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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This...

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This development, confirmed by high-ranking party insiders, follows the realization that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) effectively ceded its claims on the Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) to protect the alliance, facilitating a “Mumbai for BJP, Kalyan for Shinde” power-sharing formula. The compromise marks a complete role reversal between the BJP and the Shiv Sena. Both the political parties were in alliance with each other for over 25 years before 2017 civic polls. Back then the BJP used to get the post of Deputy Mayor while the Shiv Sena always enjoyed the mayor’s position. In 2017 a surging BJP (82 seats) had paused its aggression to support the undivided Shiv Sena (84 seats), preferring to be out of power in the Corporation to keep the saffron alliance intact. Today, the numbers dictate a different reality. In the recently concluded elections BJP emerged as the single largest party in Mumbai with 89 seats, while the Shinde faction secured 29. Although the Shinde faction acted as the “kingmaker”—pushing the alliance past the majority mark of 114—the sheer numerical gap made their claim to the mayor’s post untenable in the long run. KDMC Factor The catalyst for this truce lies 40 kilometers north of Mumbai in Kalyan-Dombivali, a region considered the impregnable fortress of Eknath Shinde and his son, MP Shrikant Shinde. While the BJP performed exceptionally well in KDMC, winning 50 seats compared to the Shinde faction’s 53, the lotter for the reservation of mayor’s post in KDMC turned the tables decisively in favor of Shiv Sena there. In the lottery, the KDMC mayor’ post went to be reserved for the Scheduled Tribe candidate. The BJP doesn’t have any such candidate among elected corporatros in KDMC. This cleared the way for Shiv Sena. Also, the Shiv Sena tied hands with the MNS in the corporation effectively weakening the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s alliance with them. Party insiders suggest that once it became clear the BJP would not pursue the KDMC Mayor’s chair—effectively acknowledging it as Shinde’s fiefdom—he agreed to scale down his demands in the capital. “We have practically no hope of installing a BJP Mayor in Kalyan-Dombivali without shattering the alliance locally,” a Mumbai BJP secretary admitted and added, “Letting the KDMC become Shinde’s home turf is the price for securing the Mumbai Mayor’s bungalow for a BJP corporator for the first time in history.” The formal elections for the Mayoral posts are scheduled for later this month. While the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA)—led by the Shiv Sena (UBT)—has vowed to field candidates, the arithmetic heavily favors the ruling alliance. For Eknath Shinde, accepting the Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai is a tactical retreat. It allows him to consolidate his power in the MMR belt (Thane and Kalyan) while remaining a partner in Mumbai’s governance. For the BJP, this is a crowning moment; after playing second fiddle in the BMC for decades, they are poised to finally install their own “First Citizen” of Mumbai.

Selective Amnesia

History is often an inconvenient companion. It tells stories of grandeur but also tales of horror, conquest and cruelty. Today’s India, it seems, would prefer to forget the less savoury parts. This week, the new Class 7 NCERT Social Science textbook, reworked in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) and the 2023 National Curriculum Framework, has excised all references to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. In their place stand glowing chapters on ‘Indian ethos,’ sacred geographies and triumphant Central government schemes like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.’


This is not the first time India’s rulers have tried to fashion the past to suit the present. In the early decades after Independence, the Nehruvian establishment, suspicious of nationalism and keen to forge a syncretic identity, instructed historians to tread carefully. A 1982 NCERT guideline explicitly cautioned against glorifying either Aurangzeb - the Mughal emperor synonymous with bigotry and destruction - or the Gupta Empire, often regarded as the zenith of India’s ancient past. As a result, generations of Indians grew up with an airbrushed version of history, where brutal invasions were reimagined as cultural exchanges and civilizational conflict was glossed over in the name of harmony.


But if Nehruvian history erred by whitewashing invasions, today’s policymakers commit the opposite sin by erasing them entirely. To remove the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals from textbooks is not an act of correction but of amnesia. It does not heal wounds; it denies that they ever existed.


The Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate were not minor episodes that can be edited out with a swipe of nationalist fervour. For better or worse, they reshaped the subcontinent. Their story is one of brutal conquest, religious intolerance (at least until Akbar) and cultural suppression. Precisely for these reasons, they must remain in the textbooks, not to be celebrated, but to be understood in full.


While India’s civilizational past, from the Mauryas to the Shungas to the Sātavāhanas, deserves fuller treatment than it was long given, pride must not come at the cost of truth. Sacred rivers and pilgrimage sites are no substitute for understanding how kingdoms rose and fell, how empires ruled, and how the scars of history continue to shape the present.


The instinct to sanitize history reveals an astonishing insecurity. A confident civilization does not fear its past but studies it. A confident democracy does not shield its citizens from unpleasant truths but equips them to grapple with them.


If the earlier government’s mistake was to minimize the atrocities of Islamic invaders, today’s error is to pretend that the invaders themselves were inconsequential. Both impulses are equally dangerous. History should neither be embalmed in sentimentality nor butchered for ideology.


Removing the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals from India’s classrooms will not change what happened. It will merely ensure that another generation grows up either ignorant of its past or vulnerable to distorted versions of it.

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