Abstract
This article examines Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hegemony in Gujarat by studying the changes inaugurated by the party in the caste profile of Gujarati political elites. I showcase the transition of BJP from a party of elite castes to a limited accommodation of a few Hindu backward castes, especially under Narendra Modi’s chief ministership. However, I argue that the recruitment of Hindu backward castes as ministers represents a case of superficial democratization as they were appointed in non-influential ministries or were co-opted only near election time. Indeed, Modi’s developmentalist regime solidified the dominance of upper castes and Patels from an urban background and a few Rajputs, and led to a rural backlash in the form of Patel agitation. In the final section, I analyse these still emerging trends in Gujarat’s polity, which became visible on a rural–urban continuum in the 2017 state election.
An oft-quoted stylized fact about Gujarat’s polity and society goes as follows: Gujarat is a ‘laboratory of Hindutva’ par excellence, thanks to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s hegemony. To its credit, BJP has remained in power since 1995, barring a hiatus of 18 months, in Gujarat. In the last four decades, the party—supported by an elaborate network of organizations linked to its parent group, the Sangh Parivar—has successfully installed the Hindu nationalist ideology in Gujarati (read Hindu) public consciousness. The party often harks back to K. M. Munshi’s concept of Gujarati asmita (pride), equating a narrow vision of Hindu-ness with Gujarati identity, among other things—a genre of ethno-religious (sub)nationalism noticeable even in the Congress party’s regional unit (Jaffrelot, 2017).
While the cultural-ideological explanation is central to BJP dominance in Gujarat, the party’s consolidation took place under Narendra Modi, the state’s longest serving chief minister (CM, 2001–2014) till date. A self-termed ‘outsider’ to the state’s politics, Modi ruptured the Gujarati political experience in the most intense manner. It is not an accident that the region’s contemporary history is heuristically periodized as ‘before’ and ‘after’ Modi. A great deal is known about Modi’s initial experimentations with the state’s Hindu–Muslim disunities and his later political economy endeavours in this first-rate industrial-urban region. 1 However, the political sociology aspect of Modi’s rule, particularly of the state’s highest political offices (e.g., the council of ministers) and BJP’s organization, is underexplored.
In this article, I explain the hegemony of BJP in Gujarat through the underappreciated logic of the party’s social engineering, with a special focus on Modi’s time as Gujarat’s CM. To put it squarely, BJP commenced its journey as an outfit of dominant castes—upper castes and Patels (middle or intermediate caste)—who controlled the party’s key posts and subsequently, the top rungs of the state government. From the mid-to-late 1990s, the party began to co-opt Hindu Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in a limited fashion as members of legislative assembly (MLAs), while ignoring Adivasis and Dalits.
On the one hand, Modi accelerated the recruitment of OBCs, especially as ministers; nevertheless, OBC leaders were appointed in not so influential ministries, and their numerical strength remained subject to the electoral cycle, affirming their secondary position in Modi’s rule. On the other hand, by promoting hyper-capitalist urbanization, he nurtured a new class of urban political elites among Patels and upper castes (except for Rajputs). I term this process as superficial democratization of Gujarat’s polity, whereby Modi neutralized pressure from below by increasing the numerical strength of OBCs in his ministries, particularly near election time, while Patels and upper castes from urban areas and some rural Rajputs captured most powerful executive and political offices. Indeed, the so-called Gujarat Model’s fault lines have shaped the state’s politics on rural–urban lines and class distinctions in recent times (Jaffrelot, 2016; Ranjan & Sircar, 2017). I mildly differ from this strand of argument to re-emphasize the centrality of caste within the logic of rural–urban differentiation and class divide by analysing the last state election’s data, ministries’ dataset, and party organizations.
Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat: Elite Revolt Against Representative Politics
Since its inception in April 1980, BJP brought Gujarat’s dominant castes—Brahmin, Bania, Rajput, and Patel (who together/collectively constitute about one-fourth of the state’s population)—on a common political platform at a time when they had begun to lose their political power after Gujarat Congress created a social alliance of backward groups. 2 These four castes had monopolized the state’s political class during the Mahagujarat movement—which culminated with the creation of a separate province of Gujarati speakers—and in its immediate aftermath. The dominance of Brahmin and Bania politicians was particularly well pronounced. From 1960 until 1973, Gujarat’s CM was either a Brahmin or a Bania, and 45 (78%) of Gujarat’s 58 cabinet ministers were Brahmin-Bania (see Table 1). Patels and Rajputs played a subordinate role as Ministers of States (MoS) where they occupied 12 (21%) spots from 1960 till 1973 (see Table 2).
The political supremacy of Brahmins and Banias frustrated Kshatriyas (read Rajputs) and Patels, cultivating a schism amidst dominant castes before they ultimately coalesced around BJP. 3 Patels and Kshatriyas, in turn, joined hands and endorsed the Swatantra party—a political outfit of landed Patel peasants, former feudal lords, and rich Parsis. They did not enable political democratization, unlike Chaudhary Charan Singh’s kisan politics, which clamoured for (some) representation of backward castes around the same period in North India. Swatantra emerged as a real threat to Congress dominance in the 1967 election when it won 66 seats and reduced its vote-share differential with Congress from 25 per cent in 1962 to just 8 per cent in 1967. However, the Patel–Kshatriya coalition (PAKSHA) was a bundle of contradictions (and thus short-lived). After independence, the Rajput influence waned as they lost their feudal privileges in princely states and had to forfeit vast tracts of land in Saurashtra, due to agrarian reforms that fomented inter-caste rivalries with Patel tenants. 4 Patels, on the other hand, were socio-economically mobile due to their involvement in the co-operative dairy and banking movement: they became agro-capitalists (especially in central Gujarat), urbanized, and often migrated abroad (Gillion, 1969, pp. 160–163; Hardiman, 1981). In the early 1970s, Congress began to co-opt Patels recognizing the community’s sociopolitical clout and fractured the ephemeral PAKSHA unity. Accordingly, the Swatantra experiment fizzled out, especially with the ascent of Indira Gandhi on the national scene. In the 1972 assembly election, in which Congress won 140 of 168 seats and soon appointed a Patel CM, Swatantra’s vote-share was a mere 1.78 per cent. However, as the old guard of Congress party or Congress (O) challenged Indira Gandhi’s faction, a coalition government of Congress (O) and Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) came to power twice in Gujarat, installing another Patel CM who, albeit, did not survive for long due to the National Emergency (1975–1977).
