Gujarat see-saws between reconciliation and prejudice
IT IS HARD TO MISS THE BJP’S BID TO USE THE TEMPLE ISSUE AND MANI SHANKAR AIYAR’S LOWBROW JIBE AT THE PM TO POLARISE VOTERS
its command and Modi’s larger than life aura. Mostly muted and sporadically loud, resentment is as much against the PM. But his drawing power is recognised by his detractors who, in a first of sorts in over two decades, aren’t hard to come by. Some among them feel however that Hardik is as much of a crowd puller without the support of a party machinery.
A tussle between the ‘established and the emerging leader’ will be on display soon in the region that goes to polls on December 14. What should worry the BJP is the tangible alienation. The prevailing mood having its genesis in police action against the Patel youth, turns upside down the conventional wisdom of public memory being short.
A proof of it is the BJP’s foremost Patidar face and deputy CM Nitin Patel sweating it out in the party’s bastion of Mehsana. The dilemma of the very affable former state minister, Jay Narayan Vyas is no different at nearby Sidhpur in Patan. They’re both banking on Modi to turn the tide. It is hard to miss the BJP’s bid to use the Temple issue and Mani Shankar Aiyar’s low-brow jibe at the PM to polarise voters on religious and caste lines. But the strategy isn’t paying dividends. Not yet.
One reason for that, perhaps, is the inclusive appeal of the antiBJP trident: Hardik, Jignesh Mewani and Alpesh Thakor.
Hardik is a campaigner, not a contestant. But the other two are candidates in Banaskantha (Vadgam) and Patan (Radhanpur) respectively.
It must be said to the BJP’s credit that the Jignesh-Alpesh duo have been restricted to their constituencies through richlyfunded independents and a word of mouth-media campaign. Jignesh for instance is facing a former area MLA’s son contesting as an Independent. Rightly or wrongly, he’s also shown to have links with a Muslim outfit under NIA probe.
But Jignesh is a good orator. He’s finding traction with the Vadgam electorate whom he exhorts to elect him to “send a message” to Vadnagar, the PM’s birth-place in Mehsana. His game plan is to capitalise on anti-incumbency in an area where caste is a major factor and development is lacking: “It has been divide and rule for 22 year. My (tailoring machine) poll symbol will join the threads to stitch up the divide.”
His independent challenge has the official support of the Congress that holds six out of Banaskantha’s nine seats.
But he’s denied help on the ground by local party leaders. By his own admission, the other challenge he has, is of overturning the BJP’s all-out effort to present him as ‘anti-Hindu’ in a constituency with a sizeable Muslim population. The poll-time machinations in Vadgam are a microcosm of the strategy the BJP wants to secure across Gujarat: use the Muslim card, the temple issue and Aiyar’s comment to whip up an identity backlash encompassing Dalits and the OBCs. Hardik knows it. So does the Congress.
The Patidar rebel is better placed to negate the the BJP offensive in the manner the Yadavs and Kurmis could in Bihar elections. Rising above his identity, he conjures up a class coalition. At public meetings he names specifically the Kshatriyas, Kolis, Dalits, Muslims and Patidaars as stakeholders in an equitable system based on communal amity. That throws up the inevitable question: will life issues make Gujarat break free of its past in the see-saw between reconciliation and prejudice?