Mevani, among the party’s working presidents in Gujarat, however, admits that not everyone on the dais was amused with Rahul’s remarks. There were some glum faces and uneasy chuckles too. ThePrint caught up with one such leader outside Rajiv Bhawan, the Congress headquarters in the heart of Ahmedabad, Friday.
The five-storey building, which faces a statue of Rajiv Gandhi, is abuzz as preparations are on in full swing for a session of the All Indian Congress Committee (AICC), scheduled for 9 April. The last AICC session in Gujarat was held 64 years ago, in 1961, in Bhavnagar.
“His (Rahul’s) team members could have looked up history. Why judge people through such a narrow prism? Who decides who is a true Congress member and who is not?” said the leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “That is exactly how we ended up handing over the legacy of our very own Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to the BJP and RSS.”
LIVE: Addressing Congress Workers | Ahmedabad, Gujarat https://t.co/H5Laio3EVy
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 8, 2025
Indeed, in Gujarat, the forces of history and the personalities that shaped the story of the Congress—its dominance and eventual fade-out—bear out, more than anywhere else, the question: who can be considered an ideal Congressperson and who is a Trojan horse?
Was Patel, who publicly called RSS workers “patriots” and said they needed to be won over by love, an ideal Congressman? Where would one place K.M. Munshi, whose books sparked the longing for a glorious Hindu past in the Gujarati consciousness? Was Gulzarilal Nanda, who wanted inputs from Hindu monks to become part of economic development policies, a misfit in the Congress? What about Morarji Desai, whose views were dipped in conservatism?
Bruce Desmond Graham, the author of ‘Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics’ (1990), which documents the prehistory of the BJP, had classified these leaders as “Hindu traditionalists”. After all, the long gestation of Hindutva politics in Gujarat was under the watch of these towering leaders of the Congress that won its last assembly election in Gujarat in 1985.
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Gandhi’s ambivalent legacy
In his book, ‘Gujarat under Modi’ (2024), political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot suggests that it is the Congress that laid the ground for the Hindutva-seeped impregnable fortress of the BJP that the state has come to represent over the last three decades.
“The Congress itself shared some important dimensions of the Sangh Parivar’s programme. That was largely due to the ambivalent legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in a state whose political culture he had largely shaped,” writes Jaffrelot.
“On the one hand, Gandhi promoted social reform and labour organisation; on the other, his discourse was conducive to Hindu traditionalist attitudes…his ambiguity was probably the root cause of the Janus-faced aspect of Congress in Gujarat, the conservative wing being epitomised by Sardar Patel, K.M. Munshi, Gulzarilal Nanda and Morarji Desai and the progressive one by Indulal Yagnik.”
Author journalist Salil Tripathi also observes in his 2025 book, ‘The Gujaratis,’ that “within the Congress, its Gujarati politicians were often the most conservative”.
Jaffrelot too underlines that the state’s political culture was dominated by a variant of Gandhi’s message that was “more conservative and even more traditionalist than in most other states of India”.
But, at the same time, it was under these leaders that the Congress strengthened its political grip over the state. “The way Rahul Gandhi views the world, they could have been described as collaborators with the RSS and thrown out. Is politics so black and white?” a senior Gujarat Congress leader said.
Speaking to ThePrint at his neatly furnished apartment in Ahmedabad, Ghanshyam Shah, one of India’s foremost social scientists, also questioned Rahul’s prescription for revitalising the Congress, which last ran a full majority government in Gujarat between 1985 and 1990. Between 1990 and 1998, on two occasions, the Congress backed regional parties to keep the BJP at bay.
“The question that must be asked is why are leaders leaving (the Congress)? Ground up commitment requires the leadership to provide ideological clarity. That clarity has gone long missing in the Congress,” Shah, a retired professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University and former director of Centre for Social Studies, Surat, said. “It is not surprising that people are leaving considering the party has not been in power in over three decades.”