The biggest threat to elite castes (sans Rajputs) emerged after the Emergency when Congress sought to represent the political interests of backward groups, in turn, propelling these influential communities to rally behind BJP in the 1980s (Mitra, 1987; Shah, 1994a). Circa 1977–1978, Madhavsinh Solanki and Jinabhai Darji put together a formidable social coalition of Kshatriyas, Harijans (Dalits), Adivasis (tribals), and Muslims known as KHAM, representing around 60 per cent of Gujarat’s population for Congress. Congress won 141 (77%) of 182 constituencies in the 1980 election ushering in the only, albeit a brief, wave of OBC politics in Gujarat’s history; Kshatriyas contributed 33 (24%) of Congress MLAs. The share of KHAM politicians rose to 59 per cent in Vidhan Sabha vis-à-vis 43 per cent in 1975, inflicting a massive injury on the political authority of dominant castes who formed just 41 per cent of Gujarat assembly, down from 57 per cent in 1975 or 52 per cent in 1967 (Wood, 1984, pp. 213 and 215). Consequently, Madhavsinh Solanki once again became Gujarat’s CM. His government established multiple firsts such as allocating less than half of cabinet spots for Brahmin–Bania–Patel leaders, whereas KHAM politicians occupied five of eight cabinet positions and over 70 per cent of MoS.
Solanki’s government, however, continued with business-friendly policies in line with the stereotypical entrepreneurial self-image of Gujaratis and failed to insert a vocabulary of social justice in Gujarat’s politics, except for a half-hearted attempt at land redistribution (Kohli, 1990, pp. 238–266; Shani, 2007, p. 72; cf. Sud, 2012, p. 81). Indeed, the KHAM alliance was merely an electoral strategy activated near poll season: just before the 1985 election, Solanki government increased quota for OBCs, known as Socially and Economically Backward Classes (SEBCs), from 10 per cent to 27 per cent. It ensured, along with a sympathy wave for Congress after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in October 1984, an unprecedented Congress win on 149 seats. In Solanki’s new cabinet, there was only one member from the Brahmin–Bania–Patel castes.
Cabinet Ministers in Gujarat Government (Caste & Religion, 1960–1990)
As KHAM alliance radically ruptured the ‘natural’ claims of upper castes and Patels on Gujarat’s political offices, Solanki faced stiff resistance within Congress and outside. First, inside Congress, Sanat Mehta and Prabodh Raval vied to bring down Solanki’s government and some led by Ratubhai Adani also left the party. Second and perhaps more importantly, Patel, Brahmin–Bania, and some Rajput leaders—who were without a political outfit after the collapse of Janata party—rallied behind the newly formed BJP to resist their political irrelevance. With the disintegration of Ahmedabad’s cotton textile industry, they felt insecure not just politically but also in socio-economic terms, whereas OBCs and Dalits experienced (limited) mobility, thanks to quotas. In the 1980s, this rivalry between elite castes and OBCs–Dalits also came on the streets of Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, and small towns of northern and central Gujarat as caste violence. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and BJP sprung to action in such moments of crises to help upper castes and Patels with grocery supplies and find them jobs (Shani, 2007, pp. 109–111).
Electorally speaking, BJP’s initial opposition to OBC quota did not yield much as it failed to win even a dozen seats in the 1980 and 1985 state elections. By the mid-1980s, BJP reformulated its strategy vis-à-vis the reservation policy by either keeping aloof from the quota question or vilifying the reservation system as detrimental to Hindu unity. Instead, BJP and other Hindu right-wing groups spent their energy on portraying Muslims as the ‘fifth column’ of Gujarati (read Hindu) society, instrumentalizing religion to foster community ties between upper castes and OBCs–Dalits. Consequently, anti-reservation clashes disappeared, and Hindu–Muslim violence took the centre stage in Gujarat, claiming 275 lives in Ahmedabad alone in 1985. 5 Soon, Solanki lost his grip over the state’s law and order machinery. Amarsinh Chaudhary replaced him as Gujarat’s CM and introduced a couple of privileged caste ministers to quell the situation. Solanki’s ouster, forced by caste and Hindu–Muslim violence, demonstrated the increasing assertion of Patels and resilience of Brahmin–Bania political actors. How did the resurgence of these groups, concomitant to BJP’s rise, alter Gujarat’s political class?
Minister of States in Gujarat Government (Caste & Religion, 1960–1990)
Patels Upstage Other Backward Classes (and Some Upper Castes)
As BJP solidified its discourse on Hindu nationalism, its popularity dramatically rose, especially in urban Gujarat, where it captured Ahmedabad, Junagadh, and Rajkot municipalities. In the 1989 parliamentary election, BJP won a dozen seats in Gujarat, which increased to 20 seats in the 1991 poll. BJP’s ascendency, beginning in mid-1980s, also ensured that the state’s polity tilted towards mandir between the period’s clichéd dichotomy of Ram mandir and Mandal report (which recommended 27% quota for OBCs in central government jobs).
