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Aug 30 2015 : The Times of India (Mumbai)Protests by the privileged? Gujarat
has a long historyEconomics is the common thread that runs through agitations
in the state over the last 75 years, finds Amrita Shah
Gujarat has a vivid recent history of large, anarchic agitations. Observers are
often surprised to hear this, pointing to the state's association with Gandhi
and its reputation as a highly developed region with a strong entrepreneurial
drive as reasons why this should not be so. Those familiar with the state's
peculiarities, however, suggest that Gujarat's relationship with violence in
fact stems from these particular characteristics rather than existing despite
them.
It has been proposed, for instance, that Gandhi's legacy of agitation has
contributed to present-day violence in the state. Historian Howard Spodek
describes the “two parallel springs of mobilization and institutionalization“
which he believes Gandhi successfully controlled, and speculates that the
future could go either way: that new organizations could succeed Gandhi to
restore a balance or that the local and the national arena could decline
becoming accustomed to deepening levels of violence.
Those who expect a pragmatic, business minded society to be above turbulence
are similarly mistaken because economics, far from quelling, has invariably
been a key motivating feature for mass violence in the state. A survey of
prominent agitations over the last 75 years suggests a common thread.The
vigorous participation of Gujaratis in the Quit India movement of 1942, for
instance, while it owed much to the intense nationalistic fervor prevailing at
the time, was also partly enabled by fears that the British, following a
scorched earth policy would destroy local mills to prevent them from falling
into the hands of their World War II rivals, the Japanese.
The movement for a separate state in the 1950s was waged on the rhetoric of
language and regional pride but was also underpinned by a feeling of neglect by
successive Congress ministries. According to Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth's
The Shaping of Modern Gujarat, the absence of any major project on the area's
rivers in the First Five Year Plan coupled with the perception that resources
were being diverted to Marathispeaking areas culminated in the Mahagujarat
movement.
In 1974 rising mess bills in an engineering college in Ahmedabad sparked
outrage among students, snowballing into a statewide stir known as the
Navnirman movement, an agitation in which even housewives joined in by beating
thalis at a prearranged hour. Anxiety over shrinking job opportunities due to
the expansion of caste-based reservations led to ugly riots in 1981 and in 1985.
These iconic mass agitations have not involved the poor and the working class
but have been led by members of the upper and middle castes and classes, with
students playing a pivotal role. In the 1985 anti-reservation riots even
children, encouraged by their parents, boycotted school.
Middle class leadership brought a managerial flair to mass agitations often
marked by a high level of organization, a clever use of communication
technology and marketing gimmicks.This is not the place to explore the links
between an emerging middle class solidarity and the growing popularity of the
Hindutva movement but it can be said that mass agitations tended to articulate
the grievances of and sought to expand economic opportunities for those in the
middle and upper reaches of society , sometimes resisting the advancement of
those below. For instance, the 1981 and 1985 anti-reservation riots (a
precursor one could say to the current fracas) saw attacks by assertive Patels
selectively on upwardly mobile sections of the lower castes.
Mass agitations have also enabled dominant groups to bypass inconvenient
politics. The unseating of chief minister Chimanbhai Patel in 1974 provided an
early taste of power. Madhavsinh Solanki, a backward caste chief minister who
won a resounding majority a decade later with a formula that united
underprivileged sections of society including Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims,
was forced out of office within months by massive protracted violence.
The latter's history of truculence is surprising more so in light of political
scientist Nikita Sud's claim that Gujarat's development trajectory , which
ensured the rise of agrarian capitalists and rapid urbanization after 1960, has
been skewed in favour of dominant castes and classes as has the contemporary
economic liberalization process.
In many ways then, the current agitation by the influential Patel community is
in keeping with the state's past experience of violent protest by the
privileged. But while the agitation may have its origins in the local, and
Gujarat-based observers have provided various cogent explanations for the
sudden discontent, there is something about the scale and deliberate
theatricality of the event that points to a less definable intent. A
charismatic leader, surging crowds, speeches in Hindu rather than Gujarati, the
dramatic destruction of public property , seem to be elements of a spectacle
aimed at creating a mood as much as or rather than stating a demand. The
atmospherics need to be watched.
Shah is the author of Ahmedabad: A City in the World
