Opposing top Hindutva votary Zadaphia's move to join BJP, ex-Gujarat CM Suresh Mehta inches closer to AAP

By A Representative
As a step to move closer to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), former BJP chief minister Suresh Mehta has declared that he will not side with one of Gujarat’s topmost Hindutva votaries, Gordhan Zadaphia, who has decided to rejoin the Bharatiya Janata Party a little over a year after he became part of the Sangh Parivar rebels to form the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP). Perhaps the most important benefactors of Vishwa Hindu Hindu Parishad’s leader and Hindutva extremist Pravin Togadia, and state home minister during the 2002 riots, Zadaphia till now had been critical of Gujarat chief minister as a “fake Hindutva leader.”
Mehta, who was one of the founders of GPP along with another ex-CM Keshubhai Patel, in an open letter to Zadaphia has said the latter’s decision to rejoin the BJP was a “betrayal” of the cause for which the BJP rebels had formed the new party. Even a bigger betrayal was his decision to “merge” the GPP into the BJP. “If you want you can leave the GPP, but you have no right to dissolve the party like this. You must give us who do not want to join you into the BJP complete charge of the GPP, as we do not want to be party to your betrayal.”
Asking Zadaphia how did he explain his opposition to the Lokyukta bill of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has sought to dilute the ombudsman body’s powers by corning the authority to appoint the Lokayukta, Mehta asked him, “How do you explain you decision to fall on the feet of the man whom you called a demon and a Hitler? Will you please hand over all the accounts of GPP to us, as also all the properties and membership details? Your feeble and comprising ways baffle us all. We cannot accept them.”
According to BJP insiders, Zadaphia’s decision to rejoin the BJP is part of the RSS strategy to dislodge the Congress from power at any cost. The RSS, these sources say, fears that in case Modi does not become Prime Minister, the Samjhauta Express blast case file may sound a death knell for the Sangh Parivar’s supreme leaders. “The file points to the involvement of people in the RSS. This would prove dangerous to everyone, including RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat”, these sources point out. Zadaphia himself has not once, but several times, defended Modi’s in 2002 communal riots, saying he and Modi are in the same boat.
Modi, it is reliably learnt, has accepted Zadaphia by projecting the latter as the BJP’s candidate from Bhavnagar. By doing this, sources say, he wants to his longstanding desire – to politically finish off one of his biggest opponents in Gujarat, Bhavnagar MP and ex-state BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana, who is known to be close to Modi’s biggest bête noire in the RSS, Sanjay Joshi. Joshi currently lives with Rana in Delhi, which is cited as an example of closeness between the two.
Meanwhile, Mehta, who is in touch with one of AAP’s senior leaders, top Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan. Bhushan has already offered Mehta to join the party, it is learnt. One of the “plus points” of Mehta, AAP sources say, is his “liberal thinking” and his “non-RSS background.” Mehta has so far refused to join, but he told Bhushan that he and his supporters would “support AAP in every possible way in Gujarat.” Whether Mehta has enough support to ensure that AAP, still in its infancy, becomes strong is yet to be seen.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Would breaking idols, burning books annihilate caste? Recalling a 1972 Dalit protest

By Rajiv Shah A few days ago, I received an email alert from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in Gujarat for the Dalit cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935, Babasaheb Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the varna (caste) system.”

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Search This Blog