Chief Minister of Gujarat Keshubhai Patel was left incredulous when he his lost his job to Narendra Modi in 2001. The BJP had removed him from the position after the Gujarat earthquake believing Patel had mismanaged the relief work and brought in Modi then serving at the New Delhi headquarters. Patels are predominant in Gujarat; therefore Keshubhai wondered how could anybody other than a Patel hold the chief ministerial job without facing internal opposition?
Twenty years later in 2022, Narendra Modi also realises this very clearly. Though the wave of Hindutva unleashed after the 2002 violence had raised the BJP to a high that has continued till the latest elections, Narendra Modi realises that without a Patel at helm, BJP risks its pre- eminent position in Gujarat. This realisation came clear in the aftermath of the 2017 assembly elections which limited the saffron party to 99 seats (in a total of 182 seats) although the BJP had won 127 seats in the aftermath of the 2002 violence. The number of seats in the BJP coffers came down in the midst of the rise of the youthful Hardik Patel who opposed the Gujarat government. He represented the rural Patel disenchantment from the saffron party.
May be other politicians would not have reacted. But Modi realised that this Patel disenchantment would cost him dearly in the future. Realising that Keshubhai was the last Patel chief minister, Modi decide to install a Patel chief minister once again. But this change was in September 2020, when Bhupendra Patel was installed as chief minister. In fact the entire ministry was changed and the old guard was replaced. Bhupendra was a first term BJP MLA – which meant that he had no vested interests or power lobbies behind him. He would be totally dependent on Narendra Modi for his power base. He replaced Vijay Rupani from Rajkot who had seen Modi through in his first election from Rajkot III constituency on February 24 2002 – coincidentally just before the Godhra train burning incident that followed three days later. Vijay Rupani, though a hard core BJP man was a Jain. The Jains mainly an urban community had nothing to do with agriculture.
The Patels, though they now form a very important part of the state lived on the margins of society about a hundred year ago. They were tillers of land at a time that farming was not very profitable. In the nineteenth century, Ghanashyam Pande a young man from close to Ayodhya in UP became part of the reformist Swaminarayan community. He was sent to Saurashtra to work among the society and influence them. He worked assiduously and converted many Patels to his line of thinking. The Swaminarayan sampradaya is however closely knit but has not taken the identity of a separate religion.
In Saurashtra, the Patels though converted to the Swaminarayan line of thinking, did not become well to do before the Green Revolution in the 1970s. That changed the face of agriculture, increased its productivity and made the farmers rich. The Patels became rich and among other things also funded the Swaminarayan sampradaya and its newly built temples abroad and other parts of India. This has increased their influence. The Patel community now rich also felt the need for political empowerment.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Gujarat’s chief minister was an ambitious Madhavasinh Solanki who got his power from Indira Gandhi. He conjured up a new power base by aligning the communities of KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims). This was highly successful and the Congress party romped to power with a record 149 (of a total of 182) seats in the assembly). Solanki’s power formula however brought him in conflict with the upcoming class of Patel who were not politically empowered. The Patels were hitherto supporters of the Congress but now left the party and joined the newly formed party of BJP. The BJP in Gujarat is now dependent on support of Patels and the re-affirmation of the 60 year Bhupendra Patel as the chief minister of the state is indication of this reality.
| 
