On a sultry July afternoon in 2015, a mob of enraged Patidar youth barged into a BJP legislator’s house in Visnagar town of North Gujarat setting on fire his car and vandalising his house. The embers left behind by the arsonists go onto spark a huge reservation protest in the state and emergence of a 22-year-old Patidar leader from Saurashtra who dominated the political mindscape for the next few years.
Till that point in time, Hardik Patel was a non-entity, hardly known and recognised. A commerce graduate whose father dabbled in small submersible pumps in Viramgam on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Hardik had no political background or godfather.
A few months and 17 FIRs later, Hardik managed to galvanise the politically significant Patidar community into a state-wide movement seeking reservation for the group in the OBC community.
The defining moment of the agitation came on August 15, 2015 when he organised one of the biggest reservation rallies in Ahmedabad. The day-long protest culminated in violent clashes leaving over a dozen dead and Hardik in jail.
With the BJP government accusing Hardik of fomenting trouble, then Anandiben Patel government kept on slapping cases on Hardik including sedition. But by that time, the 22-year-old Patidar had managed to lead the political chorus in the state. His emergence also coincided with a simmering tension between Anandiben Patel and the BJP president at that time, Amit Shah. The state government was under pressure due to the rising agitation and Anandiben’s loyalist feared that the ‘Hardik phenomenon’ was being fuelled from within the party.
In August 2016, Anandiben took to Facebook to announce her resignation — the first casualty of Hardik’s stir against the establishment. The Patidar agitation continued to grow and Hardik continued to gain popularity not just in his stronghold Saurashtra but Patidar-dominated clusters in North and South Gujarat. He formed the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) which took the centre stage in Gujarat politics.
Though Hardik vowed to stay politically neutral but his veering towards the Congress ahead of the 2017 state assembly polls was hard to miss. His rallies were targeted against the BJP government particularly in Saurashtra region. The BJP managed to scrape through, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi sensing undercurrents against the party, virtually taking over the campaign in the last few months.
Hardik had hoped to take the Congress home but fell short of numbers as Modi had managed to keep his home turf safe. The defeat left Hardik at crossroads. With internal dissensions and old associates deserting him, Hardik decided to join the Congress in 2019. For someone who had risen to instant fame, the sluggish scheme of things within the Congress soon started to make him uncomfortable.
It could be said that 2022 could be another crucial year for the 28-year-old Hardik amidst reports of him leaning towards the BJP ahead of crucial Gujarat polls in a few months.
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