Hardik Patel, the BJP's tormentor-in-chief

Despite five consecutive defeats, the Congress has proved to be a tenacious opponent for BJP in Gujarat elections. In the 2012 assembly elections, the votes difference between the BJP and Congress was just over 10% per cent. The BJP's 115 (out of 182) seat victory was a close contest in many constituencies, with margin less than 5,000 votes. The pre-election sentiment in Gujarat is clear. The BJP is in a weaker position. 

• Not only Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is making an impact, but the Congress's axis with Hardik, Alpesh and Jignesh makes it a formidable adversary. A 6% vote swing could prove catastrophic for the BJP.
• A 24-year-old Hardik Patel, has become the BJP's biggest electoral headache. Alpesh Thakor, 40, a leader from the OBC Kshatriya-Thakor community and  Jignesh Mevani, 36, a Dalit leader from Una are political influencers within their communities. The trio has teamed up with the Congress ensuring a straight fight against the BJP and BJP is in deep trouble.

Hardik Patel (24)

• Hardik's battle for reservation began when his sister was denied a scholarship in 2015 and a friend of hers with lower marks managed under the OBC quota. But that was merely a trigger. A skilful orator since his schooldays, Hardik Patel only honed his skills while he was in college and is now putting them to good use.
• Political ambition is what drives Hardik. In his first rally seeking reservation for Patels in July 2015 in Visnagar in north Gujarat his supporters allegedly beat up the local Patel MLA. On Aug 25, he addressed a massive Patel rally for reservation at Ahmedabad, asking then CM Anandiben Patel to come to the venue and take a representation from him. A savage police lathicharge by 4,000 policemen sent the Patels across large parts of Gujarat on a rampage, attacking police stations and uprooting railway lines. This provoked further police retaliation resulting in the death of 14 Patels.
• When other leaders need to have crowds 'organised' for their public meetings, Hardik's public rallies draw crowds of anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 in big meetings and 5,000-10,000 in small village meetings. His anti-BJP rhetoric has struck a chord among Patels, particularly the youth in the community. The core of his appeal is emotional-revenge for the death of the 14 Patels killed in police firing during the 2015 pro-reservation agitation. And who better to avenge the Patels than a leader jailed for 10 months and banished from Gujarat on charges of waging war against the nation?
• "Don't forget the atrocities committed on Patels by this government in 2015," Hardik repeats at each rally. "They killed 14 youths and didn't spare even mothers and sisters while thrashing us. The time to take revenge on the BJP for those atrocities has come."
• At a rally, he urges crowds to dispassionately vote against the BJP. "Even if my father or mother contests on a BJP ticket, your only response should be to defeat them. The BJP is so opportunistic that if Dawood joins their party, they will say the 1993 blast victims died of Chikungunya."
• A series of strategic mistakes by the BJP have fueled the rise of Hardik and turned him into a hero within his community. It did not punish the policemen who targeted the Patels in 2015. Instead, it slapped sedition charges on Hardik thinking he would break. But months of jail and banishment failed to crush his spirit. Then the BJP tried to slap police charges on him, leaked footage of his meetings with Rahul Gandhi, tried to buy out his colleagues like Varun Patel and Reshma Patel and then, finally, tried to take advantage of the sex CD, which Hardik alleges they themselves made. However, all this has only served to strengthen the halo around him and cement the lore of a 24-year-old David taking on the mighty Goliath.
• Since Feb 2016, Hardik has addressed 250 rallies, both big and small. There are farmers, youth and women in the gathering. But his core audience almost always comprises Patels. And that is what is giving the BJP sleepless nights. The Patel community was BJP's primary vote bank since 1985. Patels form less than 14% of Gujarat's population but are a political force that have a tendency to vote en bloc when they feel strongly about an issue.
• On Nov 18, 2017 when three 'sex' CDs allegedly involving Hardik Patel were being discussed on several TV channels, Hardik teared into BJP "I have lived as many years as the BJP has been in power in Gujarat? Instead of making a sex CD of a 24-year-old, unmarried boy, the BJP should make CDs to show people what it has done for Gujarat in these 22 years. Why farmers are in distress in the state and why there is joblessness though it has ruled Gujarat for two decades," he thundered, in chaste Gujarati.
