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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.

‘Lata-didi is like my elder sister. We respect each other’

Quaid Najmi
Jun 1
3 min read

Mumbai: Playback singer Suman Kalyanpur was always compared with legendary Lata Mangeshkar. There was a reported rift between them over certain issues. However, Kalyanpur, who passed away on Sunday night in Mumbai, had dismissed the speculation in an exclusive chat with this correspondent almost three decades ago.

 

She had responded with characteristic grace and a smile: “I have nothing to say about this. Lata-didi is like my elder sister. We respect each other. I just do my singing, and do not bother about comparisons.”

 

Kalyanpur was accorded a funeral with full state honours at the Vile Parle crematorium on Monday afternoon in the presence of her family, members of the film fraternity, admirers and countless fans who had cherished her music for over six decades.

 

Earlier in the day, her mortal remains were kept at Shivshakti Apartments for the public to pay their last respects. Scores of admirers queued up to offer floral tributes to the singer whose voice became synonymous with grace, melody and emotional depth.

 

Later, her body, draped in the National Tricolour, was taken in a solemn funeral procession. Her daughter Charul Agny and other family members joined mourners as the Mumbai Police accorded her full state honours before the last rites were performed.

 

Born Rebel

 

Born on January 18, 1937, in Dhaka, then part of undivided Bengal Province (now in Bangladesh), Suman was the eldest among six siblings, including five sisters and a brother. Her father, a banker, hailed from Hemmadi village in Karnataka's Udupi district.

 

When she was barely six years old, the Hemmadi family moved to Mumbai where she studied at St. Columba Girls' High School in Gamdevi and later enrolled at the Sir J.J. School of Art, aspiring to become a painter.

 

Fate, however, had other plans. Blessed with an exceptionally melodious voice, she gravitated towards music and received her initial training under Pandit Keshavrao Bhole. She later refined her skills for professional singing under Ustad Abdul Rehman Khan and Master Navrang.

 

Despite strong resistance from her family, Suman pursued her passion and was invited to sing for All India Radio in 1952, when she was just 15. A year later, she recorded her first playback song for the Marathi film “Shukrachi Chandni “(1953).

 

First Break

Her talent soon caught the attention of actor-producer Sheikh Mukhtar, who gave her the first Hindi film break in an action film, “Mangu” (1954). It proved to be a turning point and soon after, legendary composer Naushad Ali entrusted her with five songs in “Darwaza” (1954), including a duet with Talat Mahmood. The teenaged singer's extraordinary promise was impossible to ignore.

 

Following her marriage to Mumbai businessman Ramanand Kalyanpur in 1958, she found unwavering support from her husband, who accompanied her to recording sessions and encouraged her musical pursuits.

 

Range of Songs

At a time when giants such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Suraiya dominated film music, Suman carved out a distinctive space for herself.

 

Her repertoire ranged effortlessly from romantic melodies and ghazals to devotional songs, folk-inspired compositions and light classical numbers.

 

As her popularity grew, comparisons with Lata Mangeshkar became inevitable, fueling persistent rumours of a rivalry though Suman consistently dismissed such speculation.

 

From the mid-1950s through the late 1980s, Suman Kalyanpur recorded hundreds of songs with some of India's greatest male playback singers, including Talat Mahmood, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar.

 

With her strong grounding in classical music, she sang with ease in multiple languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia and several South Indian languages. Her versatility, precision and emotional expression earned her a place among India's most respected playback singers.

 

Over a distinguished career spanning more than six decades, she received numerous honours and accolades, including the Padma Bhushan in 2023, apart from several state, national and international awards.

 

Though the singer has fallen silent, her immortal melodies continue to resonate across generations – a fitting echo of one of her most cherished songs: “Rahe Na Rahen Hum, Mehka Karenge.”

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