In the 1990 assembly election, BJP emerged as the second largest party with 67 seats, only 3 seats less than Janata Dal, which replaced Congress party at the first position. Upper and middle castes formed about 55 per cent of BJP’s legislative body—similar to Gujarat assembly’s formation before the KHAM experiment (Desai & Shah, 2009, p. 196). Together with Janata Dal, BJP formed a coalition government, though, it survived for just 8 months; consequently, Congress lent its support to the Janata government. The Janata–Congress government confirmed the comeback of upper castes and Patels. This coalition government ran under a Patel CM, Chimanbhai Patel, who appointed 10 cabinet ministers (59%) from upper and intermediate castes in influential ministries ranging from home, finance, and industries to Narmada, revenue, and energy (see Table 3). After Chimanbhai Patel’s sudden death, Chabbildas Mehta, a Bania, was installed as the state’s CM, supported by two deputy CMs, a Patel and a Koli. In response to the revival of privileged castes, Gujarat Congress partially returned to its policy of the early 1970s to favour Patels and upper castes to move away from focusing on KHAM alliance; for instance, Madhavsinh Solanki was exiled to Rajya Sabha; Jinabhai Darji’s career was mostly over; and Amarsinh Chaudhary lost the 1990 election.
The rise of BJP was crystal clear by the mid-1990s. It won its first absolute majority in the 1995 state election, conquering two-third of Gujarat’s 182 seats. It also demonstrated the steady progress of Patels who occupied 24 per cent of Gujarat’s Vidhan Sabha, but contributed close to 30 per cent of BJP’s MLAs—a dominance they have enjoyed then on (Desai & Shah, 2009, pp. 196 and 199). Consequently, Keshubhai Patel was appointed CM. He allocated three-fourth of cabinet spots and over half of MoS positions for dominant castes, of which seven, including himself, were Patels (see Tables 3 & 4). The growing political standing of Patels in BJP irked Brahmins and Rajputs who toppled the government and installed a Brahmin as CM. Soon, Shankarsinh Vaghela, a Rajput, and Dilip Parikh, a Bania, left BJP and formed Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP); with Congress’s support, Vaghela, and later Parikh, became Gujarat’s CM. 6 Their governments accorded some space to OBCs who enjoyed four–five cabinet positions. Parikh’s government too fell in early 1998, leading to fresh polls. BJP returned to power in 1998 by broadly repeating its 1995 performance. Keshubhai Patel was back as Gujarat’s CM with a Patel-dominated cabinet. Upper castes retained just three positions in the cabinet, a threshold they have not breached since then.
Indeed, the 1990s was a golden age in Gujarat’s politics for Patels: they had not only overthrown the KHAM alliance and installed one of their own in the chief ministerial position for 7 years of the decade, but they had also successfully resisted the upper castes and surpassed them in the cabinet.
As Gujarat’s CM, Keshubhai Patel attempted to enlist Adivasis as Hindutva’s ‘foot-soldiers’ (resulting into vigilante violence against Christian missionaries) 7 , though BJP lost critical local elections under him. The party lost control of Ahmedabad and Rajkot municipalities and was defeated in 23 of Gujarat’s 25 district panchayats, whereas Congress and allies captured over 2,500 of 3,848 taluka panchayat seats in the 1999–2000 election (Sanghavi, 2010, pp. 126–129). To break this spell of losses, BJP’s central leadership installed Narendra Modi as CM in October 2001.
Gujarat Under Modi: A Case of Superficial Democratization
Narendra Modi, a member of a politically insignificant jati, is Gujarat’s longest serving and most popular CM till date. 8 Modi’s initial days as CM were arduous as he took up the state’s mantle when BJP’s popularity was declining. Political analysts are familiar with how Modi reversed BJP’s fortunes in Gujarat. He exploited the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom—in which over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in large parts of Gujarat amidst widespread allegations of state complicity following the Godhra train burning incident 9 —to unite Hindus. Few months after the pogrom, Modi dissolved the Gujarat assembly. In the election that followed, BJP won 127 assembly seats obtaining 50 per cent all votes. Its performance was particularly stunning in the riot-affected regions of northern and central Gujarat validating an electoral logic to ethnic violence (Dhattiwala & Biggs, 2012; Kumar, 2003; Wilkinson, 2004). Over half of BJP’s 127 legislators were upper caste or Patel (Desai & Shah, 2009, p. 199).
Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2002 victory had come about on one of the vilest political campaigns in modern India, by the end of which, Modi had emerged as the hypermasculine, nationalist saviour of Hindus—a Hindu Hriday Samrat (King of Hindu Hearts). In the election campaign, Modi routinely provoked Hindu sentiments against Muslims (and some Christians like then head of Election Commission, J M Lyngdoh and Sonia Gandhi) by deploying a version of Gujarati asmita that is xenophobic in its sociocultural construct and populist in its political appeal. He termed relief camps for riot victims as ‘child producing centres’ and urged his listeners to treat the 2002 election as ‘related to religion’ (Frontline, 2008; Outlook Magazine, 2002). He appealed to Hindu masses, referring to himself as their ‘brother’ or ‘son’ and equated his personal criticism as an attempt to tarnish the image of Gujaratis (read Hindus).
