The Kshatriya war on Rupala exposes ancient faultlines of Saurashtra

A careless comment from Parshottam Rupala, the Union minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, is threatening to put the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a spot in Gujarat, a state it has held for nearly three decades. Rupala’s transgression came at a Valmiki Samaj event last month, where he said that while the British oppressed and tortured all Indians, members of the princely states bowed to them, fraternised with them, and even married their daughters to the imperialists. He went on to glorify the Dalit community — of which the Valmikis are a part — for not giving in to them. “Dalits were tortured the most, but they did not yield,” Rupala, who is the BJP candidate from Rajkot, said.

While Rupala’s depiction of history may (or may not) have endeared him to his target audience for the day, it certainly has the Kshatriya community — of which the erstwhile royals are a part — up in arms. The women of the community have come out in huge numbers claiming Rupala’s comment is an assault on their integrity.

As their ire mounted against Rupala and the BJP, the Union minister apologised profusely, saying, “I never meant what I said. It is a matter of great regret that such words came out of my mouth.” But the self-flagellation did little to appease the Kshatriyas, who termed the apology a poll ploy and are unwilling to settle for anything less than the withdrawal of Rupala’s candidature. If Rupala’s candidature is not withdrawn, the community will field 400 candidates for the Rajkot seat and work towards defeating the BJP candidate.

Interestingly, the protesters aren’t claiming that they will vote for the Congress. One reason is that even three weeks after Rupala’s comment, the Congress had not announced its candidate. This week, it announced its former Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani, a Leuva Patidar leader, as its contender. Notably, Dhanani had refused to contest the elections earlier due to personal reasons, but the controversy appears to have changed his mind. Both Rupala and Dhanani are natives of the neighbouring Amreli seat.

KHAM and faultlines

What does not help matters is the fact that Rupala is a Kadva Patel. A subcaste of the Patidars, the community has had a chequered history with the Kshatriyas in Saurashtra, dating back to the Congress politics of the '80s. The KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslims) equation that late Congress leader and former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki devised in the state pointedly excluded Patidars from the power quartet, pitting the two communities against each other.

Murders of community members on both sides in the past only deepened that enmity. The rivalry was somewhat subsumed by the BJP pushing a wider Hindu identity but never really disappeared. While the BJP is now working hard to ensure old faultlines do not re-emerge, the recent fracas has found it walking a tightrope ahead of the election.

The protests that started with Saurashtra have spread to every seat in the state. Leaders of the community have been leveraging social media and poster warfare to reach out to their brethren across the country to make Rupala’s alleged slight to the Rajputs a national issue. There have been fasts, threats of Jauhar (self-immolation), and large public rallies mobilising support and public statements.

After another failed meeting between Kshatriya leaders of the BJP and a committee of the community leaders of Rajputs (a subset of the Kshatriyas) on April 3, Rajput Coordination Committee convenor Karansinh Chavda said, “We will not compromise. We have no problem with the BJP, our only demand is to remove Rupala as a candidate. They have to decide whether 22 crore Rajputs living in the country, including 75 lakh in Gujarat, are dearer or Rupala.”

The community, he went on to add, will field multiple independent candidates on the Rajkot seat and campaign against the BJP on all 26 seats, with Rajput communities from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh joining in, if their demand is not met.

The BJP has dug in its heels that Rupala will not be replaced. Withdrawing a senior leader like the Union minister will mean a loss of face, which the party wants to avoid at all costs. It will also risk upsetting the Patidars who constitute 14-16 per cent of the Gujarat electorate, impacting up to seven Lok Sabha seats in the state. Kshatriya votes, by contrast, are 5-6 per cent and do not decisively impact any of the 26 seats. Gujarat goes to the polls on May 7 and Rupala has continued his campaign amid the raging controversy.

Make or break?

Another reason is the protests the BJP faces from its members on half a dozen other seats against the candidates fielded. If Rupala is replaced, a hard-achieved consensus on the other seats will erupt.

What everyone is asking, though, is how far the protest will impact the BJP’s prospects if the community follows through on its threat and fields independent candidates against the saffron party. Most political observers dismiss it as a storm in a teacup. “The BJP will be impacted only if the community sides with the Congress. Fielding independent candidates will achieve nothing substantial,” says a political historian on condition of anonymity. A BJP leader in Saurashtra claims the controversy may also consolidate the Patidar vote in Rupala’s favour. “A section that may not have voted for Rupala would now be inclined to,” he says.

While Kshatriya leaders of the Congress have disparaged Rupala’s remarks, terming them an irreversible insult to the community whose ancestors have laid down their lives for the country, Congress’s Rajkot candidate Dhanani has urged the Patidar community not to react to the protests against Rupala, as the Kshatriya protests are not against the Patidars, but the minister in particular. Interestingly, despite the temptation, Congress has stayed away from reactivating the caste faultlines of the ’80s as the party believes the solution for it is garnering Patidar support, rather than alienating them. Patidars constitute 12-14 per cent of the population and impact up to 48 of 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly.

It’s an open war. And against a side known for its martial antecedents.