The Sangh Parivar and the Navnirman Agitation in Gujarat, India (1974)

Between January and March 1974, the state of Gujarat in Western India witnessed massive protests, led by students and joined by many sections of the population, against rising prices and political corruption. The agitators demanded and secured, first, the resignation of the Chief Minister, and later, the dissolution of the State Legislative Assembly. The contemporaneously named Navnirman Agitation was a watershed event for Gujarat politics and also considered to be one of the motivating factors for the imposition of the Internal Emergency in 1975. The Navnirman Agitation was also important to the organisational and electoral development of the Sangh Parivar (Sangh) headed by the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS). Claims that the Navnirman Agitation was initiated by the RSS’s student front, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and that the ABVP played a ‘vanguard’ role in its successful culmination were and remain a mainstay of the Sangh’s hagiography of the period. This article explores how a certain image of the Sangh’s participation and in particular, its student front, the ABVP, was projected, and how it aided the growth of the Sangh.