A typical swearing-in ceremony for a new government is usually a very dignified exercise. The function is held in a Raj Bhavan, where the governor administers the oath before a gathering of politicians, high-ranking civil servants, diplomats and other dignitaries. This is usually followed by high tea. All very genteel and sober.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to break from this tradition in Maharashtra. The swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis and his team at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday will be a lavish affair attended by over 30,000 people, including film stars, industrialists and, of course, politicians. It will be accompanied by cultural entertainment and dazzling visuals worthy of a Bollywood extravaganza.
In fact, the entire event has been conceptualised by Nitin Desai, one of Bollywood’s premier set designers and will, in his words, showcase the “best of Maharashtra-monuments, heritage, colour and grandeur”. Shivaji’s Raigad fort will form the backdrop, since the BJP was clear that the warrior-king had to be a major part of the imagery. Newspaper reports say that after the swearing-in, Fadnavis will be taken around the ground in a chariot, no doubt to the cheering of the hordes. It has been described as a coronation.
A clear message
But triumphalism is less about the young Fadnavis’s elevation to the top post and more about the BJP’s intent to send out a clear message that it is now the pre-eminent party of Maharashtra. Grand spectacles are a part and parcel of the new, Modi-led BJP and through this event, the party wants to let it be known that the other parties – including, importantly, the Shiv Sena, which invokes Shivaji the most – are, from now on, insignificant players in the state. Only the BJP matters.
It has been a long journey for the party. Throughout its existence, the BJP, and its forbear, the Jan Sangh, have been dismissed in Maharashtra as a party of Bhats and Shetiyas (Brahmins and Traders), with no mass base of its own. Even the fact that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP (and heavily populated by Maharashtrian Brahmins) is headquartered in Nagpur has never made much difference to its electoral fortunes ‒ the RSS has supporters everywhere, but that did not translate into votes in any significant numbers.
In 1995, the BJP was a junior partner to the Shiv Sena in the government. The two had come to an arrangement that did not allow the BJP to contest more than 120 seats. The BJP’s strike rate was steadily improving but it was frustrated because the formula did not allow it to gather larger numbers.
Munde's role
All that began to change when the late Gopinath Munde emerged as a leader; his outreach to the OBCs and then to other communities increased the BJP’s influence. But it was only under Narendra Modi that the BJP showed its true standing ‒ the party won a whopping 24 Lok Sabha seats in May 2014 to the Sena’s 18. Modi had no time for the Shiv Sena and the latter immediately realised that this new, assertive BJP under Modi and his lieutenant Amit Shah would rearrange the old partnership. That is exactly what happened when the assembly polls were held earlier this month.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray also understood that an aggressive the BJP would not stop at changing the seat sharing formula ‒ it wanted to sideline and, if possible, finish off, the challenge of the Sena, first in Mumbai and then in the rest of the state. The breakdown of their partnership was inevitable.
After emerging as the single largest party in the October state elections, the BJP has done everything to indicate that it does not need the Sena to form the government and if indeed the partnership is to continue, it will be on the BJP’s terms. The Sena, the BJP is hinting, does not matter to it and soon, will not matter at all. Appropriating the Sena’s most potent symbol, Shivaji, is part of that effort. That a hardcore RSS man from Nagpur, and that too a Brahmin, is now the chief minister is a declaration that the organisation, till recently on the margins of political power, will now exert its influence in every which way. It also brings out the RSS from the shadows and quite soon, it will exert its power in the key areas that matter to it, including culture and education.
Comfortable equation
But Fadnavis is not going to have an easy ride. The powerful Marathas of Western Maharashtra control many institutional levers – sugar co-operatives, colleges, banks – and most of them belong to the Congress or the Nationalist Congress Party. They know the state’s politics and its agrarian economy. The BJP will have to keep them in good humour. But given that the NCP’s boss Sharad Pawar has offered support to the minority BJP government and even ensured that the Wankhede stadium is available rent free for the swearing-in ceremony, the BJP seems to have worked out a comfortable equation with this segment too.
The next step for the BJP will be to wrest the rich and powerful Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from the Sena, which has run it for nearly three decades. That will effectively minimise the political footprint and influence of the Shiv Sena, which could in turn result in its members ditching it for the BJP.