After the 2002 state election, however, Modi personified a new kind of Gujarati asmita, merging a pro-business, middle-class-friendly development paradigm with Hindu nationalism (on the relationship between Hindu nationalism and neo-liberalism, vide, Sud, 2012). His government rolled out special economic policies for capitalists, transformed urban Gujarat’s public spaces to satiate middle-class urges, and even expanded the ‘catchment zone’ of his populist brand of asmita by redefining the ‘lower middle class’ as the aspirational ‘neo middle class’. These elements are critical to his much-touted ‘Gujarat Model’, which resulted in tremendous electoral success and catapulted him into national politics (see, Jaffrelot, 2013). 10 By the late 2000s, Modi had established himself as a messiah for Gujarat’s urban middle classes saving them from internal (read Muslims) and external (radical Islamic terrorists) enemies as a Hindu Hriday Samrat, while carving a unique space for middle classes and elites in the state’s developmental journey as a Vikas Purush (development man). The logic of caste dynamics, however, was ably built into this well-studied subject of Modi’s experiments with Gujarat’s political economy, thought of as an exercise to overcome caste–community calculations by nurturing an urban, middle-class vote-bank.
First, Modi relied on a coterie of loyalist ministers, a ‘super cabinet’ of some kind, for political decisions and governance who mainly came from upper caste and Patel background. His super cabinet, at multiple time points, included Amit Shah (Bania/Jain), Anandi Patel (Patel), Ashok Bhatt (Brahmin), Bhupendrasinh Chudasama (Rajput), Saurabh Patel (Patel), and Vaju Vala (Karadiya–Rajput). Modi used this strategy, along with his dependence on bureaucrats, to centralize power in his hands. Accordingly, he downsized the state’s cabinet to 10 or fewer individuals after the 2002 election. The number of MoS was also lower than that in the 1990s.
Second, Patel ministers from urban areas and from northern Gujarat, namely Anandi Patel, Nitin Patel, and Saurabh Patel, cemented their role as the ‘elites within elites’. In Modi’s cabinets, Patels continued to enjoy three places (30%) and handled ministries such as education, food distribution, revenue, road and building, and water supply. They were over-represented in Modi’s MoS, too, where they obtained four–five spots managing significant portfolios. The power of the Patel community increased over time: when Vaju Vala—the sole OBC heavyweight minister—became Gujarat assembly’s speaker in 2012, Nitin Patel took charge of the finance ministry.
The consolidation of Patel power came at some cost for upper castes, particularly Brahmins, who had three spots in Modi’s first two cabinets but only one position afterwards. Upper castes did control influential departments; for example, initially, Brahmins and Rajputs were entrusted with urban development, agriculture, dairy, panchayat, law and judiciary ministries. Amit Shah (a Bania–Jain), although an MoS, managed all internal security-related ministries. Brahmins became a non-entity in the cabinet after 2012: the last Brahmin in Gujarat’s cabinet was Jaynarayan Vyas from Siddhpur, who has lost two consecutive state elections. Ashok Bhatt was the last influential Brahmin minister in Gujarat who enjoyed direct access to Modi. Among MoS, the upper caste bloc’s representation fluctuated sharply from seven ministers after the 2007 election to two–three spots after 2012. The strength of upper castes (barring Rajputs) in Vidhan Sabha somewhat sunk in Modi’s time to 16–17 MLAs after 2002 and 2007 election vis-à-vis over 20 MLAs in the 1990s (Sanghavi, 2010, p. 210). More recently, Brahmins have been confined to the role of Gujarat assembly’s speaker as in the case of the incumbent speaker, Rajendra Trivedi.
Third, Modi partly transformed OBCs from rank-and-file workers, or ‘foot-soldiers’, to important decision-makers by improving their numerical score in ministries. However, the recruitment of OBCs as ministers demonstrated a superficial sharing of power as they handled not so powerful portfolios, were kept in MoS (and not in the cabinet), and their numbers in Modi’s ministries increased only near election season. In Modi’s tenure, there were one or two OBC cabinet ministers (excluding Modi, an OBC), who mostly came from lower OBC background such as Ahir, Karadiya–Rajput, Kshatriya–Thakore. In 2005, Modi set a precedent by ensuring that half of the MoS would be made up of OBCs. But OBC leaders handled not very appealing ministries—food, agriculture, fisheries, dairy, panchayat, OBC and Adivasi welfare, etc.—as the ones controlled by upper castes and Patels such as finance, home, energy, petrochemicals, and industries. The tally of OBCs in MoS varied from time to time, subject to electoral cycles: OBCs had seven positions in 2007–2012 MoS but only three places after the 2012 election. In November 2013, a few months before the 2014 general election, three more OBCs were sworn in as MoS.
Cabinet Ministers in Gujarat Government (Caste & Religion, 1990–2020)
Though Modi inducted lower OBCs in his ministries and initiated some welfarist schemes through the Gujarat Thakore and Koli Development Board, Anjana Chaudhary (also known as Anjana Patel or Anjana Desai)—a prosperous OBC jati from northern Gujarat—handled prestigious co-operative institutes such as Dudhsagar dairy. Indeed, Congress remained the first preference of OBC leaders in Gujarat who formed 39–43 per cent of the main opposition party after the 2002 and 2007 elections (Desai & Shah, 2009, p. 198). The share of OBCs in BJP’s legislative body, in this period, hovered around 25–30 per cent, about 5 per cent lower than their proportion in Vidhan Sabha (Desai & Shah, 2009, pp. 196 and 199). Moreover, BJP had initiated the process of recruiting OBCs way before Modi’s chief ministership: as early as the mid-1980s, BJP had floated a forum for Kshatriyas to counter the Congress supportive Kshatriya Sabha (Shah, 1994b). After the 1998 election, Keshubhai Patel’s new government had appointed 11 OBC ministers, cumulatively in the cabinet and MoS, two more than his previous government.
