Hardik Patel Ko Gussa Kyun Aaya

In 1992, Bali Brahmbhatt and Devang Patel came up with what became the cult Patel Rap.

Twenty-three years later, Gujarat finds itself swinging to another Patel rap – this one by a 21-year-old called Hardik Patel.

Hardik Patel has been in the news for the last few weeks for holding rallies across the western state to demand inclusion of the Patel community in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. According to a Times of India report, till recently he was the president of Sardar Patel Group’s (SPG’s) unit in Viramgam, his hometown, in Ahmedabad district. He floated Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) in July after he fell out with SPG’s head Lalji Patel. (Zee News recently carried stories saying Patel is associated with the Aam Aadmi Party, which Patel denied. Zee News even ran a story on Patel with a photo of Rohit Pandey, a long-time Aam Aadmi Party volunteer who apparently looks like Patel. In no time Twitter declared Patel to be a Kejriwal stooge. One such tweet was retweeted by Madhu Kishwar.)

In an Ahmedabad “Kranti Rally” on August 25, Patel threatened the Bharatiya Janata Party – which is in power in Gujarat as well as at the Centre –saying in the next assembly elections in 2017 “lotus (BJP symbol) will not bloom if our needs are not met.”In the violence that ensued following the protests, eight people have already been killed, five from police firing. Curfew has been imposed in many parts of Gujarat, the army had been called in.

The dangerous new Patel rap can only be jarring to two Gujaratis in Delhi – BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The latter made a statement on August 26: evoking Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Modi said with a sad face, “I appeal to the people of Gujarat to maintain peace. Violence will never achieve anything. We can find a solution through talks.”

Patels – or Patidar community – constitute 14-15 per cent of Gujarat’s population, and have traditionally been one of the dominant caste groups in the state – both socially and politically. Till the first few decades of Independence, they voted for the Congress. In Indira Gandhi’s reign there was a change in strategy, however. The Congress decided to focus on a combination of upper castes, Muslims and Dalits, the last of which the Congress attempted to woo through its anti-poverty rhetoric. But this left out the newly rich middle-caste cultivators: the neglected Patels were successfully mobilised by the BJP. In the 1980s, the Patels in fact vehemently opposed the Mandal Commission’s recommendations which reserved 27 per cent seats for the OBCs in government jobs. Their recent demand is therefore paradoxical in many ways.

Patel’s cry is the opposite of the Gujarat development story that Modi successfully sold to the country in 2014. One of the reasons Patels are agitating against the BJP is the belief that the party is too biased in favour of big business. The Patel population is scattered across small towns and villages of Gujarat: while the community, following the traditional development pattern, diversified from agriculture to small-and medium-scale industries, they don’t get as much support from the government as big business do in the form of tax soaps and other concessions. This has led to many of these industries turning sick, rendering a majority of this ambitious community poor.

What Patel wants is less than clear, though. On the face of it, he wants his community to be included in the OBC category so it would make life easier for young Patel men and women seeking government jobs or admissions into medical and entrance engineering exams. But the Constitution mandates reservations no further than 50 per cent, and Gujarat (in fact most Indian states) already has the quota full. Hardik Patel and the lakhs who throng his rallies realise this. Their next best hope is that the government scraps reservations for all castes, which is equally impossible.

It would be interesting to see if the government and the Patels reach a compromise in the near future. For now, though, the protests have revived the caste versus development debate in Gujarat. As for Hardik Patel, who says he would turn into Bhagat Singh if the need arises, the danger is, he may just find himself spearheading a rudderless army as events spin out of anybody’s control.