• The crowd erupted. If the CDs were intended to paint Patel as a sex fiend, they seemed to have had the opposite effect; he's very much a local hero.
• At another roadside gathering, Hardik continues in the same vein. "The time has come to defeat the tanashahi (imperiousness) of the BJP. Using unethical means and misusing power to defeat political rivals reflect its arrogance. The more it resorts to unethical means, the more the people will react against it."
• It's difficult to believe the 24-year-old has become the BJP's biggest nightmare. Hardik displays a political maturity way beyond his years and his astuteness and ability to turn crisis into opportunity is something BJP is worried about. 
• When the sex CDs surfaced he called the BJP "sex CD experts" and went on to rebuke "That's their main weapon when it comes to putting down rivals. They think if they can't win in a straight contest they can win by intimidation. These CDs are morphed, but even if they weren't, does it justify what the BJP did?" Sensing that they had lost the battle, the BJP beat a hasty retreat, distancing itself from the CDs after an initial attempt to exploit the footage to pull down Hardik.
• Patel votes matter substantially in nearly 70 of Gujarat's 182 assembly seats and less significantly in two dozen seats. Worryingly for the BJP traditional rivals of the Patels, are not turning towards the BJP. 
• An independent psephologist, who has conducted two surveys on Gujarat, one in Aug and Oct 2017, says the BJP's vote lead over the Congress has registered a precipitous fall from 30% to 6% in three months.
• Hardik's mother chips in: "When he was in jail, he was offered a huge sum by the BJP to join the party's Yuva Morcha." The BJP denies the charge.
• Hardik has an electric connect with the crowds. Anyone who comes to his public meeting, can't leave till his speech ends - says a political analyst. The BJP has an edge in the election thanks to the PM Modi's charisma but still Hardik is "the BJP's tormentor-in-chief".
• Congress party's political fortunes might seem brighter than they were three months back thanks to the support of the three Young Turks and the new-found appeal of Rahul Gandhi and the efforts of party leaders. 
• Modi addressed rallies in Kutch, Saurashtra and Surat tearing into the Congress with his one-liners. "I will sell tea but not our nation," he thundered at a rally in Saurashtra. 
• In BJP, caste has for the first time in many years played a key role in the selection of candidates. And Patels have been the gainers in ticket distribution in both the parties. The BJP has given them 53 seats and the Congress 47, the highest by the party in many years. 
• The questionable implementation of the GST, the resultant job losses, has altered the situation. and none in Gujarat believe the BJP will get 150 seats. 
• Modi has prevailed upon BJP strategists, including Amit Shah, to project a softer image of the party before the people as he thinks that the defection politics and highhandedness it has practised against its rivals could cost them dear. 
• Modi is subtly hinting at the benefits of having the BJP in power in both Delhi and Gandhinagar. Vote for the BJP and the benefits to Gujarat will continue. But the impact on the electorate as yet is unclear.
• Meanwhile, as many as 40 central and state ministers have been deployed in the state to ensure the victory of the BJP. The BJP's posh party headquarters is buzzing with central ministers, MPs and office-bearers from across the country dropping in.
• Congress is projecting itself a pro-Hindu party, this time, and 9.67% Muslims in Gujarat stands ignored and are keeping their cards close to chest. Muslims have significant presence in at least 25 assembly constituencies. Muslims are divided and dummy candidates ensure that Muslim votes are divided. In the end, Muslims pushed to margins have to chose the party which causes least damage to them.

Winning elections is one thing and retaining power is another thing. Winning often depends on anti-incumbency and some funny vote catching issues rather than any larger issues, efforts for retaining power makes powerful people stoop to levels of indecency and loss of character. Today what we are seeing in Modi is the second one. Modi and BJP having failed to perform to the levels they projected themselves are running from pillar to post to retain power which rarely works. Politicians lying and abusing is rampant in India, but Prime Minister lying and abusing appears awkward. Even God can't save Modi & BJP in Gujarat elections from their misdeeds and blatant lies. December 18th is not far away.

