Gujarat's young Turks: Promise, potential and the plunge

Thakor and Hardik, lauded and lavished with prized positions, proved to be men of clay; ironically, only Mevani, yet to formally join Congress, remains unrelenting

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.

Last week, Hardik Patel, the young swashbuckling hero who arrived on the 'agitation' scene seven years ago holding the promise of organising 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 assembly elections 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 the 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.

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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 sworn in.

Again, it was the 10-week Navnirman students' agitation of 1974, which began from an Ahmedabad engineering college hostel over the increase in mess charges and not only brought down a duly elected government leading to the 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 came to the fore in Gujarat, answering sociological, cultural or anti-repression calls.

Hardik Patel, just out of his teens, rose with incredible 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 witnessed the deployment of 3,500 paramilitary personnel and 93 companies of the State Reserve Police.

Alpesh Thakor rose to prominence after the Patidar agitation. The founder of the OSS (OBC, SC and ST) Ekta Manch, Thakor took up cudgels against social evils like drinking. His importance stemmed from the fact that the 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 youths 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, 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 slight lead - BJP's 99 to the Congress 77 in a House of 182.

Thakor was the first to join the Congress just before the assembly polls in 2017 and romped home from Radhanpur in north Gujarat. Mevani 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 judicial order.

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"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 Thakor at a rally the day he joined the Congress. Days before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Thakor, who had been promoted as 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 the things rest.

Hardik Patel, 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 the BJP as baseless rumours. 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 party began the day after.

Was it a mere coincidence? Apparently not, 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 moved the sessions court, which granted its plea on May 10. Hardik Patel 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 remains vital to his political career. It is now certain that Hardik Patel, 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 join the Congress, formally remains aggressive and unrelenting despite the BJP arresting and hauling him all the way to Assam. But Thakor and Hardik Patel, who were lauded and lavished with prized positions, have proved to be men of clay. It was Rahul Gandhi who personally chose them as spearheads 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.

(R K Misra is a senior journalist based in Ahmedabad)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.