Shaking Modi’s foundations in Gujarat

by Stanley Mathews

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears destined to face challenges from unexpected quarters.

The first shock was administered by Arvind Kejriwal’s fledgling Aam Admi Party (AAP), when it decimated Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Delhi Assembly elections in February 2015, within eight months of his coming to power through a landslide victory. The second shock came in late August from his home state of Gujarat, where the single largest caste group, the Patidars (famous as Patels the world over) came out in hundreds of thousands to the streets of Ahmedabad, the state’s capital city, to demand reservation in government jobs and educational institutions, and to denounce the unsympathetic attitude of the Gujarat government led by Modi protégé, Anandiben Patel.

The peaceful agitation, which brought out more than 500,000 people to the Centre of Ahmedabad, was put down with a heavy hand by the Gujarat Police, which had developed a sense of impunity after the anti-Muslim riots in 2002, when Modi was Chief Minister of the state. The police attacked when the crowd was dispersing and only 20,000 were left on the grounds. The rampage by the police went on and was condemned by the Gujarat High Court.

But Modi himself was unfazed. He did not visit Gujarat but only issued a statement from Delhi in which he appealed for calm and called for a dialogue. But a dialogue did not follow. As Gujarat returned to normal, the agitation’s leader, 22-year-old Hardik Patel, travelled to Delhi and met leaders of similar large castes, which do not enjoy reservations in government employment and educational institutions. These are the Kurmis of Uttar Pradesh, Gujjars of Rajasthan and Jats of Haryana. “I will make the movement all-India,” Hardik thundered in Delhi, holding aloft a sword in a gesture of defiance.

To the Patidars of all age groups, urban and rural, male and female, Hardik is a symbol of their common communal problem because he comes from a lower middle class family, struggling to get an education and to find a secure job after that. He is the typical Patidar young man, struggling to make ends meet, in a society where affirmative action on the part of the state appears to be skewed and unjust.

The Patidar factor

According to Hardik and the Patidars, 90 percent of Patidars are struggling to make both ends meet. He told the media that the extraordinary prosperity of 10 percent of Patidars living mostly in the UK and US cannot hide the poverty in which the vast majority are living. And the Patidars account for 20 percent of Gujarat’s population. The Patidars allege that Modi’s model of development is based on the development of the big corporates.

Modi believes in the trickle-down theory according to which good will eventually comes to the masses from the growth of a few rich investors. But in India, the trickle-down theory has not worked given the fact that Indian corporates have no sense of social responsibility. They grow for their own sake with the help of politicians who take decisions favorable to them in return for under the counter payments.

Since the late 1980s, the lower castes, called the Other Backward Classes (or OBCs), the Harijans also called Scheduled Castes, and the Adivasis also called Scheduled Tribe, have reserved seats in government and educational institutions. But the higher castes like the Patidars do not have the same facility. With emphasis put on industrial growth and the neglect of agriculture, the largely rural Patidars have been getting a smaller and smaller share of the development pie. And with the emphasis on facilitating the growth of big industrialists, Patidars in the Small and Medium Industrial Sectors feel played out. The bulk of the Patidars who are in the agricultural and small scale industrial sector have a deep sense of disappointment with Modi’s growth model.

Though Modi’s development model is purely economic and caste-free, he has been playing caste politics to rise to power and remain in power since the early 2000s. It was he who galvanized the Patidars to oppose the Congress party, which was using a combination of backward castes to capture and be in power.

Hindu vs Muslim affairs

He pitted the Patidars against the so-called Congress sponsored KHAM group comprising Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis (tribals) and Muslims. He then tried to encompass all the Hindu castes under the broader rubric of ‘Hindutva.’ The Hindutva ideology turned Gujarat politics into a Hindu vs. Muslim affair. Through such political engineering, Modi was able to oust the Congress and keep it at bay in Gujarat till date. But the Patidars did not get their due under Modi. The KHAM group continued to enjoy reservations or affirmative action, while the Patidars continued to be deprived of it. The Patidars watched with dismay Modi getting his own caste, the Modh Ghanchis, recognized as a Backward Caste in the Central Government’s List just before the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections.

When he left for New Delhi to be Prime Minister in May 2014, Modi placated the Patidars by nominating Anandiben Patel, a senior Patidar leader of the BJP, as his successor in the Chief Minister’s post. But Anandiben’s rule made no difference to the condition of the Patidars as she was under the remote control of Modi in New Delhi.

Caste factor

Having aroused the Patidars’ passions and expectations, Hardik Patel will be compelled to sustain the movement. And Modi will be compelled to take note of the caste factor and meet its demands. While he is hammering caste politics in Bihar where the BJP is facing a serious challenge from caste and rural based political heavy weights in the run up to the November State Assembly elections, he has to address caste issues in his own home state of Gujarat.

The Western model of capitalistic development (but without a social content), which Modi is thrusting on Gujarat and India, has run into rough weather everywhere in the country. While the Central Land Acquisition Bill is languishing in parliament due to severe opposition from practically all parties, in Gujarat itself, the powerful Patidars, are disillusioned with Modi for neglecting the social equity factor in development. The absence of Patidar support could stymie the BJP’s prospects in the next Gujarat Assembly elections in 2017.