Minister of States in Gujarat Government (Caste & Religion, 1990–2020)
Fourth, Modi, to put it straight, did not ‘reward’ the ‘foot-soldiers’ of Hindu nationalism (other than OBCs), namely Adivasis and Dalits, despite their crucial role in the 2002 pogrom, including sufferings in terms of going to jail. 11 Modi’s ministries minimally involved Dalits and Adivasis who occupied non-important portfolios such as social justice and forest.
Finally, the marginalization of Gujarati Muslims, internal enemies in the ideological framework of Hindu nationalism, aggravated during Modi’s time. Gujarat BJP, under Modi, did not canvass a single Muslim candidate in state and national elections; all Muslim MLAs during his tenure belonged to Congress. 12 Though large-scale ethnic violence against Gujarati Muslims plateaued in 2002, the heightened atmosphere of fear among Muslims accelerated the movement of ordinary and elite Muslims alike to urban peripheries with poor public infrastructure such as Ahmedabad’s Juhapura, India’s largest ghetto of Muslims (Laliwala et al., Forthcoming). The ghettoization of Muslims, in fact, has a legal backing: it is almost impossible for a Muslim in urban Gujarat to buy or sell properties from Hindus due to the Disturbed Areas Act (1991)—a law that has been made more stringent after July 2019.
To sum up, Modi as Gujarat’s CM heralded an elitist brand of social engineering, which bolstered the political clout of Patels (and a few upper castes) from an urban background and some rural communities like Rajputs. He only superficially accommodated OBCs, in the main, to invalidate caste pressure from below while reserving influential executive and political offices for (mostly) urban-dominant castes. Dalits and Adivasis, on the other hand, were altogether ignored. And Muslims were made invisible from much of the Gujarati public sphere.
Class Within Caste
In May 2014, Modi became India’s Prime Minister by promising to replicate the Gujarat model nationally. In Gujarat, BJP won all 26 parliamentary seats. Modi included only one minister from Gujarat, Haribhai Chaudhary (Anjana Chaudhary), as an MoS in the union government. 13 After his departure from the state, Gujarat BJP trusted urban elites among Patels and upper castes with positions of power with greater enthusiasm. Anandi Patel, Modi’s confidante with over 15 years of ministerial experience, was appointed CM. She continued the tradition of having a small-sized cabinet and MoS in which all influential portfolios were earmarked for upper caste and Patel politicians. Like Modi, she retained ministries such as home, industries, revenue, ports, information broadcasting, Narmada, and urban development with herself.
In 2015, BJP faced a rural backlash as agriculture-dependent Patels—one of the most resolute supporters of BJP—canvassed for their inclusion in the OBC list. This pro-reservation movement, by a community with an anti-reservation mindset as seen in the 1980s, quintessentially captures Gujarat’s rural distress, a consequence of promoting unbridled capitalism and urbanism; for example, in terms of rural poverty (Tendulkar methodology), Gujarat’s ranking slipped from the 5th position out of 17 large states in 1993–1994 to the 9th rank by 2011–2012 (Planning Commission of India, 2014). Along with poverty, daily wage rates in rural Gujarat have frozen (Laliwala, 2019). The rural distress particularly hurts Patels as their educational mobility—an essential tool to leave agriculture and migrate to cities or abroad—is significantly impaired vis-à-vis OBCs and Dalits (Jaffrelot & Kalaiyarasan, Forthcoming). More importantly, the Patel agitation demonstrated the futility of treating the community as a collective: rural Patels, particularly in Saurashtra where Narmada’s water is yet to reach 14 , have lost out even as urban Patels with white-collar jobs and connections with the Gujarati diaspora in the USA and UK continue to strengthen their economic and political standing. Tilche and Simpson’s (2018) ethnographic study in rural parts of central Gujarat confirms this intra-caste asymmetry, visible especially in the marriage market. They note that the ‘hierarchy [within Patels] once ordered by land and agricultural adroitness has been replaced by a league of nations and graded shades of white collars’ (p. 1534).
The farmer agitation was building for long at the behest of Lalji Patel, a senior figure of Bharat Kisan Sangh (BKS; RSS’ peasant union). As the movement transformed itself into a Patel campaign for OBC reservation, Hardik Patel, then just 22 years old, emerged as its leader in 2015 (and later joined Congress). In August 2015, lakhs of Patels gathered in Ahmedabad as a show of strength, culminating into clashes with police, which claimed lives of a dozen protestors. To pacify Patels, in May 2016, Gujarat government introduced a 10 per cent quota for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWSs) among the ‘unreserved’ castes, including Patels, in public jobs and education—3 years before Modi government did the same nationally. A few months later, Modi inducted three more faces from Gujarat in union MoS, of which two were Patels from Saurashtra, namely Mansukh Mandaviya and Parshottam Rupala.
About a year after the Patel agitation, in July 2016, a video of upper castes flogging four Dalits in public view in Gir Somnath’s Una town went viral. The vigilantes accused Dalit victims of killing a cow; in fact, they were skinning a dead cow’s carcass to earn income. Soon, Dalits across the state protested, demanding land for landless Dalits, and some even left their traditional occupation of manual scavenging and cow skinning. The demand by Dalits for respect, led by Jignesh Mevani (a journalist who turned to legal activism), in some sense, signalled their socio-economic advancement as they are more educated than OBCs and employed in salaried jobs in greater numbers than even Patels (Jaffrelot & Kalaiyarasan, Forthcoming, pp. 130 and 132).
