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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.

Why Was Srijit's Film Excluded from Indian Panorama at IFFI?

Writer: Shoma A. Chatterji
Shoma A. Chatterji
Nov 10, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Nov 12, 2024

Srijit

Mukherjee is among the top-ranking directors in contemporary Bengali cinema. He shoots different films almost simultaneously so that there are several releases under his directorial baton released within the same calendar year. He is also an extremely versatile director whose spans many genres ranging from historical fiction, re-interpreted and re-written remakes, thrillers, romances and so on.


He began his directorial journey in 2010 with Autograph, a reinterpreted version of Satyajit Ray’s Nayak still remembered not only for the masterful performance of Prosenjit but more importantly, for the magical songs and mood music the film was enriched with.


Though he has individually won five National Awards for his different contributions to Bengali cinema, Padatik till today, will be considered his best filmover his directorial career spanning 14 years. For the unitiated, Padatik is the name of a classic feature film made by Mrinal Sen himself in 1974. Srijit’s film has no link whatsoever with Mrinal Sen’s film though their titles are identical.


Srijit’s film traces the life of Mrinal Sen from boyhood till his death. The film opens with a partly fictionalised, Black-and-White clipping reiterating the huge processions following the passing away of Rabindranath Tagore when among the thronging crowds, a young man carrying the dead body of his infant baby, loses the baby in the stampede.


Tagore has no link with the film but it focusses on how the life of an ordinary man can get destroyed in a stampede gathered to pay their last respects to a great man.


Padatik means “foot soldier” a metaphorical title that suggests the unstable life of the runaway political rebel in Mrinal Sen’s original film forced to hide to escape police arrest. What kind of “foot soldier is he? Is he forced to keep running? Or has he chosen to keep running?


The answer to this is suggested towards the end of the film which leaves the question open for the audience to draw conclusions from. Srijit’s Padatik is a tribute to this great man who, in terms of his work as a filmmaker, had been a foot soldier all his life, never ever compromising to commercial demands even when there was no rice in the kitchen, with his wife, Gita, offering a strong pillar of support. Says Srijit of this film, “Actually interweaving the various aspects of Mrinal Sen’s life — his personal life, his upheavals, his work, his politics, Mrinal Sen as a father, as a husband, his relationship with his peers, his filmmaking style — all of it has been cooked together in the perfect proportion in Padatik. People are calling it my best film ever. It is very overwhelming.”


The latest news is that Srijit Mukherjee’s Padatik has been selected for special screening as Indian Panorama Feature Jury Recommends at the 55th International Film Festival of India, which will be held in Goa from Nov 20 to 28. The selection resolves the controversy regarding the film’s initial exclusion allegedly due to its Mrinal Sen association.


What “association”?

The firm belief that Mrinal Sen was a believer in Leftist ideology which goes against the Hindu Right evident from Goa IFFI’s choice of the film on Veer Savarkar as the inaugural film. But no one has ever expressed this in so many words.


Whilst discussing the exclusion of ‘Padatik’ from the Indian Panorama and its subsequent inclusion for special screening, Mukherji referenced Prasun Chatterjee’s ‘Dostojee’. The film initially wasn’t included but was subsequently added upon jury recommendation. I’m delighted this occurred with ‘Padatik’ as well,” Mukherji said.


Director Chandraprakash Dwivedi, jury chairperson, said, “Mrinal Sen was and remains an icon of Bharat and an inspiration for countless cinema enthusiasts worldwide who cherished his storytelling and admired his approach to social issues through films. I’m exceedingly pleased to see Padatik at the 55th IFFI through the jury’s collective wisdom and endeavour.”


(The author is a veteran film writer based in Kolkata. Views personal.)

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