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Before you listen to this episode of The Scene and the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
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Do check out Pulya Baazi, hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Koteswane, two really good
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Kick ass podcast in Hindi, it's amazing.
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Sometimes a map can limit the way we think about the world.
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If you utter the word Maharashtra, most people will think of it as one geographical and political
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It's one unit among many that make up India, one block of MPs in the Lok Sabha.
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But actually, what we know as Maharashtra today has far more diversity within it than
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It did not exist for quite a while after independence, with its many components being separate parts
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of Bombay state, Hyderabad and central provinces in Behrar.
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Although the state was put together on the basis of one language, many languages are
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spoken here, as is the case in all of India.
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The state teams with diversity, and I think of that as something wonderful because diversity
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unites us and we can celebrate together in different ways.
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But politics in Maharashtra is based more around what divides us.
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Do you speak Marathi or Gujarati or Hindi?
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Are you Brahmin or Maratha or Dalit?
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Are you from Vidarbha or Marathwada or Konkan or Mumbai?
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Are you a farmer or a banker?
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And amid these divisions, there is one overarching quality that unites all political parties.
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That's the central theme that runs through the gripping ongoing drama of Maharashtra
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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Maharashtra politics has been in the news recently, but in this episode, I want to take a broader
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and deeper look at it than what we get in the present.
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I want to take a journey through the last few decades of Maharashtra politics and try
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to get a better grip on this deeply complex ecosystem.
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And I cannot think of a better guess for this purpose than Sujata Anandan.
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Sujata has been a political reporter since the 1980s and I've been admiring her columns
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on local politics since I first came to Mumbai in 1995.
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She's also written two deeply insightful books, Hindu Hridaya Samrat about the life and times
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of Balasaheb Thackeray in the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Maximus, a broader socio-political
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She's a legend in the space and I'm delighted that she's agreed to come on the show and
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share her insights with me.
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Before we begin our conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Sujata, welcome to The Scene in the Unseen.
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I've been following you as I mentioned in my intro since the 1990s and while many of
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the finest political reporters today are women, back in the day you were almost an exception
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in that sense because there was this feeling that in journalism women do the soft bead,
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they do the features, they do all of that and you were a proper hardcore political reporter.
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How did you get into journalism and reporting?
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I basically took a journalism course because I wanted to join the IAS and I thought taking
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a journalism course will teach me essay writing which had a lot of marks on that.
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But once I went into journalism, I never looked back and I didn't want to become an IAS officer,
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I wanted to continue as a journalist.
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After journalism, I applied for a job to Times of India and there the editor told me that
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I was writing on Rotary clubs, Lions clubs, dance shows, things like that.
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What you said, I'm in soft journalism entertainment and he saw my portfolio and he said that if
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this is the kind of journalism you want to do, I suggest you go and start teaching English
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at Elphinstone College because you can still continue to do this in your spare time.
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But if you want to be a real journalist, you have to choose either business journalism
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or political journalism.
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Now I didn't have a head for business journalism, so I got pushed into political journalism
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But once I was there, I realized my editor was right.
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He said that I was a natural and I realized that I was indeed a natural in political journalism.
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And were you already interested in politics in general or is that something you had to
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In fact, I hated politics at that point of time, which is why I was doing the soft entertainment
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But when I began my career, there was nothing like entertainment journalism.
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I always tell people that had there been entertainment journalism at that time, I would have been
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an entertainment editor rather than a political editor by this time.
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But I got pushed into it against my will.
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I hated it in the first few months and the first couple of years.
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But once I got the hang of it, I think I was able to understand the political nuances much
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better than many other people.
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And what was it like in those early days, like, you know, when you're going out on the
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beach, you're meeting politicians, did they take you seriously?
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How did they treat you?
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How do you learn to sort of talk in their kind of language and have them open up to
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You know, when I started out there, like you said earlier, there were very few women in
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Couple of them were there before me, Olga Telles was there, you know, I mean, I think
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she was the first political woman correspondent and a couple more in Marathi journalism.
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And many of us who were covering active politics, like having to visit Mantrali, having to visit
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the Legislative Assembly during sessions, we had a real battle on our hands in the beginning
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because you know, the legislators, the MLAs coming from villages, coming from small towns,
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they were just not used to seeing, you know, women in such freedom modes, you know, I mean,
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like we were free, we were coming there, we were talking, we were laughing, you know,
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I mean, we were taking our place equally amongst the men and they just couldn't get over that.
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So many of them thought that we were up for some game, you know, I mean, they made passes
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at us, you know, I mean, and they tried to get a lot more serious.
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But then all of us, all the women journalists, we really put them in their place, you know,
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I mean, there was one senior woman journalist who took me under her wing.
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And she said, whenever these MLAs come close to me and they put their face close to me
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and say, so I tell them, you know, that I'm your elder sister, you know, I mean, I'm not
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And I tell them, keep a distance of at least five feet from where you're standing and talking
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And you should also be very careful about this.
