[This spring, with help from a
loose network of friends, Hardik Patel began organizing Patels all over Gujarat ,
a western state of 63 million people, including roughly 10 million Patels. Meeting
at farmhouses and restaurants, connecting on Facebook and WhatsApp, they
quickly turned their shared resentment into an audacious plan that culminated
on Tuesday when Hardik Patel, a baby-faced 22-year-old, stood on a stage here
before 500,000 wildly cheering people, almost all of them young Patel men, and
took dead aim at an entrenched quota system that India’s leading politicians
have spent decades defending and expanding as a means to win votes from one
caste or another.]
By David Barstow and
Suhasini Raj
 |
Hardik Patel at a rally
Tuesday announcing a challenge to
action. Credit Kuni Takahashi
for The New York Times
|
It deepened as he talked to other
young Patels from his farming village, where it seemed as if everyone had a
story of a job lost, a door closed, or a dream thwarted all because the Patel
clan is considered too well off to qualify for inclusion in India ’s
quota system.
This spring, with help from a
loose network of friends, Hardik Patel began organizing Patels all over Gujarat ,
a western state of 63 million people, including roughly 10 million Patels. Meeting
at farmhouses and restaurants, connecting on Facebook and WhatsApp, they
quickly turned their shared resentment into an audacious plan that culminated
on Tuesday when Hardik Patel, a baby-faced 22-year-old, stood on a stage here
before 500,000 wildly cheering people, almost all of them young Patel men, and
took dead aim at an entrenched quota system that India’s leading politicians
have spent decades defending and expanding as a means to win votes from one
caste or another.
In an act of political jujitsu, Mr.
Patel demanded that the Patels, who belong to the Patidar caste, be included in
the very quota system they despise — knowing that if the wealthy and
politically powerful Patels of Gujarat can qualify for special quotas, then so
must every other caste in India .
“We are not begging,” he
defiantly told the crowd. The roar of a half-million Patels chanting “Hardik! Hardik!”
echoed off nearby apartment buildings, where still thousands more Patels lined
rooftops and balconies. The adoration was all the more remarkable since almost
no one had ever heard of Hardik Patel before last month.
It was not just the enormous size
of the Patel rally, or the underground swiftness with which it came together, that
left India ’s
political and media elites universally stunned. It was also the depth of the
rebuke it represented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi came to
national prominence because strong support from the Patels helped elect him
chief minister of Gujarat in 2001.
When he ran for prime minister in
2014, Mr. Modi extolled the success of what he called “the Gujarat
model” — a set of business-friendly policies he claimed had led to widely
shared prosperity for the people of Gujarat . Those
claims have now been called into question by 500,000 of his most faithful
supporters, many of whom, in dozens of interviews last week, described a Gujarat
where a young, educated work force is finding it increasingly difficult to find
good private-sector jobs.
Hours after his speech, as dusk
settled on Tuesday, Hardik Patel sat cross-legged on a mattress on the stage, wondering
if Mr. Modi had gotten the message. To make sure, he had announced his intent
to fast on the stage. Shoes off, shirt untucked, Mr. Patel seemed drained from
the day’s drama. Only a few thousand equally spent supporters remained near the
stage.
The point of the protest, he
explained in an interview, was to confront Mr. Modi and his allies with a
brutally difficult choice — either side with the Patels who had brought them to
power, or else earn the Patels’ political wrath by siding with the castes and
tribes that currently benefit from the quota system.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” he said, mopping
sweat from his face with a rag. “The more they demand, the more the political
masters give them; the more they get, the more the political masters answer to
them.”
Ninety minutes later, hundreds of
police officers swarmed the stage to arrest Mr. Patel and break up what
remained of the rally. They beat peaceful protesters with bamboo canes, tossed
chairs into the crowd and manhandled journalists.
Several miles away, the chief
minister of Gujarat , Anandiben Patel, and the minister
in charge of the police, Rajanikant Patel, watched the violence on television
with mounting horror. Only minutes earlier, Rajanikant Patel said in an
interview, the two had been talking about how well the day had gone.
“We thought it was all done with,
and in the best possible way,” he said. And then, all of a sudden, “things went
haywire.” Neither he nor the chief minister gave an order to arrest Mr. Patel
or break up the rally, he insisted, saying that they had quickly ordered the
police to release Mr. Patel.
Yet by then the damage had been
done. That night, and over the next two days, police officers were repeatedly
caught on camera smashing cars and beating unarmed civilians, even some with
hands raised. “Police Unleash Terror,” read the headline in one Ahmedabad
newspaper.
Across Gujarat ,
mobs responded with equal fury, burning buses and police stations and targeting
the homes of Gujarat ’s ministers. Rajanikant Patel’s
home was burned. By Thursday, 10 people were dead, including a police officer, the
army had been called in, and Mr. Modi had gone on television to appeal for
peace.
The impact of the week’s events
is still being absorbed across India .
Taking their cue from the Patels, other prosperous castes have now begun
talking about holding similar protests. On editorial pages and TV news programs,
debate is raging over the nation’s quota system, first codified in India ’s
Constitution 65 years ago. The Indian Express called the Patel protest “an
eruption against growth that has not been inclusive.” The Hindu called it a
“rude awakening” for Mr. Modi.
In the meantime, Hardik Patel has
begun plotting new ways to spread his rebellion as the most famous and feared 22-year-old
in India .
Not five miles away, across the
Sabarmati River that bisects this city, the fear was palpable in an
impoverished, hopelessly overcrowded neighborhood squeezed into a depression of
land at the base of Ambedkar Bridge, named for the principal architect of
India’s Constitution. Almost everyone in this neighborhood comes from a caste
that benefits from the quota system, including Narayan Parmar, 51, who said he
felt profoundly threatened by the demands of the Patidars.
Thanks to the quota system, Mr. Parmar
landed a job 28 years ago at the city’s sewage plant.
“It was a moment of immense
happiness for me,” he said, sitting outside a crumbling government housing
block that looked as if one good shake could bring the whole thing tumbling
down. With its modest pension and health benefits, and a steady paycheck of $375
a month, the government job has allowed him and his family to escape the abject
destitution they otherwise faced with him eking out a living as a rickshaw
puller.
Yet he and his neighbors are
quick to point out the precariousness of their gains. It is a good day, he said,
when he can feed his family two full meals. They line up each morning at a
communal water line because their taps spew filth, and the children here attend
government schools that have yet to see a computer.
The quota system helped Jitendra
Jain, 40, become a lawyer, and yet, he said, he still cannot escape this neighborhood
because wealthy clients simply will not hire a lawyer from his caste.
“I’m stuck in a cycle,” he said.
Many Patels, Hardik included, readily
agree that the government should give extra help to poor families, regardless
of caste. They object, however, to India ’s
quota system precisely because it is built around caste, not economic status.
Even so, in this neighborhood the
Patel protest is seen as an act of monumental selfishness — just one more way
for the haves to have more. If the Patels succeed, Mr. Parmar said, the
implications for this neighborhood are obvious: “We will grow poorer.”
