujarat in the late 20th century. He is very different toSardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. He is much more aggressive.

For the BJP, Krishnavarma is a very convenient rediscovery. It allows them to rewrite the history of who are the heroes of Indian history, and that I think is a very integral part of Mr. Modi’s project in Gujarat.

When posters were put up [of Mr. Krishnavarma] — tens of thousands of them in western India between Mumbai and Kutch around 2003 — the photograph they chose to use had more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Modi.