‘Cradle of identity politics’
While the party had a radical, progressive face in Indulal Yagnik, it was the conservative faction represented by the likes of Patel and Munshi that influenced the party’s political line. Patel, for instance, looked the other way as leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha, most of whom were a right wing pressure group within the Congress, instigated communal riots, according to Shah, co-author of the anthology ‘Gujarat, Cradle, and Harbinger of Identity Politics’ (2022).
In his book, Jaffrelot recounts a speech made by Patel at Lucknow in January, 1948, where he said, “In the Congress, those who are in power feel that by the virtue of authority they will be able to crush the RSS. You cannot crush an organisation by using the danda. The danda is meant for thieves and dacoits. They are patriots who love their country. Only their trend of thought is diverted. They are to be won over by Congressmen, by love.”
To be sure, Patel, as the country’s first home minister, also imposed a ban on RSS after Gandhi’s assassination.
Another Congressman, Munshi, who would go on to become one of the founding members of the right-wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad, played a significant role in implanting in the Gujarati consciousness the idea of a glorious Hindu past through his books including Gujarat No Nath (The Lord of Gujarat), Somanatha: The Shrine Eternal, and Gujaratni Asmita, among others. It is this Gujarati ‘asmita,’ or Gujarati pride, that Modi would invoke decades later to stir emotions during elections.
“When Modi is criticised, he adeptly turns the tables, saying it is not a criticism of Modi, but of Gujarati asmita. As chief minister, Modi weaponised the idea, when he equated criticism—of his handling of the pogrom of 2002—as the undermining of Gujarat and its identity and pride. He promoted a Gaurav Yatra a few months later,” Tripathi writes in The Gujaratis.
“Modi made Gujaratis feel that the denial of visa from the European Union and United States was an insult of Gujaratis and Gujarat: not a stricture against Modi,” he added.
In the words of cultural historian Tridip Suhrud, Munshi’s thoughts and ideas sought to create a cultural identity “based on the imaginary notions of past glory, signified by the word ‘asmita’”.
A seismic shift in Gujarat’s politics
Former PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s passing in 1964—by which time Patel was long dead and Munshi was in the Hindu right camp—triggered a spat between the old guard of the party and the loyalists of his daughter, Indira Gandhi. She turned to the left-oriented faction represented by Yagnik and his protégé such as Jinabhai Darji and Madhavsinh Solanki after the party split in 1969.
In 1975, after the fall of Congress government of Chimanbhai Patel, owing to mass protests against corruption, the anti-Indira Congress (O) and the Janata Party had brief stints in office in Gujarat—marking the end of the Congress’s initial post-independence phase of dominance in the state.
But it was the Congress’s second coming in the state, under the Indira faction, which heralded a seismic shift in Gujarat’s politics. Shah pointed out that the social composition of the Congress underwent a shift after the party’s split. It upheld a social justice agenda to carve out a space among the poor and the backward caste constituency as opposed to championing the causes of the upper caste and baniyas under the previous leadership.
Led by Jinabhai Darji, an OBC leader from south Gujarat’s tribal belt, the party leaders such as Solanki sought to make an alliance of kshatriyas (Thakores and Kolis), ‘Harijans’ (Dalits), adivasis and Muslims (KHAM).
The experiment yielded political success—the Congress won power in 1980 and 1985—but at the huge cost of alienating the upper and dominant castes, helping the BJP to take power in the 1990s, “partly because many Congress leaders were not prepared to embark fully on a social justice agenda”, Jaffrelot argues in his book.
Similarly, Shah says that the Congress’s cynical approach on KHAM did irreparable damage to the party and is largely responsible for its long years in the wilderness.
“The KHAM alliance remained limited to distribution of tickets. There were no efforts to treat it as a social justice project for these diverse communities to forge coalitions at the grassroots,” Shah said.
