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By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 7:55:54 pm

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s...

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s neighbourhoods as an opportunity for public outreach. The political appropriation of the festival has not, however, been without a counter-current. Demands were raised for curbs on noise pollution, loudspeakers and the volume of dhol-tasha performances. The argument was not against Ganeshotsav itself, but for moderation - notably, a complete ban on DJ music and limits on the number of dhol and tasha instruments used by performing troupes. Familiar Troubles The festival’s reality has been rather different. Major roads have been occupied by mandaps. Processions celebrating the arrival of Lord Ganesha have unfolded amid punishing noise. DJ music, while subject to restrictions, has continued. Traffic congestion has become a familiar feature of the festival, with the movement of political leaders adding another layer to the city’s already strained roads. The Peth areas have remained crowded deep into the night. The Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati temple has drawn enormous crowds for darshan from the opening day. From the old city to housing societies and neighbourhood mandals, Ganeshotsav touches virtually every part of Pune. For a political party seeking a direct connection with citizens, few occasions offer such a ready-made network of people, institutions and local influencers. The BJP enters this festival with an unusually formidable organisational base. It has two MPs, seven MLAs and more than 100 corporators in Pune. Murlidhar Mohol, one of the city’s MPs, is a Union Minister of State. Chandrakant Patil is a Cabinet minister in the Maharashtra government, while Madhuri Misal is a Minister of State. The party’s presence also extends into the festival’s organisational architecture. Its influence is visible across numerous mandals, large and small. BJP MLA Hemant Rasane is General Secretary of the Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Sarvajanik Ganpati Trust. Kunal Tilak, a member of Lokmanya Tilak’s family, is a BJP corporator. The political and cultural histories of Pune therefore intersect in ways that are difficult to ignore. The BJP’s senior leadership has also made the most of the occasion. National President Nitin Nabin visited Pune to seek Lord Ganesha’s blessings, while Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited the city before and during the festival. Such visits are about more than religious observance. In a festival watched by millions and embedded in the city’s social life, political visibility comes almost automatically. There is also talk in Pune that the BJP provided substantial financial support to Dhol-Lezim troupes and their organisers, with claims that some major mandals received financial backing as well. These claims would require independent verification, but the perception itself points to the depth of the political contest around Ganeshotsav. BJP workers, according to local observers, have also sought to make their presence more conspicuous than that of festivities organised by housing societies. Useful Expedient The festival arrives at a politically useful moment for the BJP. The party has faced disquiet on several fronts. Young people have been agitated over the paper-leak controversy. Broader public dissatisfaction has been voiced over inflation and unemployment, while government policies relating to ethanol and charges associated with UPI transactions have also generated criticism. While a political party can defend a policy in a press conference and advertise its achievements, during Ganeshotsav, its workers can be physically present in neighbourhoods, among processions, mandals, cultural groups and devotees. Politics thus becomes less about argument and more about visibility. That is the BJP’s advantage in Pune. Ganeshotsav, after all, is not simply a sequence of religious rituals. It is an elaborate civic network involving local organisers, volunteers, cultural groups, businesses, residents and political representatives. Whoever has influence over that network acquires a powerful channel of communication with the city. The BJP appears to understand this particularly well. Its strength in Pune’s electoral politics has been reinforced by a presence that extends beyond elections and into the institutions and social spaces that organise public life. The irony is that the very scale of the festival that makes it politically attractive also magnifies the civic costs. The political value of Ganeshotsav and the civic burden it creates are therefore two sides of the same phenomenon. For Pune, the larger question is not whether politics has entered Ganeshotsav. It has done so for decades. The more consequential question is whether the festival’s extraordinary social capital will remain primarily a vehicle for political outreach or whether the same influence can be used to reconcile celebration with the ordinary civic needs of the city. For the moment, the BJP seems to have understood the first proposition better than most.

Broker’s Farce

Correspondent
Apr 12
2 min read

If diplomacy is theatre, then the recently collapsed US–Iran talks in Islamabad was an elaborate farce staged with all the solemnity of statecraft but none of its credibility. After 21 hours of marathon discussions, the outcome was as predictable as it was embarrassing with no agreement or breakthrough achieved, and no illusions left intact. Except, perhaps, among those still inclined to believe that Pakistan could ever serve as an ‘honest broker.’


But the fact that the talks failed is hardly the story. It is that they were held at all in Pakistan, a nation that has openly sponsored terror. The premise itself was surreal. Two bitter adversaries - the United States and Iran - were expected to bridge their deepest differences under the watchful mediation of a country whose own record in international affairs is deeply compromised. Pakistan was a curious choice of venue, akin to asking an arsonist to supervise a fire safety drill.


Pakistan’s proponents – from Donald Trump and a section of his inner circle to its admirers within India’s self-styled ‘left-liberal’ circles - have long indulged the fiction of Islamabad as a misunderstood stabilising force in the region.


This section of the Indian commentariat in particular, with its strident opposition to PM Modi and the ruling BJP, rhapsodize about Pakistan’s ‘strategic importance,’ its ‘geopolitical leverage’ and its supposed ability to convene difficult conversations.


For anyone with eyes to see, the far more inconvenient truth is that Pakistan’s state apparatus has for decades been entangled with precisely the kinds of non-state actors and duplicities that make genuine diplomacy impossible. To cast such a state as a neutral mediator in one of the world’s most sensitive geopolitical disputes was wilfully absurd to begin with.


Predictably, the talks foundered on the most intractable issues. The United States, represented by Vice President JD Vance, reiterated its insistence on a verifiable commitment from Iran to abandon any pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. Iran, for its part, dismissed Washington’s demands as excessive and unlawful, pointing to broader grievances that included sanctions, war reparations and control over the Strait of Hormuz. These are structural antagonisms embedded in decades of conflict.


What, then, was Pakistan expected to contribute? Moral authority? Strategic clarity? Institutional trust? It possesses none in sufficient measure. Instead, Islamabad offered what it often does - optics without substance, posturing without consequence.


One might reasonably ask whether the intent was ever genuine. For Pakistan, the benefits of hosting such talks are largely reputational. In a country perennially seeking international validation and frequent international bailouts, playing host to high-stakes negotiations offers a fleeting veneer of relevance. It allows its leadership to project an image of indispensability, even as its domestic and economic realities tell a different story.


While diplomacy is the art of restraining power without humiliation, Pakistan’s turn as broker looked more like the art of staging illusions without consequence. Can America pick better mediators?

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