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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.

SORRY! Fatima Sheikh a mythical character, not real

Correspondent
Jan 9, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Jan 10, 2025

Author Dilip Mandal says the so called first Muslim woman teacher of India was a creation of his imagination. Fatima never existed. A fictional sketch was created.


The anti-Hindutva forces had glorified the fictional Fatima Sheikh

Dilip Mandal
Dilip Mandal
Fatima Sheikh
Fatima Sheikh

Mumbai: Former managing editor of India Today Hindi Magazine, and author of several books on media and sociology, Dilip Mandal, admitted on Thursday that Fatima Sheikh, who is considered to be the first Muslim woman teacher of India, is a mythical character and that it was he who created the character.

In a sensational post titled ‘Confession’ on the microblogging site X, Mandal wrote – “I had created a myth or a fabricated character and named her Fatima Sheikh. Please forgive me. The truth is that “Fatima Sheikh” never existed; she is not a historical figure. Not a real person. It is my mistake that, during a particular phase, I created this name out of nothing—essentially from thin air. I did that knowingly.”


A wikipedia page created in 2022 describes Fatima Sheikh as “the sister of Mian Usman Sheikh, in whose house Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule took up residence.” And goes on to describe her as “One of the first Muslim women teachers of modern India, she started educating Bahujan children in Phules’ school. Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule along with Fatima Sheikh took charge of spreading education among the downtrodden communities. Fatima Sheikh met Savitribai Phule while both were enrolled at a teacher training institution run by Cynthia Farrar, an American missionary.[4] She taught at all five schools that the Phules went on to establish and she taught children of all religions and castes. Sheikh took part in the founding of two schools in Mumbai (Then Bombay) in 1851.”


The Google also had made a doodle on Fatima Sheikh in 2022. However, Mandal. In his post has wronged this all.


“You will not find a single entry in a Google search earlier. No article, no book, no mention. Nothing. Interest in her vanished in 2022 when I abandoned the story of Fatima Sheikh. She came in social media narrative and just vanished,” Mandal wrote in his post on X.


However, Mandal hasn’t offered any reason for creating such a fictitious figure.

“Do not ask why I did it. It was a matter of time and circumstance. A figure needed to be constructed for a purpose, and so I crafted one. Thousands of people can attest to this—most of them heard this name from me for the first time. I know the art of creating narratives, of building images. I have mastered this craft, so it was not difficult for me,” he wrote in his post on X.


He added that, “A fictional sketch was created because there were no old photographs. I spun many stories about her.  And thus, Fatima Sheikh came into being. The story spread. Those who needed this narrative for political and ideological purposes amplified it.”


Incidentally, several of the scholars on Phule, always doubted existence of Fatima Sheikh and had even sounded their concern. Referring to that Mandal wrote, “The complete writings of Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule have been published, and nowhere is the name Fatima Sheikh mentioned as someone who taught alongside them. Even Babasaheb Ambedkar never referred to such a name. No biographer of Mahatma Phule or Savitribai Phule has mentioned Fatima Sheikh. No Muslim scholar referenced this name until 15 years ago. British documents that discuss the educational efforts of the Phule couple make no mention of Fatima Sheikh either. She is nowhere to be found—absolutely nowhere.”


He also advises not to refer to his old writings as the evidences for existence of Fatima Sheikh. “As evidence, please refrain from digging up my old tweets, Facebook posts, articles, or videos. I have mentioned Fatima Sheikh’s name the most. I admit to this. But she never existed,” Mandal wrote on X.

Mandal, known to be a vocal critic of Hindutva, was appointed as Media Advisor by the Narendra Modi government after the Lok Sabha elections in June 2024.

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