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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.

Hormuz: Where Law Meets the Gunboat

Capt. Naveen S. Singhal and Capt. M. M. Saggi
Apr 7
4 min read

In the world’s most vital oil chokepoint, the elegant certainties of maritime law dissolve into a murky contest of power, risk and coercion.

The Strait of Hormuz is, in the dry language of international law, a “strait used for international navigation.” In the less sterile vocabulary of geopolitics, it is a loaded gun pointed at the global economy. Barely 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, this corridor connects the oil-rich Persian Gulf to the wider Arabian Sea. Around a fifth of the world’s petroleum flows through it. As the ever-escalating Iran conflict shows, any disruption in Hormuz, whether legal or kinetic, reverberates from Mumbai to Rotterdam.


On paper, the rules governing such a passage are clear enough. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) enshrines the principle of ‘transit passage’ for straits like Hormuz by which ships and aircraft, commercial and military alike, may pass continuously and expeditiously without interference. Unlike the more limited concept of ‘innocent passage,’ which coastal states may suspend for security reasons, transit passage is meant to be inalienable. Article 44 of UNCLOS is unequivocal on this count when it states any vessel or craft “shall not be impeded.”


Yet law, as ever at sea, is only half the story. The waters of Hormuz lap against the shores of Iran to the north and Oman to the south. Both exercise sovereignty over their territorial seas. Both insist, at least formally, on adherence to international norms. But sovereignty, especially in a region long shaped by imperial retreat and regional rivalry, has a habit of expanding in moments of crisis.


Legal Regime

The modern legal regime itself is a relatively recent construct. For centuries, strategic waterways were governed less by codified law than by naval power. The British Empire, whose warships once policed the Gulf, ensured freedom of navigation less through treaties than through dominance. When Britain withdrew east of Suez in 1971, the vacuum it left was filled not by a stable multilateral order but by a volatile balance among regional powers, increasingly shadowed by American naval presence.


Since the Iranian Revolution, Hormuz has repeatedly flirted with closure. During the Iran–Iraq War, the so-called ‘Tanker War’ saw both sides target oil shipments, drawing in external powers. American-flagged vessels were escorted through the strait under Operation Earnest Will; mines and missiles rendered legal niceties largely academic. The blunt lesson was that the right of passage exists only insofar as it can be enforced.


UNCLOS, negotiated in calmer waters, is ill-equipped for such moments. It is, fundamentally, a peacetime convention. When conflict intrudes, the legal compass shifts towards customary international law and interpretive guides such as the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea. These allow for defensive measures like exclusion zones, interdictions, even blockades, provided they meet stringent conditions. A blockade, for instance, must be declared, effective, and must not indiscriminately harm neutral shipping.


But here the line between legality and expediency blurs. Article 39 of UNCLOS obliges vessels in transit to refrain from any threat or use of force. Yet what constitutes a ‘threat’ in a militarised strait? Is a swarm of fast attack craft shadowing a tanker an act of intimidation or a legitimate security patrol? When drones hover and warships loiter, the distinction becomes as narrow as the channel itself.


Grey-Zone Tactics

In practice, states have developed a repertoire of what might be called ‘grey-zone’ tactics. Rather than formally suspending transit passage, which would be a clear breach of international law, they impose de facto constraints. Naval exercises are announced in sensitive lanes. Radio warnings proliferate. Tankers are boarded or briefly detained on ostensibly technical grounds. Each action falls short of outright obstruction.


For the global shipping industry, this ambiguity is a mounting cost. Insurance premiums spike at the first hint of tension. War-risk clauses are invoked. Shipowners reroute vessels, sometimes at considerable expense, to avoid perceived hotspots. Crews, often drawn from poorer countries, bear the psychological burden of navigating waters where the rules are both rigid and malleable.


The result is that while UNCLOS promises a frictionless corridor for global commerce on paper, operational reality delivers something closer to a negotiated passage, contingent on the shifting calculations of coastal states and external powers. In effect, risk is outsourced from governments that contest the strait’s status to the private actors who must traverse it.


Nor is this tension likely to dissipate. As energy markets evolve, Hormuz remains indispensable. Even as the world talks of transition, hydrocarbons still flow overwhelmingly through this narrow artery. Meanwhile, regional rivalries endure, and the presence of extra-regional navies ensures that any local incident risks broader escalation.


What, then, is to be done? Calls for stricter enforcement of international law are well-intentioned but insufficient. Law, in the maritime domain, has always depended on a convergence of interests among major powers. Where such convergence is absent, as it often is in the Gulf, legal norms become aspirational.


While Iran and Oman may regulate navigation for safety and security, the situation highlights an enduring tension between international legal norms and strategic realities. It underscores the need for global maritime governance to evolve, addressing not only compliance in stable conditions but also resilience in conflict environments.


(Capt. Singhal is a shipping and marine consultant and member, Singapore Shipping Association. Capt. Saggi is ex-Nautical Advisor to Government of India. Views personal.)

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