Two among Alexandre Dumas's three musketeers - Aramis and Porthos - were known to be fond of the good life. Aramis loved women; Porthos, a bit of a dandy, desired fashionable clothes. But two of the three Gujarati musketeers I met recently - Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani - on whom rest the Congress's hopes of wresting Gujarat from the Bharatiya Janata Party after 22 long years, have no time for fleeting pleasures. Thakor, a social worker-turned-Congressman, is an influential figure in the Kshatriya community, which constitutes a sizeable chunk of the other backward classes vote bank of over 20 per cent. Throughout the interview, Thakor popped lozenges to soothe his vocal chords that are strained on account of rigorous canvassing. Mevani, who is contesting as an independent, is seen to be a unifying force in an otherwise fractured Dalit constituency, which forms around 7 per cent of the electorate. The third musketeer, the youngest and perhaps the most visible face of the Patidar agitation, Hardik Patel, did not have time to spare: he was busy stitching up an informal understanding with the Congress.
That alliance came through after prolonged deliberations. Hardik's pact with the Congress and the latter's persistent wooing of Thakor and Mevani offer an inkling to the Congress's poll strategy in Gujarat. It is an old strategy alright: the consolidation of the votes among Kshatriyas (Thakor's constituency), Harijans (Mevani's Dalit fold) and adivasis. But there is an important difference. On this occasion, the 'M' in KHAM - Muslims- seems to have fallen through the cracks. Rahul Gandhi's circumambulation of temples in the state is proof of the Congress's attempts to mollify the majority community, which has, over two decades, stood solidly behind the BJP.
The Congress's resistance to resurrecting the riots as an electoral issue is understandable. The BJP is especially gifted when it comes to deflecting the allegations of being complicit in the violence by projecting the censure as a liberal conspiracy to malign communitarian pride - the potent Gujarati asmita. Sonia Gandhi's description of Narendra Modi - he was the chief minister then - as 'Maut ka Saudagar' in 2007 and Modi's dexterity in using the epithet to turn tables on the Congress in that election is still a part of Gujarat's political lore. It is thus instructive to look at how emerging leaders like Thakor and Mevani are planning to counter the BJP's time-tested electoral formula, which remains an imaginative mix of the rhetoric of vikas and polarization.
The initial political momentum has been with the Congress and the musketeers because, as data show, development seemingly has gone crazy in Gujarat. The trading community, which forms the BJP's spine in Gujarat, is livid about the goods and services tax and demonetization. Surat, where the BJP swept the last two assembly elections, has been receptive to Rahul Gandhi's strident criticism of the BJP; even Manek Chowk, the hub of small enterprises in Ahmedabad, is seething against the party, an unthinkable proposition in the not-so-distant past. There is also anger at the perceived arrogance of the BJP, the fruit of an uninterrupted stint in power. But the problem goes deeper than GST and anti-incumbency. Unemployment among the educated - over six lakh a year ago - is rising still; the daily earnings of farmers in the state remains below the national average; the rate of formal employment has stagnated; 60,000 small and medium enterprises have stopped operating between 2004 and 2014.
Thakor, the more conventional among the two musketeers, is confident that organizational strength of the OBCs combined with the economic distress would be enough to dislodge the BJP. He said that he had spent at least a year mobilizing the OBCs against the ruling party. But it is Mevani's vision that can give the Congress cause of hope. Social and economic disparities are seldom enough to win elections. The trick - and Mevani knows it - is to harness public opinion intelligently, exposing the failings of a government while simultaneously working to forge a coalition among numerically significant caste groups. The latter has been achieved through the formation of a loose confederation of OBCs, Dalits and the Patidars, even though differential aspirations and animosities among these groupings are well-documented. What Mevani is working on is to direct the public gaze towards the intersections among the BJP's tacit endorsement of caste oppression - Una is a turning point in the Dalit movement according to Mevani, its not-so-implicit communal agenda as well as its pronounced tilt towards corporations. These continuities form the plinth of the counter-mobilization which, Mevani hopes, would expose the hollowness of not only the BJP's development model but also neutralize its stoking of regional pride.
It is easy to see why the media fawn on Mevani. He is young, intelligent and articulate, fluent in the only language that the national media understand. Mevani is aware of this benefaction and uses it effectively. At one point during the interview, he chooses to stroll along the Sabarmati waving at an imaginary crowd. A few pedestrians and motorists watch him, bewildered. There is none else, save for his supporters and the scribes who follow him like moths chasing a light. There is irony in this moment, but also inspiration. For it holds the promise of a meaningful transformation, one in which an emerging leader, while being integral to a political system, is also condescending towards the trappings of power. This condescension holds the key to Mevani's scrutiny of the political system he seeks to embrace.
The musketeers face a formidable opponent in the BJP, whose organizational strength in Gujarat is matchless: it has a man in place for each of the 48,000 booths. Then there is Modi's personal charisma, which could be decisive in the urban seats that number around 60. But the biggest challenge for the musketeers and their patron would be to break the stranglehold of the BJP on Gujarat's cultural and moral ecosystems. Many of the values that the BJP espouses - social conservatism, individual entrepreneurship and even majoritarianism - appear to be synonymous with an ethos that has the people's endorsement in Gujarat. After having spoken to a wide cross-section of Gujarati society, not just in Ahmedabad but also in towns (Mehsana, Vadnagar) and villages (Nandali, Heduva-Hanumantgaon), one got the impression that the electorate perceives the BJP as a family member that has gone astray, and it is intent on teaching the party not-too-harsh a lesson to bring it back on to the right path.
It would be limiting to look at the impending Gujarat elections as a contest merely between opposing parties and ideologies. There is another kind of tension that cannot be ignored. A newer kind of leadership, symbolized by the musketeers, is challenging an older hegemony but the means that they have adopted are not quite stirring. The musketeers are seeking to end a reign characterized by polarization and exclusion with a coalition based exclusively on identity. Little wonder then that the political narrative in Gujarat continues to oscillate between the twin evils of casteism and communalism.
No amount of rhetoric, not even the refined version employed by Mevani, can make one ignore the paradox. Redemption perhaps lies in the musketeers' ability to sustain their campaign of empowerment beyond the political battle, whatever its outcome. That achievement would be equal to, if not greater than, routing the BJP.