In just 2 years of Modi’s national rise, BJP faced two social uprisings in Gujarat posing an immediate threat to its electoral fortunes in the 2017 election: agri-dependent Patels rebelled against their falling income and influence while Dalits clamoured for land and dignity. In August 2016, as Dalits under Mevani planned a yatra from Ahmedabad to Una town, Anandi Patel announced her resignation as Gujarat’s CM. In her place, a relatively unknown Bania–Jain leader, Vijay Rupani, a loyalist of Amit Shah, the then national president of BJP, was installed as CM. Modi–Shah handpicked Rupani’s ministers, bearing in mind BJP’s electoral interests and the task of reassuring dominant castes, especially Patels. Rupani’s cabinet of nine ministers, in turn, consisted of three Patels (33%), two OBCs (22%), and one member each from Rajput, Dalit, and Adivasi blocs. Patels occupied 6 (40%) of 15 MoS seats.
In the 2017 election, BJP’s tally came down to double digits as it secured 99 seats (a first after the 1990 poll), whereas Congress and its allies won 83 seats by highlighting the issue of socio-economic disparities and unemployment. During the election campaign, BJP relied on Modi’s personality cult and Hindu nationalism’s core feature—the demonization of Muslims by often reminding Gujarati Hindus of curfews, riots, and terror attacks before the party’s rule. Even Congress was forced to recognize the power of Hindutva: Rahul Gandhi, the chief campaigner of Congress in 2017, toured numerous Hindu religious places in Gujarat but avoided Islamic religious sites. Indeed, BJP’s win, even with a downward trend, pointed to the resilience of Hindu nationalism in Gujarat’s society.
The 2017 election underlined BJP’s strength (or its vulnerability as one may read it): in times of crisis, it hangs on to its core vote-bank cultivated by Modi—urban middle classes. BJP was no match in urban Gujarat: BJP won 46 of 56 assemblies with at least 50 per cent urbanization, where its vote-share lead over Congress sometimes exceeded 20 per cent (see Table 5). In rural and semi-rural areas, BJP faced the angst of voters who voted for Congress: Sixty-seven of Congress’ 77 MLAs came from 126 seats with at least 50 per cent rural areas in a constituency. Of these 126 seats, Congress obtained a 1 per cent lead in vote-share against BJP in 91 constituencies with 75 per cent and more rurality. The rise of Congress was most visible in the 35 seats where rural areas constituted 50–75 per cent of the constituency. Here, Congress’ vote-share jumped by 5 per cent to around 44 per cent in 2017, halving BJP’s vote-share lead vis-à-vis the 2012 election.
The realignment of Gujarat’s polity on a rural–urban continuum, as shown in section two of the article, overlaps with the caste background of politicians. BJP depends on upper castes and Patels from urban Gujarat and rural Rajputs, while Congress draws its strength from Patels and OBCs from rural parts apart from Adivasis; for example, in Rupani’s new cabinet after the 2017 election, Patels occupied five spots (50%), and Rajputs had one minister. Out of the five Patel ministers, the more important ones—Deputy CM Nitin Patel, Kaushik Patel, Saurabh Patel—come from northern-central Gujarat and do not hold a stake in rural politics.
The rural–urban differentiation is most stark in the case of Patels: out of 52 Patel-dominated seats, BJP won 28 and Congress captured 23 in the 2017 election, a loss of 8 seats for BJP and improvement of 9 constituencies for Congress vis-à-vis the 2012 election (Times of India, 2017). However, Congress gained almost all Patel-dominated assembly segments in the rural parts of Saurashtra–Kutch (Firstpost, 2017). In the Patel-OBC–concentrated districts of Amreli, Gir Somnath, and Morbi in Saurashtra, Congress won all 12 seats, up from 6 in 2012; 10 of these 12 seats contain at least 50 per cent rural areas. Overall, in the Saurashtra–Kutch sub-region, Congress nearly doubled its tally to 30 seats from 16 seats in the previous election. In the rest of Gujarat (minus Saurashtra–Kutch), BJP repeated its 2012 performance, obtaining 78 seats in 2017, just 2 less than 2012. It also won the urban constituencies on the peripheries of Ahmedabad and Surat where the Patel ‘neo-middle class’ lives such as Amraiwadi, Kamrej, Thakkarbapa Nagar, Varachha Road. Consequently, BJP’s Patel legislative force is formed of mostly urban MLAs while Patel MLAs in Congress are rural (Jaffrelot & Laliwala, 2020).
Upper caste (excluding Rajputs) BJP MLAs are overwhelmingly urban: 10 of 14 such lawmakers came from constituencies with a minimum of 50 per cent urbanization. Among Rajputs, all but one of BJP’s 9 legislators belonged to rural seats. On SC- and ST-reserved constituencies, both parties broadly replicated the 2012 numbers: Congress and allies won 17 ST- and 6 SC-reserved seats, whereas BJP garnered 9 ST- and 7 SC-reserved assembly segments.
Vote Share of Parties in Gujarat’s Assembly Elections According to Urban Population of Constituencies
The top regional leadership of both parties further demonstrates these trends. BJP has a long list of Patel and upper caste leaders: Amit Shah, Anandi Patel, Bhikhu Dalsaniya (Patel), Bhupendrasinh Chudasama (Rajput), Jayesh Radadiya (Patel), Nitin Patel, Purshottam Rupala, to name a few. During Modi’s chief ministership, R. C. Faldu, a Patel from Saurashtra, served as Gujarat BJP’s president. In 2016, Vijay Rupani replaced Faldu in this position. After Rupani became Gujarat’s CM, Jitu Vaghani, a Patel from Bhavnagar (Saurashtra), occupied the party’s top post until recently. Even in 2017, BJP went to polls on the back of these castes: Patels held almost half (13) of the top 27 party positions, with a party president and 2 vice-presidents, among others. 15 Brahmins and Rajputs were allotted five seats at party’s top rungs, whereas OBCs were represented in six places, and the remaining three posts went to Adivasis and Dalits. Like its legislative body, most of the important dominant caste party office holders—Bharat Pandya, I. K. Jadeja, Jitu Vaghani, Kaushik Patel, Surendra Patel—have an urban presence. In July 2020, BJP appointed C. R. Patil as its Gujarat chief, owing less to caste equations (as he comes from the numerically insignificant Patil community) and more to his closeness to Modi and organizational experience.