Hindu Raj: Ambedkar’s warning

• Proponents of Hindu supremacy knew that democracy could be used to establish a Hindu Raj. They and their followers have sought to use the vote for ends of power using the Hindutva card.
• If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.… Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost - wrote B.R. Ambedkar in 1946. He was against majoritarianism, which in the Indian context meant unbridled rule of the majority community, the Hindus.
• Unfortunately for the minorities in India, Indian nationalism has developed a new doctrine which may be called the Divine Right of the Majority to rule the minorities according to the wishes of the majority. Any claim for the sharing of power by the minority is called communalism, while the monopolising of the whole power by the majority is called nationalism. Under these circumstances there is no way left but to have the rights of the Scheduled Castes embodied in the Constitution. 
• In the forties, even Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was sometimes accused of being soft on the Hindu Revanchists, who believe in and practised tit-for-tat in that turbulent and fateful period.
• Patel’s retort to BM Birla on announcement of Independence: “I also feel happy that the announcement of June 3, 1947 at least settles things one way or the other. There is no further uncertainty. I do not think it will be possible to consider Hindustan as a Hindu state with Hinduism as the state religion. We must not forget that there are other minorities whose protection is our primary responsibility. The state must exist for all, irrespective of caste or creed.”
• Ambedkar was perceptive. It is not necessary to declare India a Hindu state formally by amending the Constitution and making Hinduism the state religion. The same result can be achieved by administrative measures. The Supreme Court has held secularism to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution which cannot be discarded even by constitutional amendment.
• Ambedkar thought that the elaborate constitutional provisions on administration would work. He told the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, when he moved for the adoption of the Draft Constitution: “While everybody recognises the necessity of the diffusion of constitutional morality for the peaceful working of a democratic Constitution, there are two things interconnected with it which are not, unfortunately, generally recognised. One is that the form of administration has a close connection with the form of the Constitution. The form of the administration must be appropriate to and in the same sense as the form of the Constitution. The other is that it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution, without changing its form, by merely changing the form of the administration and to make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the Constitution. Can we presume such a diffusion of constitutional morality? Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic”.
• The leaders of the Congress sought to inculcate secularism right from the first Congress held at Bombay in 1885. S. Srinivasa Aiyangar, president of the 41st Congress in 1926, articulated the credo of secularism very ably. So did Vallabhbhai Patel in the presidential address to the 45th Congress at Karachi in 1931. Hindu-Muslim “unity can only come when the majority takes courage in both hands and is prepared to change places with the minority. That would be the highest wisdom.”
• But by then, forces that did not share the Congress’ ideology, did not participate in the freedom movement and were charged with revivalist hate had come to the fore.
• Nehru once remarked that Hindu communalism was the Indian version of fascism, and, in the case of the RSS, it is not difficult to perceive certain similarities. The leader principle, the stress on militarism, the doctrine of racial-cultural superiority, ultra-nationalism infused with religious idealism, the use of symbols of past greatness, the emphasis on national solidarity, the exclusion of religious or ethnic minorities from the nation-concept—all of these features of the RSS are highly reminiscent of fascist movements in Europe.
• With an RSS pracharak, Narendra Modi, known for his antipathy towards Muslims, as Prime Minister, and Yogi Adityanath chosen by him as Chief Minister of India’s largest State, Uttar Pradesh, we have crossed the threshold to a Hindu state. The BJP’s presidential candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, is “deeply rooted in the ideological stream of the RSS”. A brand new rubber stamp has been manufactured for the Rashtrapati Bhavan, 25 years after the last rubber stamp, R. Venkataraman.
• We now have a Prime Minister whose Hindutva puts Vajpayee’s Hindutva in the shade. Lynchings of Muslims has become common. So are cries for a Hindu state. Yogi Adityanath said on the Hindu Swaraj Diwas that no Indian should be hesitant about being proud of his or her Hindu identity.
• The drive will pick up speed. Modi made blatantly communal speeches during the Uttar Pradesh election campaign, as 65 former civil servants recalled in their open letter. He will do worse for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. He aims to claim that he has fulfilled the BJP’s triple demand. His Kashmir adventure had “solved” the problem. For a uniform civil code, no other Prime Minister has so relentlessly campaigned for a reform of Muslim law. As far as the Ram temple at Ayodhya is concerned, he will say: “have patience, I have crossed the threshold to a Hindu state in India. Can’t you see the dread on the faces of Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other minorities?

