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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.

Pyrrhic Peace

Correspondent
Jun 19
2 min read

The uncomfortable conclusion emerging from Donald Trump’s understanding with Iran is that while wars are expensive, failed wars are even more so.


After months of military confrontation, repeated threats of escalation and lofty declarations about reshaping the Middle East, Washington appears poised to offer Tehran a package of sanctions relief, restored oil revenues, access to frozen assets and reconstruction assistance that could eventually amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. If this is the peace package, an obvious question uppermost in everyone’s minds is what was the war for?


The Trump administration’s defenders insist that the Memorandum of Understanding is merely a framework and that tougher concessions will be extracted in the final negotiations. This is a hard-sell and something harder to swallow. It smacks of the utter failure of Trump’s monumental gamble to destabilize Iran and control the Strait of Hormuz.


Trump has repeatedly portrayed Iran as the principal source of instability in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic’s missile arsenal has been repeatedly condemned. Its drone programme was described as a threat to regional security. At various points, the U.S. administration even framed its actions as a defence of the Iranian people against an oppressive regime. Yet none of those ambitions appear reflected in the emerging deal.


Iran’s proxy network remains intact and there is little indication that Tehran’s missile or drone capabilities will be dismantled. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains the dominant force in Iranian politics and economics. Most strikingly, the regime itself remains firmly in control. Thus, it is Tehran emerges with a plausible claim to success.


If sanctions are substantially lifted, Iran will gain access to resources it has lacked for years. In effect, a state that was supposed to be weakened could now emerge economically strengthened.


It is unclear why Washington is negotiating from such generosity. The administration argues that economic incentives are necessary to secure Iranian compliance. In this case, the incentives are substantial but the gains remains highly uncertain.


Thousands of Iranians reportedly died during recent unrest and the subsequent crackdown. Political repression continues unabated. Yet there is little indication that sanctions relief or reconstruction funding will be conditioned upon meaningful reforms.


The deeper problem is strategic. If vast sums flow into Iran without structural reform, much of the benefit will inevitably pass through institutions linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the state apparatus. Far from moderating the regime, such an arrangement may entrench it.


Trump likes to present himself as a master dealmaker. Great deals, however, require leverage. America fought to obtain leverage, only to spend it on terms that fall conspicuously short of its stated objectives.


If Iran retains its proxies, preserves its missiles, keeps its regime and merely agrees to discuss its nuclear programme under more favourable economic conditions, then the simple question is after all the threats, the destruction and the rhetoric, what exactly did America win?

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