The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s biggest challenge, when the state goes to the polls on May 7, could well come from its decision to continue backing Parshottam Rupala as its candidate for the Rajkot seat in the Lok Sabha 2024 election.

The union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy farming and Rajya Sabha MP has been embroiled in controversy for his allegedly controversial comments against the Rajput community in a campaign speech on March 24, his many subsequent apologies notwithstanding. 

The Kshatriya community has been demanding, vocally, that the saffron party cancel the Patidar leader’s candidature. Rajput politicians within the BJP, however, are toeing the party line, with talks of “pardoning” Rupala.

Gujarat’s recent history of community-led protests and agitations show that the BJP may be backing the wrong horse in this race. 

Take, for instance, the Patidar reservation movement of 2015, the 2016 and 2018 agitations highlighting atrocities against Dalits, or the Maldhari community’s protests against the cattle control bill in 2022. 

In the first, the Patidar Anamat Andolan, which began in August 2015 saw  demonstrations, protests and riots against a state government led by then chief minister Anandi Patel, who was herself a member of the community.

Eventually, the government caved, and the economically weaker sections of the Patidar community received 10% reservation under the OBC (Other Backward Classes) umbrella. Notably, Hardik Patel, one of the youth leaders who had spearheaded the Patidar movement is now an MLA in the state’s BJP government.

In July 2016, protests erupted in the Dalit community after four youths were beaten up in Una by self-styled “cow vigilantes” for skinning a dead cow. Two years later, when activist  Bhanu Vankar carried out his threat of self-immolation over Dalit land rights, the community again rose up against the government and its representatives.

Actor and BJP politician Hitu Kanodiya, who was elected from the Idar seat on a ticket reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, came into the crosshairs, for his reaction to the incident.

MLA Karsan Solanki, elected from the reserved Kadi constituency, was allegedly manhandled by protesters when he attempted to visit Vankar’s family after he died. The government eventually assuaged protesters by giving land to a Dalit family, completing the allotment process that had been stalled for four years.  

More recently, in 2022, the state government withdrew Gujarat Cattle Control (Keeping and Moving) In Urban Areas Bill—which had already been passed by the majority in the assembly and sent to the governor—after protests by the pastoralist Maldhari community.

Now, with the Rajput community’s protests entering their fourth week, it will be interesting to see if Kshatriya politicians—and the BJP—will continue to stand by Rupala as he attempts to make his Lok Sabha debut, or if they will repeat history by caving to mass demand.

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