My View:
Democracy in its true spirit is rule by people. Among all models, the model of rule by majority is the most popular and probably the best. That doesn't mean that minorities can be thrashed out by majority. Rule of the law must prevail. This Hindutva philosophy will only lead to civil war, sooner or later. In a democracy, ruled by majority, it is the duty of majority to uphold the rights & dignity of minorities. Polarization of people on the lines of religion, caste or creed - is not democracy. It is only a distortion and perversion. In a society corrupted with religious extremism all constitutional provisions and laws of the land will not work properly and the country will be heading for anarchy. When constitution fails, it is mafia that rules and then nation will be heading for disintegration!

Chatur Baniya, de-legitimization of Mahatma

BJP President Amit Shah de-legitimizing Gandhi as 'Chatur Baniya'

• Jamnalal Bajaj once told Gandhi that he was a foolish Baniya, always maintaining the accounts. 
• Modi & BJP re-writing books and history to edit Jawaharlal Nehru out of public memory using social media spreading wonderfully inventive and salacious stories about him is an errant nonsense. 
• Now BJP & Modi are trying to bring Gandhi down in national imagination, cheapening him as a Baniya — all because they want to get at the Congress Party. 
• These chelas of  Sardar Patel are loudly claiming for pitting him against Jawaharlal Nehru, with all their wonderful fictionalized accounts of how Gandhi cheated Patel out of the Prime Ministership of free India. 
• But they still go to Rajghat every year. They try to imitate charkha-spinning. When it suits them, some of them go as far as observing a ‘fast’.
• Gandhi has been abused all his life and much more after his death. Gandhi had been a beneficiary of some of the choicest abuses from many quarters — the Tories, the Communists, all those Hindu Mahasabhaites, at times even Ambedkar was unsparing. But they all argued with Gandhi's ideas, questioned his actions and programmes, but nobody called him a Baniya, leave alone a chatur Baniya. 
• What BJP is doing is to de-legitimise all those institutions, ideas, ideologies, individuals who were associated with the freedom struggle, nationalist movement and transformation of India into a modern state. 
• Gandhi's desire that the Congress should convert itself into a non-political Lok Seva Sangh, for reconstruction of India,was one of the most misunderstood and cited out of context. Ironically, Congress Party didn’t dissolve, its social and political programmes geared for electoral politics, static government and it has for the six decades come to symbolize the establishment to the Indian people.
• Gandhi knew very well that after the British left, the Congressmen were not going to retire to the jungle and leave the political field open for the Hindu Mahasabhaites or the Communists to take over the arena. The Congressmen were not so unworldly as to leave the field for all those forces which had opposed freedom struggle, sided with the colonial authorities. Congressmen's Political life cannot simply be brought to an end! Congress now has to govern, not to oppose government. So it will have to function in a new way, staying within politics.
• BJP are getting good at twisting and distorting. Their insinuation that somehow a power-hungry Congress disregarded Gandhi's ideas about the Lok Seva Sangh is totally bogus. Gandhi knew about organisation, control, order, and power; never in his wildest of dreams he could countenance a situation where the most formidable organisation — the Indian National Congress — would have vacated the commanding heights of Indian politics and left the field for the Savarkarites and Mahasabhaites to take over the store. 
• This cherry-picking from history to denigrate national leaders and inject poison in people’s minds cannot be the basis of any national progress.
• BJP is firing shots at Nehru and now at Gandhi. Watch out, they may reduce Sardar Patel to just a Patidar. BJP may be good at counting votes and notes, but Congress cannot keep quiet in the face of the creeping institutionalized shoddiness in India’s political life and public space. 
• Finally the quality and content of our nationalism cannot be dictated by a demagogue.