Ultimately how the BJP is perceived will depend on how it performs in the government. But it is apparent that it wants to spread all over the state – beyond the urban and semi-urban pockets of influence – and show that it is now the party to beat in Maharashtra. The rest are also rans.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to break from this tradition in Maharashtra. The swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis and his team at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday will be a lavish affair attended by over 30,000 people, including film stars, industrialists and, of course, politicians. It will be accompanied by cultural entertainment and dazzling visuals worthy of a Bollywood extravaganza.
In fact, the entire event has been conceptualised by Nitin Desai, one of Bollywood’s premier set designers and will, in his words, showcase the “best of Maharashtra-monuments, heritage, colour and grandeur”. Shivaji’s Raigad fort will form the backdrop, since the BJP was clear that the warrior-king had to be a major part of the imagery. Newspaper reports say that after the swearing-in, Fadnavis will be taken around the ground in a chariot, no doubt to the cheering of the hordes. It has been described as a coronation.
A clear message
But triumphalism is less about the young Fadnavis’s elevation to the top post and more about the BJP’s intent to send out a clear message that it is now the pre-eminent party of Maharashtra. Grand spectacles are a part and parcel of the new, Modi-led BJP and through this event, the party wants to let it be known that the other parties – including, importantly, the Shiv Sena, which invokes Shivaji the most – are, from now on, insignificant players in the state. Only the BJP matters.
It has been a long journey for the party. Throughout its existence, the BJP, and its forbear, the Jan Sangh, have been dismissed in Maharashtra as a party of Bhats and Shetiyas (Brahmins and Traders), with no mass base of its own. Even the fact that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP (and heavily populated by Maharashtrian Brahmins) is headquartered in Nagpur has never made much difference to its electoral fortunes ‒ the RSS has supporters everywhere, but that did not translate into votes in any significant numbers.
In 1995, the BJP was a junior partner to the Shiv Sena in the government. The two had come to an arrangement that did not allow the BJP to contest more than 120 seats. The BJP’s strike rate was steadily improving but it was frustrated because the formula did not allow it to gather larger numbers.
Munde's role
All that began to change when the late Gopinath Munde emerged as a leader; his outreach to the OBCs and then to other communities increased the BJP’s influence. But it was only under Narendra Modi that the BJP showed its true standing ‒ the party won a whopping 24 Lok Sabha seats in May 2014 to the Sena’s 18. Modi had no time for the Shiv Sena and the latter immediately realised that this new, assertive BJP under Modi and his lieutenant Amit Shah would rearrange the old partnership. That is exactly what happened when the assembly polls were held earlier this month.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray also understood that an aggressive the BJP would not stop at changing the seat sharing formula ‒ it wanted to sideline and, if possible, finish off, the challenge of the Sena, first in Mumbai and then in the rest of the state. The breakdown of their partnership was inevitable.
After emerging as the single largest party in the October state elections, the BJP has done everything to indicate that it does not need the Sena to form the government and if indeed the partnership is to continue, it will be on the BJP’s terms. The Sena, the BJP is hinting, does not matter to it and soon, will not matter at all. Appropriating the Sena’s most potent symbol, Shivaji, is part of that effort. That a hardcore RSS man from Nagpur, and that too a Brahmin, is now the chief minister is a declaration that the organisation, till recently on the margins of political power, will now exert its influence in every which way. It also brings out the RSS from the shadows and quite soon, it will exert its power in the key areas that matter to it, including culture and education.
Comfortable equation
But Fadnavis is not going to have an easy ride. The powerful Marathas of Western Maharashtra control many institutional levers – sugar co-operatives, colleges, banks – and most of them belong to the Congress or the Nationalist Congress Party. They know the state’s politics and its agrarian economy. The BJP will have to keep them in good humour. But given that the NCP’s boss Sharad Pawar has offered support to the minority BJP government and even ensured that the Wankhede stadium is available rent free for the swearing-in ceremony, the BJP seems to have worked out a comfortable equation with this segment too.
The next step for the BJP will be to wrest the rich and powerful Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from the Sena, which has run it for nearly three decades. That will effectively minimise the political footprint and influence of the Shiv Sena, which could in turn result in its members ditching it for the BJP.
Ultimately how the BJP is perceived will depend on how it performs in the government. But it is apparent that it wants to spread all over the state – beyond the urban and semi-urban pockets of influence – and show that it is now the party to beat in Maharashtra. The rest are also rans.
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