A photo of Kshatriya women at a Rajkot rally organised earlier this month against Union minister and senior BJP leader Parshottam Rupala figured prominently in the backdrop of the stage as Congress leader Paresh Dhanani declared at an election meeting on Thursday that he entered the fray in Rajkot not to become an MP but to lead the common man’s fight against a power-drunk BJP. Gujarat, he said, would have to take the lead in India’s second fight for freedom by overthrowing the aadhunik angrej or the modern version of the British rulers.
Addressing a Jan Swabhiman Sammelan election meeting, Dhanani said the 2024 Lok Sabha election is a fight between people’s self-esteem on one hand and arrogant leaders who are ruling the country on the other. “By filing my nomination papers… I have blown the conch for a swabhiman yuddha (war for self-esteem). This battle for Rajkot is not a fight between two individuals, between the BJP and Congress or between Parshottambhai and Paresh.”
“This is a war between the common people’s self-esteem and the arrogance of power,” Dhanani said while addressing the meeting after filing his nomination papers as the Congress candidate for the Rajkot seat, which has been a BJP forte for three decades now.
Referring to BJP leaders as “aadhunik angrej”, Dhanani called on Gujarat to take the lead in the fight against them in the manner that Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel took the lead in driving away the colonial rulers. “Gujarat had taken the lead in the fight, the first one, against the Britishers. I feel Gujarat will also have to lead the fight for biji azadi (second freedom). Hence, I have come to Rajkot not to become an MP but to make Gujarat free one more time, this time from the rule of the aadhunik angrej,” he said.
His rival and BJP candidate Parshottam Rupala, the Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairy in the outgoing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently stoked the ire of the Kshatriya community over his remarks at an event for Dalits in Rajkot. Rupala had purportedly said that foreign rulers, including the British, spared nothing while persecuting Indians and eventually kings bowed down and “broke bread with them and married their daughters.”
Interestingly both Rupala and Dhanani are natives of Amreli district which is not a part of Rajkot constituency. This election sets the stage for a second showdown between them 21 years after they first clashed in the election to the Amreli Assembly seat in 2002. Then, 26-year-old Dhanani had defeated Rupala, who was the agriculture minister in Narendra Modi’s state Cabinet, by more than 16,000 votes.
Since that defeat, the veteran BJP leader Rupala did not contest any election for two decades. Now, the ruling party has given a ticket to the 69-year-old and he has entered the fray for his first-ever Lok Sabha election. On the other hand, 47-year-old Dhanani, a three-time MLA from Amreli, had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha poll from Amreli in 2019 before losing the Assembly polls too in 2022.
Drawing from the Mahabharata, Dhanani also sought to project himself as Arjuna aiming for the eye of the proverbial fish at the swayamvar of Draupadi. “On the one hand, the power-drunk Delhi durbar has imposed a BJP candidate on Rajkot without consulting the party’s grassroots workers, sparking a wildfire across Gujarat, including Rajkot. On the other hand, the Congress family blindfolded a small-time worker who was asleep in Amreli, by tying a band of love on his eyes, and brought him to Rajkot. With that band of love tied over my eyes, I have come to Rajkot to pierce the eye of the arrogant fish,” he said.
Meanwhile, Kshatriyas have continued their protest against Rupala for his alleged derogatory remarks against their community last month, and demanded that the BJP cancel the election ticket given to him. Dhanani said that it was not a slip of the tongue by Rupala but the BJP’s attempt to sow the seed of sectarian conflict and polarisation during election time. Dhanani said he has entered the poll fray at such a time to bind people together with the thread of love.
“In the Gujarat of Gandhi and Sardar (Vallabhbhai Patel), BJP, to achieve its political goals, has put in place a system of sowing seeds of sectarian conflict, making people fight among themselves in the name of caste, creed, languages, religion etc. But I have entered the battlefield of Rajkot to bind everyone together with the thread of love,” he said. At the meeting, some Kshatriya women tied a raakhi on Dhanani and declared him their brother.
Addressing the meeting, Somnath Congress MLA Vimal Chudasama – as the president of the Gujarat unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Koli Samaj – declared his support for the protesting Kshatriyas and said that the BJP’s downfall has started. “Be it the election to municipality, district panchayat or taluka panchayat, the BJP never changes its candidates once they are announced. But this time, it has been forced to change its two candidates. This is an indication from Somnathdada (Lord Shiva, the patron deity of Somnath temple) that the time of your ebb has begun and Congress, INDIA bloc are going to form the government.”
“I have come from Somnath. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Yogi (Adiyanath), CM, state president–they all campaigned there but they could not defeat Vimal as he had the blessings of Somnathdada. It is Somnathdada who has sent me here and Pareshbhai’s (Dhanani’s) victory is a given,” Chudasama added.
Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil, senior party leaders Jagdish Thakor, Punja Vansh, and Aam Aadmi Party president Isudan Gadhvi also addressed the meeting.
Paresh Dhanani addresses a public meeting on his way to file his nomination papers as Congress candidate for Rajkot Lok Sabha seat. (Express photo) 
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