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, 

to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind ...  George Orwell 

Nehru becomes PM of independent India in 1947

Rajagopalchari summed it up pretty well:
'When the independence of India was coming close upon us and Gandhiji was the silent master of our affairs, he had come to the decision that Jawaharlal, who among the Congress leaders was the most familiar with foreign affairs, should be the Prime Minister of India, although he knew Vallabhbhai Patel would be the best administrator among them all. Undoubtedly it would have been better if Nehru had been asked to be the Foreign Minister and Patel made the Prime Minister. I too fell into the error of believing that Jawaharlal was the more enlightened person of the two. A myth had grown about Patel that he would be harsh towards Muslims. This was a wrong notion but it was the prevailing prejudice.'

The simple reason as to why Nehru became PM was that he was, by far, the Congress’ most popular politician, after Gandhi. Right from the 1937 provincial elections, Nehru was the party’s star campaigner, enthralling crowds with his Hindustani oratory. Patel had an iron grip on the Congress party itself but he was many miles behind Nehru as a popular leader. The Sardar himself conceded this: at a massively attended Congress rally in Mumbai, he told American journalist Vincent Sheean, “They come for Jawahar, not for me."

Gandhiji had made his choice known in the favour of Jawaharlal Nehru on 20th April, 1946. This was not the first time that Gandhiji spoke about his choice of Nehru; even before the process of election was set in motion. He had been speaking about it from the last several years.

Maulana Azad expressed his desire for the re-election. This has been accepted by Azad himself, in his autobiography “ ... a general demand arose that I should be selected President for another term…. There was a general feeling in Congress that since I had conducted the negotiations till now, I should be charged with the task of bringing them to a successful close and implementing them.” Maulana’s move agonized his close friend and colleague Jawaharlal who had his own expectations. It upset Gandhiji and on 20.04.1946 he wrote to Maulana Azad, who had already been President of Congress for the last six years: “Please go through the enclosed cuttings.… I have not spoken to anyone of my opinion. When one or two Working Committee members asked me, I said that it would not be right for the same President to continue…. If you are of the same opinion, it may be proper for you to issue a statement about the cuttings [the news item Gandhiji had sent him] and say that you have no intention to become the President again…. In today’s circumstances I would, if asked, prefer Jawaharlal. I have many reasons for this. Why go into them?”

Despite Gandhiji’s open support for Jawaharlal Nehru, 12 out of 15 Pradesh Congress Committees, nominated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. No Pradesh Congress Committee proposed the name of Jawaharlal Nehru.  J.B Kripalani took the lead in finding the proposers and seconders for Nehru’s candidacy, in deference to Gandhi’s wishes, during the Working Committee meeting on 29.04.1946 in New Delhi. Kripalani succeeded in getting a few Working Committee members and local members of AICC to propose Nehru’s name for the post. However once Nehru was formally proposed by a few Working Committee members, efforts began to persuade Sardar Patel to withdraw his nomination in favour of Jawaharlal. Patel sought Gandhiji’s advice who in turn asked him to do so and “Vallabhbhai did so at once.” Only after Gandhiji was informed that “Jawaharlal will not take the second place” he asked Patel to withdraw. Dr. Rajendra Prasad lamented that Gandhiji “had once again sacrificed his trusted lieutenant for the sake of the ‘glamorous Nehru’. 

PCCs who voted for Sardar to elect him as the Congress President, not the Prime Minister of India. Pradesh Congress Committees don’t elect Presidents, delegates of the All India Congress Committee do. Moreover, Nehru was not the Congress President when India gained independence, JB Kripalani was elected Congress President for the crucial years around Indian independence in 1947. 

