The Patel-Kshatriya rivalry in Gujarat is a socio-cultural phenomenon that encapsulates the caste dynamics, power structure and economics. Economics, of these, is a major aspect.
Senior Union minister and BJP leader Parshottam Rupala’s “anti-Kshatriya” remark has re-ignited the caste fault lines that the Bharatiya Janata Party had successfully swept under the mat for nearly three decades.
In fact, the BJP’s rise to power points to a beautifully syncretic Patel-Kshatriya stitch. The Keshubhai Patel-Shankersinh Vaghela
combo was one such Patel-Kshatriya team that scripted BJP’s first victory in Gujarat in 1995. Of course, it was the over 18% Patel voter base that played a vital role.
Rupala is a Kadva Patel from Saurashtra and he is the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Rajkot. He was nominated in place of sitting MP Mohan Kundaria, also a Kadva Patel. Rupala’s remark on Kshatriya behaviour has festered fresh wounds in the already highly polarised state. But to the benefit of the BJP, since both the parties involved are Hindus, an amicable temporary solution can be expected.
Unlike most BJP Union Ministers, Rupala is an easily accessible person. A school principal-turned-politician, the 70-year-old was one of the first few entrants to the BJP in Gujarat in the eighties. A Union minister in the Modi government handling fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, Rupala has unwittingly reignited a traditional caste fault line in Gujarat.
On March 2, Rupala, while attending bhajan function in the Dalit community in Rajkot, remarked that while Dalits had remained steadfast and committed, the Rajputs/Kshatriyas entered into what he called was “roti-beti vyavhar” – breaking bread and giving daughters in marriage – with the “vidharmis (heretics)“.
Parshottam Rupala apologises. Photo: By arrangement
In Gujarat politics, it is often said that a political party cannot accord equal importance to Patels and Kshatriyas both at the same time. This ‘PaKsha’ acronym (taking the first letters of Patel and Kshatriya in Hindi) is important in decoding Gujarat politics.
When Other Backward Class leader Madhavsinh Solanki was the chief minister of Gujarat, he and his party leaders – notably among them Jhinabhai Darji – conceived the ‘KHAM’ theory which saw Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims swarm into the Congress fold. Patels, according to late Gujarat political analyst Nagindas Sanghvi felt humiliated especially when Solanki reportedly made a disparaging comment about how their government would reduce Patels to a lower economic strata. “People who buy oil in tins will be reduced to buying oil in small glass medicine bottles,” he is supposed to have said.
Gujarat had several princely kingdoms in pre-Independence India. Out of the 548 odd big states, at least 128 were in Gujarat not counting the numerous small princely states which commanded fewer gun salutes. Bhavnagar state in Kathiawar was the first to agree to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s scheme of integration of princely states to the Indian Union. That was a period when Kshatriyas and Patels (led by Sardar Patel) shared a relationship of absolute trust. Several Maharajahs and their family members even contested the first election of independent India on Congress tickets and won handsomely.
However, the birth of the Swatantra Party in 1959 gradually saw the rich landlords and Kshatriyas in Gujarat gravitating to this party. Capitalism, free markets and the idea of abolition of ‘license raj’ struck a chord with all the big and small 250+ states and jaagirs in Gujarat.
In fact, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s words, Swatantra Party was made up of “the middle ages of lords, castles and zamindars“. Indira Gandhi’s decision of abolition of privy purses in 1971 gave a further temporary impetus to the Swatantra Party in Gujarat with most Kshatriyas and the erstwhile states under them supporting it. The Patels or Paatidars then who became Congress supporters were mostly uneducated tillers and farm labourers.
Interestingly, after the Emergency, and after Indira Gandhi’s final phase of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act came into existence, most Patels in Gujarat joined the Congress. Their other option was the Jana Sangh, backed by Hindu nationalists whose present iteration is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Indira Gandhi’s decision of converting land tillers into land owners benefited the Patels in large numbers and they started idolising the Congress. This phase that began in the early seventies concluded after a decade and half following the phenomenal rise of the OBC in Gujarat politics. Madhavsinh Solanki was an OBC Kshatriya.
Kshatriya protests in Gujarat. Photo: By arrangement.
It was only in the mid eighties that Patels or Paatidars started getting disillusioned with the Congress. The Patels of Gujarat did not enjoy any government job reservations. They had started making extraordinary economic progress because of sky rocketing land prices and had become an increasingly united community. Making up 18% of Gujarat’s population – much more than the Kshatriyas – they were also aiming for political power. “We had money, numbers, unity, but no power. This was possible only through politics”, a senior BJP leader and minister in Gujarat told this author.
With the KHAM theory of Congress excluding them openly, their only option was the newly formed BJP. If we take a cursory glance at the list of the first BJP MPs and MLAs from Gujarat, they are mostly Patels. In fact, it was a Patel – A.K. Patel – who won the first BJP Lok Sabha election in 1984. There were only two BJP MPs elected in India then. Patel from Mahesana in Gujarat and Chandupatla Janga Reddy from Hanamkonda, then in Andhra Pradesh.
