Surprises never cease to stop in battleground Maharashtra, the land of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The Marathi-speaking people and those who reside there have the Maharaj in their hearts. They proudly
proclaim the legacy of the 17th-century Maratha warrior who changed the course of the country’s history.
No matter how fierce the fight, a Maratha can take on anyone in the battle with the chant of ‘Jai Bhavani, Jai Shivaji”. So much faith and reverence they have in their King that they won’t tolerate any insult or a whiff of an insult to their deity. Everyone has to bow before the Maharaj and should be seen to be doing so.
Before the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene 10 years back, the BJP had put up huge posters and issued advertisements to project its leader’s reverence to the Maharaj. The unwritten code is that one can reach the heart and the soul of the Maratha only through the Maharaj.
So, it is not unsurprising that the honour of the Maharaj is being made the key issue by the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi after the collapse of his 35-foot statue last week in the Konkan region. The statue of Maharaj with a sword in his hand was unveiled by the Prime Minister at Rajkot Fort in Malvan tehsil of Sindhudurg coinciding with Navy Day celebrations on December 4 last year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others at the unveiling of the now-collapsed statue of Shivaji on December 4, 2023. Photo: X (Twitter)/@INCKerala
It was unveiled by the PM in the Konkan region ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in a move to make inroads into the bastion of the Shiv Sena. Charges are that to score over the opposition, the statue was installed without much preparation and flouting of the norms. Opposition is alleging massive corruption in the project.
Maharashtra boasts of hundreds of statues of the Maharaj on the forts and on the seashore, in the cities and the towns for the past several decades, including one unveiled by Pandit Nehru and all are in good shape.
The collapse has created a furore in the poll-bound state and the attempts to project the incident as just unfortunate in the face of gusty winds on the seas have found the BJP-dominated Maha Yuti and its
allies at sea.
An angry opposition led by Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray and Nana Patole as well as other state leaders have announced a march this Sunday (September 1) from Hutatma Chowk at Flora Fountain to the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj near the Gateway of India for a “jode mara (Beat with shoes)” campaign against the Eknath Shinde government.
Seeking to exploit the latent anger ahead of the Assembly polls, similar marches would be undertaken later at district and tehsil headquarters to address the “insult” of the Maharaj to the people. The Aghadi insists that this is being done to expose the “Shiv Drohi” (Betrayers to the cause of Shivaji).
What has worsened matters is that neither the central leaders nor the Maha Yuti dispensation in the state has been able to gauge the extent of damage the issue could cause. Opposition leaders have become more angry seeing what they call the “casual” reaction to such a serious issue. The collapse of the statute reeks of all-round corruption in the Shinde dispensation which has not even spared the Maharaj is the refrain of the opposition leaders.
Uddhav Thackeray’s Shivsena is going to the extent of charging the BJP with being lackadaisical on the issue of honour of the Maharaj. To buttress his point, Uddhav Thackeray said that the Sena had taken out a march for the recall of Bhagat Singh Koshyari as governor sometime back when he had disrespected the Maharaj. But no action was taken against the former governor by the Centre.
The political climate in the state has been hotting up for the past some time and the incident of sexual assault on two school-going girls at Badlapur in Thane district, the home turf of chief minister Shinde,
has already put the Maha Yuti dispensation on the defensive.
Incidentally, the last such agitation was launched by the Shiv Sena founder the late Bal Thackeray in Mumbai two decades back against Congress leader and then Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, for
“insulting” freedom fighter Veer Savarkar. Deriding Aiyar, Thackeray had kickstarted the party’s ”Jode Mara” agitation by hitting the minister’s effigy with footwear.
“I have brought my own ‘chappal’ to hit Aiyar”s effigy,” the Sena chief had then said and then slapped the effigy as hundreds of Shivsainiks raised slogans against the Union minister at the sprawling Shivaji Park in central Mumbai.
Now, the failure of the BJP-led ruling front in Maharashtra to control the damage is indicative of its fast losing the plot ahead of the crucial state assembly polls, which are expected to be the most exciting this century. If growing attacks on women damaged its “Ladki Bahin ” Yojana, the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s statue has punctured its poll planks including governance, development and Hindutva.
While this has demoralised its core voters, the floating voters see the Eknath Sinde government as incompetent. The refrain of the leaders of BJP and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena appealing to the Opposition parties not to politicise does not hold much water.
Ruling alliance leaders have not been able to explain why the Prime Minister was in a hurry to unveil the statue. Opposition leaders insist that this was done with a calculation to get the political mileage out of it in the Lok Sabha elections held recently.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who is heading the breakaway faction of the NCP, has tendered an apology over the collapse of the statue. But it happened on the day when the opposition announced the
“jode maro’ agitation. Political observers see Ajit as the lightweight partner of the ruling front who is, in fact, not aware of what is in store for him in the polls ahead.
The issue is unlikely to die before the polls even though the BJP wants the people to forget it as fast as possible. The central leaders of the BJP are maintaining silence fearing that their reaction could aggravate the situation.
Opposition Maha Vikas Agahadi has so far succeeded in the battle of nerves despite splits carried out in the Shiv Sena and the NCP, and their symbols being granted to the splinter groups which have sided
with the BJP.
The kind of politics pursued by the BJP along with the use of money power and misuse of government agencies for power has not gone down well with the people, and it reflected in the results of the Lok Sabha polls where the Aghadi constituents bagged 31 of the total 48 seats.
