Modi flags off Run for Unity: The importance of Sardar Patel and 'nationalist' narrative for BJP in Gujarat

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday flaggedoff the ‘Run for Unity’ from the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium, near India Gate.
Similar ‘runs’ have been organised across the country to mark the 142nd birth anniversary of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

"Some people tried to ensure the contribution of Sardar Patel is forgotten," PM Modi said.

"We remember Sardar Patel on his birth anniversary. We are proud of his contribution to India before we attained freedom and during the early years after we became independent," he said at the Dhyan Chand stadium in the national capital before flagging off the 'Run for Unity' event.

In Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched a WhatsApp campaign on Monday to highlight the “insults” allegedly meted out by the Nehru-Gandhi family to two sons of Gujarat – Sardar Vallabhbai Patel and Morarji Desai.

The social media campaign accuses the Nehru-Gandhi family of “insulting” Gujarati ‘asmita’, or pride. It says Patel, the first home minister of independent India and deputy prime minister, wasn’t accorded a memorial in New Delhi.

The WhatsApp forward claims Patel was stopped from becoming the first prime minister of India, that he wasn’t conferred the ‘Bharat Ratna’ by any of the Congress governments or his birth centenary celebrated.

In a similar vein, it also claims that the Congress indulged in the “character assassination” of former prime minister Desai, and how Congress ally Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said people of Gujarat were “donkeys” at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh.

At a public rally in Gandhinagar earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also alleged that the Congress insulted Patel and Desai. He is likely to bring up the alleged insult to Gujarati ‘asmita’ by the Congress more often in the run up to the assembly poll in Gujarat.

In a leaked telephone conversation with a supporter, Modi had talked of how he was called ‘maut ka saudagar’, or merchant of death, and other names in the 2007 assembly poll campaign.

In recent days, the BJP has raked up ‘nationalistic’ issues to attack the Congress. It has criticized senior Congress leader P Chidambaram for “talking the language of separatists” on the Kashmir and Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s alleged links to a hospital where a suspected ISIS operative was employed.

Both Chidambaram and Ahmed Patel have rejected the allegations, but the BJP has persisted. The PM attacked the Congress on the Kashmir issue at his speech in Karnataka on Sunday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, BJP chief Amit Shah and several others lost little time to comment on the issue.

Congress strategists say the BJP is desperate to take the narrative away from its failure on the economic front. On Monday, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala countered the BJP allegations by pointing out Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s record in releasing terrorists after the hijacking of IC 814.

But BJP is facing much criticism for demonetisation and its implementation of goods and services tax (GST) in poll-bound Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. It is, therefore, keen to change the discourse away from economy, and to that of ‘nationalism’ in Gujarat.

The memory of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is set to be evoked frequently in the days to come in Gujarat. The state polls on December 9 and 14.

At Patel’s next birth anniversary, the PM is slated to inaugurate the ‘statue of unity’, a statue of Patel in Bharuch. At 182 metres, it will be the tallest statue in the world.

The challenge for the BJP is to maintain its sway in urban areas, where anger against GST and demonetisation is more palpable. The Congress is trying to keep the narrative focused on ‘MMD’, the ‘Modi made disaster’ that was ‘note ban’ and “hurried” implementation of the GST.