Did new-look Rahul peak too soon in Gujarat?

Last Friday, on his third tour of poll-bound Gujarat, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi attracted crowds at many places, where he interacted with them, slammedthe ruling BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah, all in a bid to keep his party’s new-found spirits going till mid-December.

But the enthusiasm generated by his three-day Navsarjan Yatra s — initially across the Saurashtra region, then Central Gujarat and now South Gujarat — seemed to be frittering away as the crowds began to thin out. At Valsad, for instance, his road-show turned out to be, what the BJP quickly dubbed, a “flop show”, as few turned up to see the Nehru-Gandhi scion in a region his grandfather Feroze Jehangir Ghandy’s family hailed from.

More than Rahul’s words, however, it is his attempts at an image makeover that has attracted attention, apparently in a bid to deflect the expected barbs from Modi and Shah about his being a “Prince”. Only the previous day, he had alighted from a service aircraft at Vadodara airport with a black bag hanging on his shoulder, in much the way a common flier would. He allowed a young woman to click a selfie at his automobile and a priest to apply sandalwood paste on his forehead at a public meeting. He had Kathiawadi dinner at a roadside eatery and tea at local tea stalls. He mingled with students, farmers, professionals and others at different places, in corner meetings.

But elsewhere, Rahul has his hands full — even worse, he has them tied in knots. His attempts at trying to woo youth leaders Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakore has only yielded the latter.

Hardik and Jignesh, on the other hand, have kept the Congress guessing about their next move. On Thursday, Jignesh announced that would not join any political party. Just the previous day, Hardik, still hobnobbing with the Congress, also met NCP leader Praful Patel, along with party MLA Jayant Patel who reportedly voted for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election in August!

As election fever grips Gujarat, these youth leaders’ stands are expected to change. Hardik has asked the Congress to clarify its stand on reservation and the Grand Old Party appears confused on what to do.

For, while Hardik is demanding reservation for Patidars under the OBC quota, Alpesh is opposing this very demand — and the Congress is trying to keep them both in good humour and directed against the BJP. The 23-year-old Hardik, who has been making all the right noises for the Congress, has said that his support for the party would be contingent on what it decides on the quota issue, and by Tuesday.

Jignesh’s grievance is not reservation but against the atrocities against Dalits perpetrated before and after the Una incident of 2016. The Dalits accuse the Darbar communities — Kshatriyas, Rajputs and Thakores — for these crimes in areas that still harbour feudal tendencies. And Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki hails from the Darbar community! No wonder then, that Jignesh has spurned the Congress offer to join.

In 1985, Solanki’s father, former Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, had cobbled together a Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim (KHAM) coalition, which won the Congress an unprecedented 149 Assembly seats in the 182-member Assembly.

But the last 22 years have seen the BJP stitching together a counter-consolidation and emerging as the ‘natural’ party of governance in Gujarat, leaving the Congress far behind. Only in 2015 did this consolidation begin to crack, with Hardik leading the Patidars, while also triggering the Alpesh tornado. The Una incident brought to the fore Jignesh.

Only the elections in December will prove if the Congress successfully revives and expands its erstwhile KHAM base by keeping the rivals — Patidars, Dalits and Thakores — under the same umbrella.

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