Saintly Mask

Maharashtra’s politics has long excelled at the peculiar art of disguising power politics as moral philosophy. No leader mastered that craft more deftly than NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar. Beneath this carefully lacquered image has lain an older and cruder reality of caste consolidation masquerading as reformism.

The latest controversy involving NCP (SP) spokesperson Vikas Lawande and sections of the Warkari community reveals the contradiction with unusual clarity. Lawande had launched a scathing attack, condemning allegedly ‘regressive’ practices among the Warkari. In retaliation, members of the community threw ink on Lawande.

Throwing ink, issuing threats and allegedly brandishing weapons are acts of thuggery, not devotion. Those responsible deserve prosecution.

But the outrage of the Pawar camp also rings hollow. For years, Maharashtra’s self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ establishment treated the Warkari movement with a curious mixture of condescension and political utility. The movement was celebrated when it fitted neatly into the secular-Maratha consensus of the state. But as many Warkaris increasingly gravitated towards the BJP and the broader Hindu political space, the tone changed. Suddenly, there were concerns from Pawar about “regressive elements,” “religious fanaticism” and “outside infiltration” in the Warkari community.

Lawande’s remarks against the Warkaris followed his boss, Sharad Pawar’s recent criticism about “regressive” tendencies entering the Warkari tradition.

For decades, the Maratha strongman cultivated the image of a worldly progressive who was secular, rational, anti-communal and supposedly above the vulgarities of identity politics. His speeches have invoked the holy trinity of ‘Shahu-Phule-Ambedkar’ with almost liturgical regularity. His followers spoke the language of social justice while his ecosystem claimed moral superiority over the Hindutva right. But now, Pawar and his acolytes are anxious that a devotional movement once assumed to be culturally pliable is slipping beyond its influence.

The irony is rich. The very people who denounce ‘Manuwad’ have often presided over some of India’s most ossified cooperative and educational patronage networks wherein dynastic politics flourished and rural satraps thrived. Sugar barons became social reformers by day and caste chieftains by night.

But the ground has shifting since the BJP’s rise in Maharashtra in 2014. The party has steadily entered spaces once monopolised by the old Congress-NCP order: OBC networks, sections of Dalits, urban aspirational classes and increasingly the Warkari ecosystem.

That explains the particular bitterness directed at figures like Dhirendra Krishna Shastri and other northern Hindu preachers. Politically, the anxiety is of new Hindu religious figures weakening the monopoly once enjoyed by the state’s entrenched ideological class.

None of this excuses rabble-rousing by self-appointed guardians of faith. The Warkari tradition’s strength has historically lain in humility, not vigilantism. Those invoking Tukaram while throwing ink on opponents betray the very ethos they claim to defend.

Still, Maharashtra should stop pretending that its politics was ever uniquely ‘progressive.’ Much of it was merely caste arithmetic spoken in polished prose. The old establishment wrapped itself in the language of reform while practising patronage, identity and inherited power.