The BJP was smart enough then. They did not want to let go of the Kshatriyas completely so they had Keshubhai Patel, their electoral face and Shankersinh Vaghela, their organisational face. Both of them, with Vaghela as the Gujarat BJP president, toiled for decades to bring the BJP into limelight. In its first assembly election in 1980 in Gujarat, BJP won nine seats. Out of these five were Patel MLAs – Amritlal Patel, Gangaram Patel, Keshubhai Patel, Nathbhai Patel and Arvindbhai Patel. There was not a single Kshatriya leader elected from the BJP, which used to be called the ‘Bharatiya Patel Party.’
The KHAM theory undoubtedly brought rich dividends to Congress and the party won 149 assembly seats in 1985, their highest tally ever. But it also witnessed the Patel exodus to the BJP. In the late 80s in Gujarat, Keshubhai Patel, Pravin Togadiya and A.K. Patel were big names who attracted Patels in big numbers to the new BJP.
The Patel allure for the BJP continued till the mid-2016s, when young Patels began a stir demanding job reservation for Patels. Helmed by Hardik Patel, this resulted in the best electoral victory for the Congress in 2017 in 27 years. It got 77 of the 182 assembly seats in Gujarat. However, the BJP was smart and most Patel leaders including chieft Hardik Patel were absorbed by the BJP eventually. This contributed to BJP winning 156 assembly seats in 2022. The Congress tally from 77 in 2017 dropped to 17 in 2022. By 2024, it has further dropped to 13 with an exodus to the BJP. One of these three MLAs happen to be C.J. Chavda, a known real estate businessman and a Kshatriya.
But all the while, majority Kshatriyas nursed the feeling of being neglected by the BJP. Though the BJP did accommodate Kshatriya leaders from across the state, they felt that they were not given adequate importance in the Gujarat ministry. “We only got portfolios like education and health. The BJP has never trusted us with portfolios like finance or home,” says a senior Kshatriya leader associated with the BJP. According to him, while BJP has had five chief ministers ever since they got a majority in 1995 and while three of them have been Patels including Keshubhai Patel, Anandiben Patel and Bhupendra Patel, they have never had a Kshatriya chief minister.
Bhupendra Patel with CR Paatil. Photo: By arrangement.
When questioned as to how the Congress too never had one, the BJP leader said though Madhavsinh was an OBC, he was a Kshatriya and that the Congress supported the Shankarsinh Vaghela government when he was the chief minister. The Congress also made him a Union minister and the State Congress president after he merged his outfit with the Congress. “In case of BJP, we had a five-time MP and a state BJP chief Rajendrasinh Rana who has been continuously snubbed and was never made a Union minister. Worse, he was also dropped as a Lok Sabha candidate”. The only exception to the ‘rule’ of a Kshatriya getting home department in Gujarat was Pradipsinh Jadeja but he too was a Minister for State and did not have an independent charge, the BJP leader said.
Compare this with the Congress and there are innumerable instances of Kshatriyas getting important positions within the party and the government when they were in power or out of power. Digvijaysinh Jhala of Surendranagar district and Daulatsinh Jadeja became cabinet ministers during Congress governments. Harishin Mahida, Amarsinh Vaghela, Shankersinh Vaghela, Manoharsinh Jadeja, Shankersinh Vaghela Kiritsinh Gohil, Bhadrasinh Vaja and several other Kshatriyas got enviable positions within the Congress party governments in Gujarat. To make matters worse for the BJP, the current Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil is also a Rajya Sabha MP and a Kshatriya from Saurashtra. He is the only Congress MP from Gujarat. In 2019, BJP bagged all 26 seats in the Lok Sabha elections and it is hoping to repeat this feat.
Shaktisinh Gohil. Photo: By arrangement.
Rupala’s statement in the heat of the Lok Sabha elections has opened up a pandora’s box. We need not dismiss the BJP’s fire-fighting skills. PM Modi is extremely sensitive about his home state Gujarat and his lieutenant Union home minister Amit Shah has already got involved in the issue. This already indicates that it is now beyond the capabilities of the Gujarat state BJP unit to douse the anti-Kshatriya sentiment.
It must be emphasised that Gujarat Kshatriyas are not at all anti-Modi or Shah and their intervention would definitely earn positive results for the BJP.
Rupala’s comments will indisputably spoil the BJP’s lofty ambitions of getting an over 5,00,000 victory margin on all Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat but to say that it would affect the electoral result stupendously would be an exaggeration or to put it crudely, a Congress fantasy. Nevertheless, it must be emphasised that considering the background of the Patel-Kshatriya feud, this widened chasm can be repaired but not restored to its full glory in the near future.
