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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.

Friends turned Foes

Correspondent
Jul 25, 2025
3 min read

Hun Sen’s betrayal of the Shinawatras reignites tensions on the Thai-Cambodian border, exposing the fragility of personal diplomacy and the unfinished business of history.

It began, as it often does in Southeast Asia, with a mine and a leak. Five Thai soldiers were maimed by an explosive buried near the tangled, disputed border with Cambodia. By the following day, at least 15 civilians - mostly Thai - were dead while diplomatic ties had unravelled. Cambodia’s once-durable backchannel to Bangkok, forged through decades of Shinawatra diplomacy, lies in tatters. The proximate cause was a leaked phone call. The deeper reason lies in centuries of mistrust and the opportunism of two political dynasties playing for high stakes at home.


Relations between the two neighbours have always been uneasy. Their 800-kilometre border, carved by colonial cartographers and made murky by jungle and war, has been the site of recurrent skirmishes. The worst in recent memory came in 2008 and 2011, when artillery duels near the ancient Preah Vihear temple killed over 40 soldiers and civilians. Back then, saner heads prevailed quickly. But not this time.


The spark came in June when Hun Sen, Cambodia’s wily ex-premier and de facto regent to his son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, published a phone call between himself and Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. In the call, Paetongtarn, Thaksin Shinawatra’s daughter, called him “uncle” and disparaged one of her own military commanders. The leak ignited nationalist fury in Thailand, embarrassed the Thai armed forces, and all but doomed Paetongtarn’s premiership. She has since been suspended, and the constitutional court is weighing her dismissal.


Why would Hun Sen sabotage a relationship that once served him well? The Shinawatras and Hun Sen go way back. When Thaksin was deposed by a coup in 2006, Cambodia offered him sanctuary. When his sister Yingluck suffered a similar fate in 2014, Phnom Penh again provided a safe haven for red-shirt loyalists. The rapport between the two political clans blurred the line between diplomacy and family ties, often bypassing formal institutions altogether. In 2020, Thai dissidents in Cambodia began disappearing - abducted, it was believed, by Thai agents with at least tacit Cambodian assent. Cambodian opposition figures, too, met grim ends on Thai soil.


Now that fragile pact has crumbled. Thaksin, newly returned from exile and weakened politically, could not shield his daughter from the fallout. Thai police have since begun probing Cambodian tycoons with ties to illicit online gambling and scam networks that Cambodia’s post-pandemic economy has come to rely on. Trade between the two countries has ground to a halt. Bangkok has expelled Cambodia’s ambassador and withdrawn its own. Hun Sen, in turn, has threatened to release documents allegedly proving that Thaksin insulted Thailand’s monarchy.


This personal falling out has escalated into a geopolitical crisis. Thailand’s ruling coalition is brittle and preoccupied with an economic slowdown and looming US tariffs. Paetongtarn’s suspension is only the latest blow. Cambodia, too, faces economic headwinds. Chinese tourists remain scarce, frightened off by horror stories of forced labour in scam compounds. Both nations desperately need stability. Neither is showing the maturity to deliver it.


That responsibility once fell to ASEAN, the ten-member regional bloc founded in 1967 with the express aim of preventing conflict between Southeast Asian neighbours. But ASEAN, perennially allergic to confrontation, has yet to intervene in any meaningful way.


Yet the strangest piece of this puzzle remains Hun Sen himself. The man who long played regional peacemaker has now set fire to a personal relationship that once defined Cambodia-Thailand diplomacy. Some speculate that Thailand’s crackdown on scam centres may have ruffled powerful interests in Phnom Penh. Others believe Thaksin’s bid to legalise gambling in Thailand threatens Cambodia’s own casino-driven economy.


Perhaps the answer is simpler. Hun Sen is nothing if not a survivor. Having handed power to his son, he may be seeking to bolster his own legacy as a nationalist stalwart. Burning Thaksin - no longer a kingmaker in Thailand - may cost him little and win him domestic plaudits. A calculated betrayal has once again put Hun Sen at the centre of regional intrigue.

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