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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.

Warriors of the NIght

Writer: Ruddhi Phadke
Ruddhi Phadke
Oct 3, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

We name our daughters Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; we worship the divine feminine power in the temples but oppress, repress and even attack the feminine power amidst us. That is the irony in the way India sees its women.

After the safety of the daylight fades, women are seen as easy prey by the predators of the night.

We mark the nine nights of Navratri, the festival of the goddess, by celebrating the dedication and valour of nine real-life women who brave the challenges of the night to pursue their dreams.


PART - 1

Brave Shooter

VEENA GOKHALE CONTINUES TO SHINE AMID ERRATIC SCHEDULES AND LATE NIGHTS

Brave Shooter

Thirty-five years ago, when Veena Gokhale, 55, chose to be a photographer, her presence at events, heavy camera equipment perched on her shoulder, met with surprise. Undeterred by erratic schedules and late nights, she’s made a mark in the world of photography—from movies to weddings and events with more than 4000 weddings and 12 Marathi movies in her portfolio. “My profession has a new work schedule everyday. Late nights are frequent and sometimes stretch into the morning. My parents were worried about my marriage because everyone wanted a daughter-in-law who had fixed work timings. I refused to alter my career path to get someone to marry me,” she says. But life had other plans for her; at a wedding, she met a man who admired her passion and the two married. Her new family, she says, fully supported her passion. “My profession gave me my life partner too.”

While she’s rarely faced harassment at work, having “fortunately worked at weddings that involved well-behaved families”, she’s often boarded the last train at night after wrapping up a shoot. “The train used to be crowded, with the lady’s compartment full at capacity. That’s when I actually realised that I am not the only woman who is working at wee hours. Mumbai is full of such strong women, who fearlessly, and confidently set out in the middle of the night to do their shifts.”

Work challenges come in different forms and one such difficult shoot was at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel in 2008. This was just two months before the dastardly attack of 26/11. She had to secretly shoot the daughter of a ‘sheikh’ from Dubai. The girl insisted on a lady photographer who could enter posing as a friend, maintain her privacy and not allow even her father to know that she had got a photo shoot done. “She wanted to get casual and candid pictures of herself clicked in different looks and costumes. lace. The girl wanted the pictures for her personal happiness, and she dreaded the dire consequences that would follow if the family found out,” says Gokhale.

Gokhale took up the assignment and they shot without a break for seven hours. “While talking to her, I was constantly acknowledging to myself how blessed we Indian women were compared to many out there. While I was fearlessly filming her, she was scared to even share it with her own father,” recalls Gokhale. But the end came with a surprise, for Gokhale bumped into a six and a half feet tall man. “He was the girl’s father; I was sweating but avoided eye contact and quickly left,” she says.

Over the past three decades, Gokhale has shot 4000 weddings, concerts, corporate events and worked on films such as Sade Made Teen, Gaiir and Harishchandrachi Factory.

Did she face discrimination or surprise at her choice of career? Yes, she says. But Gokhale chose to ignore them. “When I started my career, photography was a laborious job involving holding heavy machines on both the shoulders. However, I chose not to enjoy unnecessary sympathy being a woman. Gokhale has shot prominent personalities like Amitabh Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit, Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, among others.

The best way to counter male chauvinism, says Gokhale, is for women to stop treating themselves differently. “Stop inviting pity and praise out of sympathy. Trust yourself, be confident and treat yourself equal to men. Once you treat yourself equal to men, the sky’s the limit as life is one big pool of opportunities. This attitude will help combat male chauvinism, she says. Gokhale advises caution while out for work-be alert, be communicative and be aware of who to contact when in crisis. “A good assessment of risk factors and adequate precautions are a few things that need to be remembered,” she says. With that in mind, there’s no stopping a determined woman.

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