Among OBCs, BJP has only one home-grown leader who has risen from below, Shankar Chaudhary, apart from Narendra Modi (who continued to underplay his OBC identity until 2013–2014). Earlier, Gujarat BJP had two prominent OBC politicians: Kashiram Rana (died in 2012) and Vaju Vala (Karnataka’s current governor). More recently, BJP has fallen back on defections and turncoats to reach out to OBCs validating the superficiality of recruiting OBCs; for example, before the 2019 general election, Kunvarji Bavaliya (Koli) and Jawahar Chavda (Ahir) shifted sides from Congress to BJP and were inducted in Rupani's cabinet. In late 2019, two Kshatriya–Thakor Congress MLAs, Alpesh Thakor—who rose to prominence through his Gujarat-Kshatriya Thakor Sena in northern Gujarat—and his associate Dhavalsinh Rana, joined BJP but lost assembly bypolls.
Congress, on the other hand, draws from a range of OBC and Patel leaders focused on agrarian issues, and a few Adivasi, Muslim, and upper caste faces: Ahmed Patel (Bharuchi Patel Muslim), Amit Chavda (current state president, a Kshatriya–Thakor), Arjun Modhwadia (Mer), Bharatsinh Solanki (Kshatriya–Thakor), Jagdish Thakor (Kshatriya–Thakor), Shaktisinh Gohil (Rajput), Siddharth Patel (Patel), Tushar Chaudhary (Adivasi), Madhusudan Mistry (OBC), and Paresh Dhanani (leader of the opposition, a Patel).
The rural–urban reconfiguration of Gujarat’s politics reflects a new form of division among Gujarat’s political elites, especially Patels. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Patels (both rural and urban) had access to power centres and could also install one of their own, Keshubhai Patel, as the state’s CM. As Modi’s rule advanced, rural Patels were neglected, while Patels and some upper castes from urban Gujarat gained further power, in turn, creating an elite class within the already privileged castes. Indeed, BJP came to prefer a certain kind of Patel politician—one who was associated with industrial interests, particularly in northern-central Gujarat. In Saurashtra, for instance, even though BJP has several Patel leaders, they are not as powerful as Keshubhai Patel or Gordhan Zadhaphia (who has been reinstated in BJP but kept away from Gujarat). The 2012 election showed early symptoms of this phenomenon when Keshubhai Patel—who stood by big farmers in the 1990s—launched the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) to oppose Modi’s economic policies and represent farmers, small and big alike. GPP won two seats in Saurashtra in the 2012 election, but it was merged with BJP two years later.
Indeed, Hardik Patel’s—who is reinventing himself as a kisan-cum-youth leader—recent elevation as the working president of Gujarat Congress corroborates my claim about shifts in the party allegiance of agrarian Patels. 16 Clearly, Congress is nurturing a new coalition of Patels and lower OBCs, especially Kshatriya–Thakors, with rural-kisan interests who now hold the top three Congress posts, namely Amit Chavda, Hardik Patel, and Paresh Dhanani.
Conclusion: Inching Towards De-democratization
Bharatiya Janata Party successfully captured Gujarat’s political power by tapping into upper caste and more importantly Patel anxieties over the political democratization and socio-economic mobility of OBC and Dalits. In the 1980s, angered by the rise of the marginalized communities in Gujarat Congress, these dominant castes increasingly rallied behind Sangh Parivar’s anti-quota and anti-Muslim politics. Though anti-Congress sentiments among Patels and Rajputs somewhat preceded this period: in the 1960s, they supported the Swatantra party—a group of economic right-wingers with Hindu nationalist tendencies—when Brahmin–Bania politicians controlled Gujarat Congress. (Some of them later shifted to Congress (O) and Janata Party). However, from the late 1970s, dominant castes shunned their aversion to each other to form BJP. In turn, this new political outfit solidified dominant caste opposition to Congress politics, that was construed as benefitting Hindu OBCs, Dalits, and Muslims at their cost. Unsurprisingly, as I have illustrated in this article, these elite castes are over-represented in the top rungs of Gujarat BJP and its state governments.
Nevertheless, Sangh Parivar’s project envisages solidarity among various Hindu castes to confront Christians and Muslims; towards this aim, Hindu nationalists need the support of OBCs, Dalits, and Adivasis (or Vanvasis in Sangh’s parlance). As conventional ideas of Sangh Parivar and Gujarat BJP suggest, OBCs, Dalits, and Adivasis were co-opted in the party organization's lower ranks and deployed in episodes of Hindu–Muslim violence throughout the 1980s, early 1990s, and 2002, and anti-Christian clashes in the late 1990s.
Although the above explanation sufficiently describes how BJP became the ruling party in Gujarat, it is not enough to appreciate BJP’s sustained dominance. The party’s hegemonic consolidation occurred under Modi who initiated long-term structural transformations in the state’s politics.
