Gujarat Young Turks : Promise , Potential And The Plunge !
BY R.K.MISRA
Challenges stir both mice and men. The one to
face, fight and forge ahead, the other to turn tail and scamper. Only time
tells the difference.
On May 18,2022,
Hardik Patel, the young swashbuckling hero who arrived on the ‘agitation’ scene seven
years ago holding promise of organizing 27 crore patidars into a national
movement, walked out of the Congress under a media generated hype, a faint caricature of his rebellious self. The
national dream had long been forgotten as the revolutionary metamorphosed into
a prim politician . With election looming on the horizon, he was one working
president who walked out of the party saying that he was not allowed to work.
Weather- beaten opportunism had found an
additional adherent. Gujarat and
Himachal Pradesh go to polls later this year.
But this is
not as much about Hardik Patel as about
movements and their leaders, about promise, potential and then the betraying plunge into the ranks of the pompous politicians.
Gujarat has
birthed not mere men but national
movements as well. Mahatma Gandhi never returned to the Sabarmati ashram but
his 24 day salt satyagraha or civil disobedience movement in March 1930 laid
the foundation for India’s freedom 17 years later. Gandhi was nowhere near
Delhi when independent India’s first government was being sworn- in.
Again, it was
the 10- week Navnirman students agitation of 1974 which began from an Ahmedabad
engineering college hostel over rise in mess charges and not only brought down
a duly elected government leading to dissolution of the State Assembly but
became the trigger of a national movement
that led to the installation of the first non-Congress government in the
country three years later in 1977,incidentally also headed by a Gujarati,
Morarji Desai. Maintaining the piety of his beliefs, Manishi Jani the face of
the movement, shed the limelight and leads a quiet life in Ahmedabad.
Individuals are commas
of history. In time, they either become
defining full stops or end up as faltering question marks. After Narendra
Modi’s departure for Delhi in 2014,
three promising young men come to the fore in Gujarat answering sociological, cultural or
anti-repression calls.
Hardik Patel, just
out of his teens rose with amazing speed demanding OBC status for his Patidar
community which would entitle them to a reservation quota in government jobs
and education. Patidars constitute 14 per cent of the state’s population and
have a defining say in 55 of the 182 seats in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha. His
quota agitation which engulfed the state turned bloody with 14 fatalities
and foresaw the deployment of 3500 paramilitary personnel and 93 companies of
the State Reserve Police.
Alpesh Thakore
rose to prominence after the Patidar
agitation. The founder of the OSS(OBC,SC and ST) Ekta Manch who aggressively took up cudgels against social
evils like drinking, his importance stemmed from the fact that OBCs
constituted about 40 per cent of the
voter population in Gujarat.
Jignesh Mevani,
a journalist turned dalit activist rose to prominence during the protests
following the Una flogging incident in
July 2016 when seven Dalit youth were tortured on the pretext of cow protection
and in the presence of the police though they were skinning a dead cow. The
incident filmed and widely shared on
social media led to widespread outrage and militant dalit protests. Over 30
dalit organisations came together to protest and Mevani was its convenor.
The three youth
with their organisations banded together to become a formidable caste phalanx
that led to the fall of the Anandiben Patel government in Gujarat with the Una incident proving the
last straw that broke the camel’s back. The three cast their lot with the
Congress which gave a fright to the BJP
in the 2017 elections before the latter scraped through to power with a seven
seat lead- 99 to the Congress 77 in a House of 182.
Alpesh was the
first to join the Congress ,just before the State Assembly polls, and romped
home from Radhanpur in North Gujarat. Jignesh
though contested as an independent
from Vadgam with Congress support and won. Hardik joined the Congress just
before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but was thwarted from contesting the polls by a judicial
order.
“It is time to
throw out the BJP from Gujarat. Lakhs of young are jobless,74,000 farmers are
neck deep in debt, illicit liquor flows freely and education and health sectors
are in a mess”, thundered Thakore at a rally the day he joined the Congress.
Days before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Thakore, who had been promoted
national secretary, quit the Congress solemnly affirming he would never join
the BJP. Two months later he joined the BJP after quitting his Assembly seat,
re-contested as a BJP candidate and was defeated. He has now made it clear that
he will contest the ensuing elections from Radhanpur come what may. And there things rest.
Hardik, who shot
to fame riding astride a Patidar caste based agitation and brought down a government headed by a
Patidar lady, quit the Congress calling
it ’casteist’. On April 24 Hardik termed reports of joining BJP as baseless rumours but by May 19 that had turned to “I have not yet made up my mind”, even as he parroted
the BJP line immediately after
quitting-Congress anti-Gujarat,
obstructing Modi, Ram mandir, abrogation of article 370, CAA -NRC all
praiseworthy measures.
He has reason to,
for lots depends on the ruling party’s benevolence. All primed to contest the
2019 Lok Sabha polls, he was thwarted when the High Court accepted the
government plea that he had ”criminal antecedents with 17 FIRs and two sedition
cases” and refused a stay on a 2015 case of arson and rioting wherein he had
been sentenced to two years
imprisonment. The Supreme Court stayed this verdict on April 12 this year and
his fulminations against his own party began the day after. Was it mere coincidence? Apparently not, because the government moved
to withdraw another case of rioting and
trespass against him and his associates on April 25 but the Ahmedabad
metropolitan magistrate turned down the plea. The government which moved the
session court which granted its plea on May 10. Hardik quit the Congress on May
18. A total of 30 FIRs were filed against him between 2015 and 2018 and by his
own admission 23 cases are pending. The apex court may have stayed one case but
the state government’s stand in the
remaining ones remain vital to his political career. It is now certain that
Hardik, for all his pious platitudes, is determined to contest the ensuing
elections. It makes sense to be on the right side of the rulers, maybe even
rewarding!
Ironically, Mevani who is yet to formally join the Congress remains aggressive and unrelenting despite the BJP arresting and hauling him all the way to Assam, but Thakore and Patel- who were lauded and lavished with prized positions- have proved men of clay. It was Rahul Gandhi who personally chose them as a spearhead for the new Congress leadership in the state. It is he who will have to accept culpability for their failures.
As someone said. you don’t drown by falling in the water, you
drown by staying there. EOM
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