Riding on Patidar power: Hardik Patel is undoubtedly a trailblazer

For one so young (he’s just 28), Hardik Patel has packed in a lot in his life.

He’s run an agitation in Gujarat, party-hopped and it is an irony of our times that he’s returned to precisely the same party against which he had launched his protest. If elements in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat were uncomfortable about Patel joining, they took great care not to show it — though supporters of Anandiben Patel, current Uttar Pradesh governor and former Gujarat chief minister, can be forgiven for asking why the man who contributed the most to deposing her should be allowed anywhere near the party.

As an independent leader, Hardik Patel is undoubtedly a trailblazer. He is best known for his stewardship of anamat (reservations) for Patidars under the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) that created turmoil in Gujarat in 2015 and 2016. The Patidars of Gujarat, are, by and large, upwardly mobile and sections of the community are wealthy landlords. They have played a central role in the politics of the state, but outside of agriculture they have struggled with problems of education and unemployment, with hundreds of thousands migrating abroad — the last ended in tragedy, when a Patel family of four from Gujarat, including a three-year-old, froze to death on the Canada border in pursuit of a better life in the United States, even if it meant cleaning toilets.

Hardik Patel sensed Patidar despair. This was a politically powerful community that suddenly felt it had become powerless: Patidar dominance in Gujarat was challenged by Congress leader Madhavsinh Solanki in the early 1980s when his Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim (KHAM) combination won more than 150 seats in the 183-member Assembly. The Patidars then used the BJP as a political vehicle to reclaim their dominant position in state politics. When the BJP came to power, building a larger social coalition under the pan-community Hindu umbrella, the chief ministership went to Keshubhai Patel. But later, except for a short period under Anandiben Patel, Gujarat has had a non-Patidar chief minister for almost two decades.

Hardik Patel’s rise began in the pre-Anandiben period, but peaked when she was chief minister. He made reservation for Patidars his central theme in a state where poor quality of education meant that “with 95 per cent marks, a Patel child is unlikely to get into a government medical college and can be required to pay Rs 5 lakh and upwards to become a doctor, while a Dalit child even with 87 per cent marks gets free education,” Anandiben Patel told Business Standard when she was chief minister. When she was replaced by Vijay Rupani, the Hardik Patel rebellion died down but not before the youthful leader had extracted a promise from the Congress to support Patidar reservation.

The language of reservation, relative deprivation and frustration is a big attention catcher. Hardik Patel combined this with innovative campaign tactics: in 2015, he launched a “lollipop movement” because the Gujarat government announced, to defuse his reservation agitation, a scheme for benefits to deserving students of all castes and categories, which he saw as nothing but a “lollipop” to the Patidars. He then went ahead and actually distributed the lollipops. So struck was the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra that it announced unilaterally that it would support Hardik Patel for chief minister of Gujarat. He reacted cautiously at the time, saying he was only 23, and ineligible to contest Assembly elections, so could the Sena come back in a few years, please.

The Congress snaffled him. Although he campaigned for the Congress in the 2017 state Assembly polls, Hardik Patel formally joined the party just ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections. He was then made chief of the state unit. The party thought he would be able to revive its fortunes: the three top state leaders of the Congress — Shaktisinh Gohil, Arjun Modhwadia and Siddharth Patel — lost the 2017 Assembly elections. Out of 182 seats in the Assembly, the Congress got 77 and the BJP 99. But in the local elections that followed months later, the Congress was wiped out, including in the areas that had shown promise during the Assembly elections. Hardik Patel was seen as the magic bullet.

But there are no magic bullets in politics, just as there is no El Dorado in the US or Canada, however much the Patidars might want to believe this. In 2019, the BJP won all 26 Lok Sabha seats from the state. Although Hardik Patel became working president of the Congress, a bitter parting of ways last week showed his frustration with the party. Gujarat Congress in-charge Raghu Sharma and former Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Bharatsinh Solanki were the pointed targets of his attack. Interestingly, when the question came of joining the BJP, he was given an option: would he like to join in the presence of the national president in New Delhi, or Gujarat BJP in-charge Bhupender Yadav (or organising secretary BL Santhosh) in Gandhinagar? He chose the latter.

With time on his side, that Hardik Patel will one day occupy the top spot in Gujarat is a no-brainer. But the BJP doesn’t like rabble-rousers. So to rise in the party, he will have to demonstrate a head for strategy. Mere tactics will not work.