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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.

Uniform Arrogance

Correspondent
May 21, 2025
2 min read

Pakistan has a habit of repeating its darkest chapters. In 1959, General Ayub Khan awarded himself the rank of Field Marshal just after he had overthrown a civilian government and declared himself President the previous year. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf unseated Nawaz Sharif and ruled for nearly a decade. Today, another general in uniform seems poised to follow in their bootprints. Despite being comprehensively beaten by Indian arms in Operation Sindoor, the Shehbaz Sharif-led government has made an inexplicable decision to elevate Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir to the rank of Field Marshal. This has triggered frenzied speculation whether Pakistan is preparing for its next military coup, if history is anything to go by?


General Munir’s sudden promotion is no reward for battlefield heroism. His strategic record is appalling. Ahead of the gruesome April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, Munir had conjured up the ghosts of the two-nation theory and unleashed a venomous, anti-Hindu diatribe designed to stoke tensions within India. This did not materialize. India responded to the Pahalgam massacre with blistering force as Operation Sindoor left Pakistan’s Chinese-made air defence systems smouldering and exposed the country’s tactical vulnerabilities. That Munir, having overseen this debacle, should now be rewarded with a ceremonial baton is farcical.


But in Pakistan, military failure is rarely punished. It is rebranded as patriotic defiance. Munir’s real victory lies not on the battlefield but in Rawalpindi’s long game of power. His term, originally set to end in November 2025, is now conveniently extended to November 2027. Rumours abound that a state of emergency may be declared and that the Constitution may be suspended yet again. These are echoes of a well-worn playbook.


What makes Munir even more dangerous is his lack of subtlety. He is no Musharraf, no Ayub. He is cruder, more theatrical and intoxicated by his own rhetoric. Animated by a cocktail of Islamic nationalism and military ego, his obsession with provoking India along religious lines makes him a uniquely destabilising figure. Like Zia-ul-Haq before him, Munir appears to believe that religious extremism can be wielded as a tool of statecraft. The consequences for regional peace could be catastrophic.


His strategy, if it can be called that, consists of keeping Pakistan in a permanent state of tension with India to justify the Army’s iron grip on state power.


One cannot ignore the wider geopolitical context as well. Is this farce enabled by Islamabad’s foreign patrons? China and the United States have long preferred pliant, military-led regimes in Pakistan that will protect their interests.


India, for its part, must remain vigilant. Munir is likely to seek another crisis to rally support and distract from his domestic failures. Pakistan’s real crisis is internal - a decaying economy, fractious politics and a military elite playing empire as the state crumbles. Munir may wear the Field Marshal’s baton. But he commands neither respect nor victory, only insecurity. And in Pakistan, that is a dangerous thing indeed.

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