top of page

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.

Why Eknath Shinde is forced to use Uddhav Thackeray’s lingo?

Writer: Abhijit Mulye
Abhijit Mulye
Nov 23, 2025
4 min read

Mumbai: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s recent comments, acknowledging that Shiv Sena workers in Dharashiv have expressed feelings of "betrayal" by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) within the Mahayuti alliance, mark a pivotal and ironic inflection point in the state’s volatile politics. While Shinde was quick to categorize these sentiments as merely "local" and insisted that contesting independently does not make the allies "foes," the very language he used—the vocabulary of betrayal and discontent—echoes the exact rhetoric Uddhav Thackeray employed before he severed ties with the BJP in 2019.


The profound irony is inescapable. Shinde’s political identity and ascendancy to the Chief Minister’s chair were predicated entirely on his claim that Uddhav Thackeray had betrayed the legacy of Bal Thackeray and the natural Hindutva alliance with the BJP. Yet, two years into his tenure, Shinde finds himself reciting his rival’s script. This apparent contradiction is not a mistake; it is a calculated political move born of profound structural and grassroots compulsions that threaten the integrity of his own Shiv Sena faction.


Grassroots survival imperative


The most immediate compulsion for Shinde lies in the survival of his own organization at the grassroots level. When Shinde rebelled, he secured the legislative majority, but he did not automatically inherit the entire Shiv Sena structure or the unwavering loyalty of its local functionaries. These workers are the lifeblood of the party, responsible for mobilising votes and maintaining local dominance.


For these local workers, the transition from being the dominant regional power (under the undivided Sena) to a junior partner in the Mahayuti has often meant a palpable loss of power, influence, and access to resources. When the BJP fields its own candidate or prioritizes its local leaders over Shinde’s loyalists in areas like Dharashiv, the local Shiv Sena workers feel marginalized and "betrayed."


Shinde cannot afford to ignore these localized feelings. By publicly acknowledging the "betrayal" sentiment, he is utilizing a political safety valve. He is telling his disillusioned cadres: "I hear you. Your anger is valid." This validation is crucial to prevent these cadres from migrating back to the Shiv Sena (UBT) camp, which constantly frames Shinde’s entire faction as having sold out to the BJP. If Shinde were to blindly dismiss their grievances, he would risk accelerating the internal bleeding and delegitimizing the core rationale of his rebellion.


Asserting parity within alliance


The fundamental imbalance in the Mahayuti—where the BJP is the numerically and ideologically dominant partner—creates an existential threat for the smaller allies, including Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction.


Historically, the BJP has always employed a 'Big Brother' approach, seeking to expand its footprint at the expense of its regional partners. This was precisely the tension that drove Uddhav Thackeray away in 2019. Now, Shinde is facing the same structural pressure. Reports of internal friction—allegations of the BJP attempting to poach Shinde’s functionaries, delays in file clearances for Shiv Sena-held ministries by the Finance Department (Ajit Pawar’s portfolio), or Devendra Fadnavis subtly overshadowing Shinde—all point to a constant, underlying power struggle.


By channeling the "betrayal" lingo, Shinde is sending a clear, diplomatic warning to the central BJP leadership. He is communicating that his political position is not guaranteed by Delhi alone; it depends on the sustained morale and active participation of his Marathi-speaking, Hindutva-aligned base. This soft critique is a necessary negotiating tool to secure better seat distribution, more influential portfolios, and, critically, respect for the political space his faction occupies. He is effectively saying: "We broke away from Uddhav to save the alliance, but don't force us into the same corner he felt pushed into."


Irony of inevitable cycle


Perhaps the deepest compulsion is the unavoidable reality that the Shiv Sena, in any form, needs to maintain a distinct regional identity separate from the BJP’s monolithic national identity. Uddhav Thackeray’s 2019 betrayal narrative revolved around the BJP's national ambition clashing with the Sena's need to lead Maharashtra.


Shinde’s use of the same language, even if quickly qualified, suggests a recognition that the core issue—the BJP’s drive for absolute dominance—persists regardless of who leads the Shiv Sena. The need to carve out a distinct identity for his faction, based on local issues, Marathi pride, and the interests of the actual Shiv Sainik, means Shinde must occasionally stand apart from the BJP’s national agenda.


His statement that mere independent contesting doesn't make them foes is a complex political cipher - it justifies the internal dissent of his workers (by framing the BJP as a competitive force rather than an infallible patron) while simultaneously assuring Delhi that the government is stable.


In essence, Eknath Shinde is caught in a familiar Marathi political cycle. To survive the existential threat from his former party chief, Uddhav Thackeray, Shinde must protect his identity by asserting strength and independence. To assert this strength, he must occasionally use the only effective language regional parties have against a national behemoth: the language of threatened identity and betrayal. His words are less a declaration of war and more a necessary, calculated cry for equal respect within a highly asymmetrical marriage of convenience.

Comments

bottom of page