Maharashtra’s politics has long excelled at the peculiar art of disguising power politics as moral philosophy. No leader mastered that craft more deftly than NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar. Beneath this carefully lacquered image has lain an older and cruder reality of caste consolidation masquerading as reformism. The latest controversy involving NCP (SP) spokesperson Vikas Lawande and sections of the Warkari community reveals the contradiction with unusual clarity. Lawande had