First, Modi, himself an OBC, strengthened the process, embarked upon in the mid-1990s, of enlisting lower OBCs (Ahirs, Kshatriya–Thakores, and Mers) as legislators, parliamentarians, and in some instances, as ministers in BJP. This exercise marked the partial transformation of OBCs from foot-soldiers to political elites—a privilege not afforded to Adivasis and Dalits. However, Modi’s (or BJP’s) attempt at sharing more power with OBCs, is at best, a case of superficial democratization, as high-priority ministerial portfolios and crucial party roles remained in the hands of Patels and a few upper castes such as Bania–Jains, Rajputs (in that order).
Modi did not inaugurate, if not facilitate, any brand of representative politics as he approached the OBC question in a gradualist and piecemeal manner to defuse oppositional interest groups by recognizing—and not stimulating—upward mobility among a few numerically significant OBC jatis. This political strategy vis-à-vis OBCs is remarkably at odds with the approach of Congress in the early-to-mid 1980s. At that time, Congress’ KHAM experiment endeavoured to radical restructure society’s power dynamics, building upon a new stream of political consciousness among OBC Kshatriyas, to dismantle centuries-old entitlements of upper castes.
Second, as is well known, Modi—the populist harbinger of hyper-modernity that he is—inserted developmentalism to the ethnocultural project of Hindu nationalism to attract urban middle classes. By merging these two seemingly opposite concepts, he expanded the definition of Gujarati asmita, which no longer remained limited to just Gujarati cultural identity but also included the state’s developmental journey. This brand of social engineering, in theory, tried to go beyond caste calculations by introducing a middle-class and elite-oriented urbanism as well as a pro-business model of development. In the process of ‘overcoming’ caste through an inventive language of class politics, Modi’s regime concentrated more power in the hands of mostly urban elites within Patels and upper castes. Consequently, Gujarati politics has become enmeshed in a new kind of caste–class and rural–urban dynamics—as it became evident in the 2017 state election, especially in the case of Patels—whereby the urban rich among Patels and Banias along with some rural Rajputs call the shots.
The cornering of power and resources by (mostly) urban members of dominant castes makes the established vocabulary surrounding caste politics partly irrelevant, particularly in the post-economic liberalization environment. The re-assertion of Congress and regional parties (like Jannayak Janata Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Nationalist Congress Party, Shiv Sena) in places as varied as Chhatisgarh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan evidences the increasing importance of economic concerns facing farmers and poor in Indian politics. However, to describe this still emerging phenomenon as some kind of insignificance of caste would be a futile exercise: in Gujarat, for instance, only the urban elites amongst Patels and upper castes have monopolized top political offices. OBCs and Dalits have not been able to do so despite some signs of prosperity in their fold. In fact, Dalit self-assertion has only exacerbated caste discrimination and atrocities in the society (see, Chauhan, 2019). Even the pan-caste- peasant crisis has not fostered ‘class solidarity’ in rural Gujarat, including between Patels and Dalits, two communities which have been at the forefront of social movements recently. 17
The above-mentioned two elements of Modi’s political experiments in Gujarat relate to representative facets of democracy. Finally, I wish to somewhat elaborate on an aspect I have, so far, only hinted at—the systematic weakening of democratic norms under Modi in Gujarat.
Emboldened by his populist credibility, Modi centralized power and undermined democratic accountability, for example, by downsizing the cabinet and relying on loyalist ministers and bureaucrats. 18 He exploited people’s blind faith in him, enabling the de-democratization of Gujarat’s politics, in tandem to the state’s superficial democratization. In his initial years as Gujarat's CM, Modi often flouted established procedures to wipe out leadership challenges within BJP—Gordhan Zadaphia, Haren Pandya (who was murdered in 2003), Keshubhai Patel, Sanjay Joshi—and without. His discomfort with democratic decision-making was manifest also in the deterioration of the functioning of Vidhan Sabha. From 2007 to 2012, Gujarat assembly met for around 31 days each year—lower than the number of days for which Kerala and Tamil Nadu’s assemblies were convened; almost all bills were passed on the day they were introduced (Anil, 2014). The assembly proceedings are not broadcast on television, whereas until recently, legislative debates were not available online. In his time, the Lokayukta (public ombudsman) post was vacant for 7–8 years, and Right to Information (RTI) activists faced institutional challenges and were often assaulted by ‘strongmen’ to the point of murder (as in the case of Amit Jethwa, for instance). Indeed, Gujarat witnessed a ‘democratic backsliding’ during Modi’s chief ministership, though the state fared worse than most Indian states, including neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, before his time on parameters of electoral democracy (Harbers et al., 2019).
Modi’s prolonged rule in Gujarat not only hid structural inequities, especially in the state’s political economy, from the public eye but also deepened them via the subversion of vital democratic values and his urbanist developmental model. After he became India’s PM, these fault lines have haunted his successors in the form of Patel agitation, Dalit movement, government employees’ protest for a salary hike, inter alia, precisely as his political inheritors do not possess his political deftness and public appeal to ‘convince’ masses. However, to compensate for the lack of their charisma, Modi’s successors have not only benefitted from the steady decay in democratic practices but also furthered the rot in the system; for example, at least since 2016, no protests in Ahmedabad and many other cities of Gujarat are allowed without a police permission. 19 Even some minimalist procedural expectations of democracy, such as a free and fair election, have been compromised: in May 2020, Gujarat High Court (HC) invalidated the victory of Bhupendrasinh Chudasama—incumbent cabinet minister of education, law and justice, legislative affairs, civil aviation, etc.—in the 2017 election due to electoral malpractices; the Supreme Court has stayed Gujarat HC’s order. This ongoing breakdown of democratic order and practices—that deserves a full-length theoretical contemplation of its own—is perhaps Modi’s most fundamental contribution to Gujarat’s politics.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received financial support from the Social Profile of India’s National and Provincial Elected Representatives (SPINPER;