Gandhi was always impressed with the modern outlook of Nehru. In comparison Sardar Patel was a little orthodox and Gandhi thought India needed a person who was modern in his approach. But more than anything, Gandhi always knew that Sardar Patel and would never defy him. Gandhi wanted both Nehru and Patel to provide leadership to the country. Gandhi feared delay in India’s independence, if Nehru was not given the chance to become Prime Minister. Sardar Patel was close to 71 and Nehru, then 56 only. Despite all this Patel accepted to take a second position because of two reasons: firstly, for Patel post or position was immaterial; and secondly, Nehru was keen that “either he would take the number one spot in the Government or stay out. Patel shrank from precipitating such an outcome, which would bitterly divide India.” Eminent historian Rajmohan Gandhi, who is the author of the most authoritative biography of Patel, says that had it been left to the people of India, Jawaharlal Nehru would’ve been elected as the Prime Minister.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the most powerful man of his time. The Mahatma was the most respected, Jawaharlal Nehru the most loved and Subhas Bose the most longed-for. But in terms of the iron control he exercised over the largest political apparatus in the country and the grip he had on political currents and cross-currents in virtually every province in India, the power wielded by Patel had no match. Gandhi loved Jawaharlal, trusted Prasad, admired Rajaji, esteemed Azad. But Patel, he leaned on and laughed with. Patel regarded Gandhi as his mentor, his leader.

Nehru and Patel were in fact not rivals but comrades and co-workers. They worked closely together in the Congress from the 1920s to 1947; and even more closely together thereafter, as prime minister and deputy prime minister in the first government of free India. Independence and Partition, Nehru and Patel worked shoulder-to-shoulder in building a united and democratic nation. Nehru and Patel shared a deep love of their country, an abiding commitment to its unity, and, not least, a sense that they owed it to the memory of their common Master, Mahatma Gandhi, to work together, and to work ferociously hard too. AS Iyengar remarked: “Both are untiring workers, allowing themselves practically no rest, either physical or mental.” Patel represented Indian nationalism's Hindu face, Nehru India's secular and also global face. Their partnership, necessary and fruitful for the country, was a solemn commitment that each made to the other.

Last but not the least, we must not forget why Gandhi had chosen Jawaharlal over Patel: appeal among all communities and groups, international stature, moderation, age, health etc. Patel himself wrote in 1949 that it was fitting that Nehru came to head the country after Independence:

'The sincerity of his convictions, the breadth of his outlook, the clarity of his vision, and the purity of his emotions – all these have brought to him the homage of millions in this country and outside.It was, therefore, in the fitness of things that in the twilight preceding the dawn of independence he should have been our leading light, and that when India was faced with crisis after crisis, following the achievement of our freedom, he should have been the upholder of our faith and the leader of our legions. No one knows better than myself how much he has labored for his country in the last years of our difficult existence. I have seen him age quickly during that period, on account of the worries of the high office that he holds and the tremendous responsibilities that he wields'.

In 1951, First General Elections were held in India, Indian National Congress won the election, winning 364 out of 489 seats, i.e.75%. Hence being the ruling party it was totally an internal matter for the Congress for so as to whom to choose the Prime Minister. Nehru being on height of his popularity, it was a unanimous vote in the Congress to make him the Prime Minister.

Choosing the First Prime Minister of India

My View:
Only Nehru-Gandhi baiters, especially with RSS inclinations, argue that Patel would have made better PM than Nehru for independent India. The Nehru baiters have known very less about Nehru & Patel and nothing about Gandhi while doing so. The truth remains that Nehru was the most popular Congress leader among the people of India, next only to Gandhi, during 1930's & 40's, the fact which was conceeded by Patel himself. PCC's can only file nominations for Congress President position to be elected by AICC delegates but not the position of Prime Minister. Nehru's goodwill with Mountbatten's had its effect on smooth transition of power at the time of independence. Despite certain short comings, Nehru could lay solid foundation for building institutions for modern India, project its secular & non-aligned approach in the bi-polar world etc. Subsequently corruption, social degradation etc pulling down India's progress can't be blamed on Nehru.