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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Shinde hauls up Shirsat as BJP fumes over controversial visit

Mumbai: In a glaring display of internal friction within Maharashtra’s ruling Mahayuti alliance, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has reportedly issued a stern reprimand to Shiv Sena leader and social justice minister Sanjay Shirsat. The dressing-down comes in the wake of Shirsat’s highly controversial visit to the family of Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the newly floated Cockroach Janta Party. The meeting has touched a raw nerve within the Bharatiya Janata Party, turning into a major...

Shinde hauls up Shirsat as BJP fumes over controversial visit

Mumbai: In a glaring display of internal friction within Maharashtra’s ruling Mahayuti alliance, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has reportedly issued a stern reprimand to Shiv Sena leader and social justice minister Sanjay Shirsat. The dressing-down comes in the wake of Shirsat’s highly controversial visit to the family of Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the newly floated Cockroach Janta Party. The meeting has touched a raw nerve within the Bharatiya Janata Party, turning into a major flashpoint between the alliance partners and raising serious questions about their internal coordination. The political storm began brewing when Shirsat called upon Dipke’s residence in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar on July 26. The visit immediately raised eyebrows in the BJP camp, given that Dipke’s recent agitations have been squarely aimed at the saffron party, with direct rhetorical attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The simmering anger boiled over during Shah’s visit to Pune on August 1, where the Union Home Minister is said to have expressed his profound displeasure over the Sena minister’s diplomatic faux pas. Taking immediate cognizance of the BJP’s mounting outrage, Shinde reportedly summoned Shirsat over a phone call, demanding a swift explanation and firmly reprimanding him for the political indiscretion. However, neither the government nor party officials have issued an on-the-record confirmation of these developments. Political Battle Despite the fierce political backlash, Shirsat has stubbornly stood his ground, offering a personal justification for the contentious rendezvous. Defending his actions, the minister clarified that his ties with the Dipke family go back a long way and that he firmly believes in keeping political battles separate from personal relationships. He further noted that Abhijeet Dipke was in Delhi during the time of the visit, and the meeting was strictly limited to Dipke’s parents. Shirsat also pointed out that he had deliberately avoided visiting the family earlier to steer clear of the ongoing political controversies, though his belated visit seems to have done little to prevent a political firestorm. For the BJP, the visit is not just a matter of poor optics but a glaring breach of alliance protocol. Senior BJP leaders are reportedly furious that they were kept completely in the dark, insisting that the party leadership should have been informed in advance before a sitting Mahayuti minister extended an olive branch to a vocal critic. This lack of communication has once again brought the fragile issue of coordination within the Mahayuti alliance to the forefront, prompting the BJP to officially register its objection. Disciplinary Action The controversy has now sparked intense speculation about whether Shinde will wield the same disciplinary stick against MLC Bachchu Kadu. Kadu recently stirred the pot by not only meeting Dipke but doing so in the company of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Chandrakant Khaire. The BJP has already been nursing a grievance against Shinde for generously accommodating Kadu with a legislative council seat from his party’s own quota. As the dust refuses to settle on these controversial meetings, political circles in Maharashtra are watching with bated breath to see if this episode will further vitiate the atmosphere within the Mahayuti or trigger a fresh set of consequential political realignments.

Backward March

Kerala’s Marxist mandarins mock a sacred Hindu tradition yet again in the name of progress.

Kerala
Kerala

The Marxists of Kerala are at it again, peering through their fogged ideological spectacles and seeing menace in the most benign of Indian traditions. This time, the ritual in their crosshairs is guru puja, the age-old custom of offering flowers or washing the feet of teachers to mark Guru Purnima, a day revered across Hindu and Buddhist communities for honouring those who impart knowledge.

 

In a normal society, this would pass as a graceful act of gratitude. But in Kerala, where Marxist dogma masquerades as progressivism, it is deemed a “feudal relic” and an affront to democracy.

 

The trigger for this controversy was when Governor Rajendra Arlekar, addressing a gathering organised by Balagokulam (a cultural outfit with links to the RSS) mounted a calm but firm defence of guru puja. Arlekar delivered a stinging rebuke to V. Sivankutty, Kerala’s combative general education minister after the latter condemned the symbolic washing of feet at two CBSE-affiliated schools as “undemocratic” and “violative of progressive thinking.”

 

“I don’t understand from which culture these people are coming,” Arlekar had remarked, referring to the naysayers.

 

In the name of ‘reason,’ Kerala’s ruling party seeks to delegitimise one of India’s most ennobling cultural practices. Marxism, which has long treated religion and tradition as bourgeois constructs to be dismantled, finds itself instinctively recoiling at anything vaguely spiritual or reverent while conveniently forgetting that its acolytes themselves have elevated Marxism to a religion and Marx and Engels as their gods.

 

That the ritual took place in schools affiliated with the Bharatiya Vidya Niketan, an organisation inspired by Hindu ideals, was enough to invite the wrath of both the CPI(M) and the Congress.

 

The act of devotion, naturally, became yet another opportunity to accuse the BJP of saffronising the classroom. That the governor’s critics also dragged in caste and feudalism is telling. To the Marxist mind, every cultural gesture must be interrogated for class oppression. Thus, a student offering a teacher flowers becomes symbolic of ‘slave mentality’ as CPI(M) state secretary M.V. Govindan indignantly put it. It is an argument both threadbare and deceitful. The ritual in question is voluntary, spiritual and performed by children across castes. That Marxists see domination in every bow or folded hand says more about their historical insecurities than it does about Indian culture.

 

Kerala’s self-proclaimed reformers are fond of invoking the ‘renaissance’ that the state underwent in the 20th century, as if it absolves them of understanding or respecting what preceded it. But cultural renaissance does not imply civilisational amnesia. Nor does the expansion of literacy require the eradication of reverence. Education in India has never been a purely instrumental affair. It was, and still ought to be, a sacred enterprise with its purpose not just to inform but to transform. In many Indic traditions, the guru is not merely a conduit of curriculum but a remover of darkness, a guide through moral and intellectual uncertainty.

The modernist impulse to level all hierarchies has confused humility with servitude. In flattening every institution to fit the template of Western-style secular rationalism, the Left has stripped Indian education of its soul. What remains is a mechanised pedagogy - utilitarian, joyless, and allergic to meaning. That is the truly backward path.

 

Governor Arlekar deserves credit for defending what few in Kerala’s public life dare to: the cultural integrity of India’s traditions. Ironically, it is the Marxists who are most disconnected from the material history of the land they govern.

 

One would think that a government genuinely invested in ‘scientific temper’ and critical thought might spend more energy improving Kerala’s learning outcomes or investigating the appalling politicisation of its college campuses. But ideology, not education, is the CPI(M)’s first love. And so, in the name of democratic values, they attack guru puja. In the name of liberty, they deride voluntary expressions of gratitude.

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