Upon taking office, Solanki’s administration announced a reservation of 10 percent for social and economically backward classes in technical education, triggering a fierce upper caste backlash. However, Solanki doubled down on the issue and promised to expand the reservation pie for OBCs that resulted in the Congress winning 149 seats in the 182-member Gujarat assembly in 1985—a record which was broken by the BJP in 2022.
Around the same time, Darji was sidelined by Solanki, said Shah. “On one hand, he sidelined Darji, who originally conceptualised KHAM, and on the other he expanded reservation,” added Shah. Soon, the situation spiralled out of control.
As caste riots had Gujarat aflame, Solanki was forced to step down soon after he took office in 1985, making way for Amarsinh Chaudhary, who rolled back the reservation promise.
It was too little, too late. Academic Ornit Shani’s 2007 book Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism on the 1985 caste riots concludes that the “aftermath of the Ahmedabad riots of 1985 marked the beginning of the political shift in Gujarat from Congress rule to the rise of the BJP, which further strengthened the upper castes’ position”.
That is when the BJP-RSS also launched its ‘Samajik Samrasta’ (social harmony) campaign aimed at the assimilation of disparate Hindu castes and Dalits under one broad umbrella, explained Shah. The caste riots also gradually took a communal turn, according to Jaffrelot, as the “objective was to repair the damage caused to Hindu unity in the course of the anti-reservationist campaign by transforming Muslims into scapegoats for the upper castes as well as Dalits and OBCs”.
This went hand in hand with a shrill campaign to project the Congress as a platform that shields the Muslim underworld, featuring gangsters such as Abdul Latif, who was killed in 1997. As Jaffrelot argues: “In Gujarat, the Sangh Parivar benefited till the 1970s from the strength of Hindu traditionalist leaders (in the Congress as well as in the Swatantra) and, from the 1980s, from Congress’s inability to sustain progressive policies. But its rise to power in the 1990s also reflected decades of grassroots activism.”
‘Very little difference between BJP & Congress’
The Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress high command’s decision to disregard the opinion of the state unit and back Chimanbhai Patel, who was a widely unpopular figure by then, as the CM in 1990 to weaken the V.P. Singh government at the Centre also further eroded the party’s support structure, Shah said.
Eventually, the BJP won the state for the first time in 1995, making way for Keshubhai Patel as the CM. Infighting within the BJP led to Patel getting unseated by Shankersinh Vaghela, who floated a regional outfit and took the support of the Congress to become CM. But, in 1998, the BJP returned to power and has ruled the state uninterruptedly till date.
During this period, very little differentiated the Congress from the BJP, as both followed the policy of pivoting their politics around the Patidar, OBC, Dalit and Adivasis, while completely sidestepping the Muslims. The last Muslim to get elected to the Lok Sabha from Gujarat was the Congress’s Ahmed Patel in 1984. Currently, there is only one Muslim MLA— Congress’s Imran Khedawala—in the Gujarat assembly.
The 2002 post-Godhra riots only deepened the social and political cleavages in the state.
“You will not find any Congress leader in Gujarat talking about the riots. Instead, a man like Vaghela with strong RSS-BJP roots joined the Congress fold,” Shah said.
A senior Congress leader admitted: “If you look at the caste composition during election ticket distribution, you will find very little difference between the BJP and the Congress. In such a situation, it’s no surprise that the BJP, which has established itself as the saviour of the Hindus, steals a march over us.”
Yet, from 2002 to 2012, the Congress held on to a vote share of 38-39 percent even as the BJP under Modi as CM registered successive victories. In fact, the BJP was staring at a crisis in 2000-01 when Keshubhai was CM as the party received a drubbing in the 2000 local body polls, which was followed by a massive earthquake in January 2021 that caused heavy destruction across the state.
It was in these circumstances that Modi took over as CM from Keshubhai in October 2001. “Modi knew that it would be a challenging task to arrest the BJP’s declining trend before the state elections that were due to be held in February 2003…That the BJP was under such pressure probably explains why communal polarisation appeared particularly relevant to its pursuit of power in 2002,” according to Jaffrelot.
The 2003 state polls were advanced to December 2002 when the BJP registered a resounding victory with 127 seats. In 2007 and 2012, the BJP won 117 and 115 seats, respectively.
A fight of guns against swords
Then came the 2017 elections, held against the backdrop of two unprecedented political mobilisations—the Patidar quota movement and Dalit protests against the Una flogging—which gave the BJP a scare.
The Congress tapped into the Patidar anxiety and Dalit grievances and improved its performance, winning 77 seats, its highest tally since 1985. But it stopped far short of a majority, with the BJP scraping past the halfway mark, bagging 99 seats.
Hardik Patel, the young face of the Patidar agitation demanding reservations, joined the Congress in 2019, served as its working president till 2022, only to switch over to the BJP the same year. Last month, the BJP state government withdrew nine cases, including sedition, related to the Patidar agitation against Hardik and his associates.
On the other hand, Mevani, who spearheaded the Dalit protests and won from Vadgam as a Congress-backed independent candidate in 2017, joined the party in 2021. Last year, the state government moved an appeal at the Gujarat High Court against Mevani’s acquittal by a sessions court in a case related to the Dalit movement.
“Look, a fight where one side is holding swords while the other is firing guns is not fair. The way the corporate forces, capitalist classes align with RSS and BJP, it’s become very difficult for Congress,” said Mevani pointing to the contrast in the approach of the state government towards him and Hardik. “The entire state machinery helps the BJP. Police officers, collectors, SDMs support the BJP workers and candidates. That’s also something we are struggling with.”
In the 2022 assembly polls, which the party “did not fight properly” as Rahul admitted in July 2024 during his first visit to the state as Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition, the Congress scored a historic low of 17 seats, while the BJP won 156 seats. The Congress’s campaign was deemed so insipid that it helped the AAP find some toehold in the state, with a vote share of nearly 13 percent and five seats.
Even the local body polls held in February this year were swept by the BJP. Shaktisinh Gohil, the president of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, told ThePrint that it was primarily due to the commanding presence of BJP MLAs across the state. “The situation was not such in the local body polls held after the 2017 assembly election as we had more MLAs then,” Gohil said.
Gohil also added that the party will have to walk the talk after Rahul’s assertions about the need to identify and remove “BJP agents” from the Congress. “It will have to be executed for such statements to bear fruit,” Gohil said.
Asked if he has a roadmap to fight BJP in Gujarat, Gohil, who was elected to Rajya Sabha in 2020 after serving four terms as an MLA, including one stint as the Leader of Opposition, between 2007-12, said, “I won elections defeating the machinations of the administration under Modi. I have a trick or two up my sleeve and hope to use it to guide others as well.”
At the 8 March party workers conclave in Ahmedabad, Rahul mentioned how power has eluded the Congress in Gujarat over the last three decades. A fresh beginning, he said, can only happen if the Congress acknowledges that it has “failed to meet the expectations of Gujarat and has been unable to offer it a new path”.
While his diagnosis of what’s ailing the Congress in the state aligns with that of Rahul, Mevani feels the party needs to recast its politics to be more in step with the aspirations of the growing urban populace in the thrall of “neo-liberal ethos”.
“We should have a plan for the urban pockets such as Surat, Vadodara , Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Porbandar, Jamnagar. Neo-liberal ethos have taken over. The state is highly urbanised. We need to figure out the aspirations of these classes. For instance, what does Gen Z think? We need to offer a vision to entrepreneurs, business class, because mercantile ethos also dominates the minds of Gujarat society,” said Mevani.
“It may be overemphasised. But it’s there. It may require a different blueprint. The jargon of caste census, and social justice for SC, ST, OBC minorities may have less impact in urban pockets.”
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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