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But you know, she was one of the pioneers.
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So she had cleared the way quite a lot by the time I came into journalism, yes, there
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were some ministers, there were some MLAs who tried to make passes, but I knew how to
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You know, I put them in their place and once they got to know, once they got to know that
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you were not up for all these things, then they began to take you very seriously.
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And also I guess language was never a problem for you because like you mentioned before
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we started our conversation, you've pretty much grown up here, the one you said you've
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come from MP where you were born and isn't that something you have in common with Mr.
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Thackeray's father, Keshav Thackeray also came from MP to Maharashtra.
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Yes, he did come from MP to Maharashtra, but he actually migrated.
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My father was posted in Amarnath close to Mumbai, you know, I mean, he was with the
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defense services, you know, I mean, so I was born there and then I came here, I grew up
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here and well, but yes, I am a migrant just like the Thackerays, you know, I mean, I am
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a migrant, but Maharashtra government particularly, I don't know whether this is true about other
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states, it considers that if you have lived in Maharashtra continuously for 20 years,
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you have to be regarded as a native.
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You are a regular Maharashtrian.
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You know, I mean, so by that definition, I am a Maharashtrian, I'm an honorary Maharashtrian.
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You know, I really enjoyed reading both your books, especially in Maharashtra Maximus,
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which has come out recently is especially fascinating because it's sort of puts the
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fault lines in current Maharashtra politics in very sharp historical perspective.
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For example, you know, when people talk about contemporary politics, they'll talk about
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the Brahmins versus Marathas and so on.
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And reading your book, I realized that this is a fault line that is not something that
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only in modern politics, it goes back hundreds of years.
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Tell us a little bit more about that, about, you know, the schism between the two that
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sort of happened when the Peshwas took over from Shivaji.
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Now, Shivaji was a Maratha warrior king and his son Sambhaji and grandson Shahu Maharaj.
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You know, until then, it was the Bhosle dynasty, which had a tight grip on Maharashtra.
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But right from the times of Shivaji, Vishwanath Ballal was their Peshwa, their prime minister.
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And after that, after Shahuji, there was a split in the family.
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There were two sons, you know, I mean, there were two branches of the family.
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Tara Bhai, who was the second wife, you know, she wanted the inheritance for her son, Rajaram.
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And of course, Shahu Maharaj was under the custody of Aurangzeb.
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Aurangzeb had kidnapped him and his mother.
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Then he got released and he came and he sat on the throne.
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But by that time, there was a split in the dynasty.
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So there was one branch ruling out of Kolhapur and one branch ruling out of Satara.
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Now the Peshwas, the prime ministers, the Ballal family, they took advantage of this.
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And while they ruled in the name of the Maratha kings, they were the actual warriors.
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Now they were Brahmins and they were not a warrior caste for those centuries, for those
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You know, I mean, they were not expected to go into the battlefield, but Bajirao, particularly
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Bajirao Ballal, he is one general who never lost a battle, who never lost a war.
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He died early, but he never lost a war.
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And of course, the Marathas had a very guerrilla kind of fighting, you know, they never used
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to have open battles, which is why the first open battle that they ever had, which was
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the Panipat in 1761, you know, I mean, they lost that war because they really could not
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fight that on open ground and but until Bajirao was alive, he never lost a single war.
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And the Marathas, when we refer to Marathas, we also mean the Peshwas, but this Maratha
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Peshwa dynasty, I mean, that war that they lost, the battle of the war of Panipat that
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they lost, it pushed them back by a whole generation, 20, 25 years, they could not do
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Then gradually, gradually, the succeeding dynasties by that time, Shivaji's descendants
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were just rubber stamps, if I may put it like that, you know, I mean, they were just putting
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the mohar on all the decisions of the Peshwas and the inheritors of Bajirao Balal, the heirs
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of Bajirao Balal, they gradually built up the dynasty again, but they were a weakened
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lot and there was a lot of infighting amongst them after Bajirao's death, you know, his
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brother or his nephews, everybody, they wanted a piece of the cake and things like that.
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So the dynasty was highly weakened.
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And if you go back in history, Charles Metcalfe, Lord Charles Metcalfe, who was a governor
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of Bombay, I think, he had said that there are only two ruling powers in India.
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One is the British and the other are Marathas and every territory they seed, we occupy and
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every territory we occupy is seeded to us by the Marathas.
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So they were really ruling from north to south, from east to west, everywhere there was a
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Maratha presence and they had gone as far back as Peshawar.
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And I believe that if they had not lost the battle of Panipat, if they had not lost the
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war of Panipat, maybe we would not have had a partition of India also, because there would
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have been a Maratha rule over there and we may not have had the partition of Bengal,
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because again, there would have been Maratha domination over there, but Marathas were pushed
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back from all the edges.
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Yeah, this is very interesting, like again, bound by, you know, what we know of present
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day geography, people don't often realize how large the Maratha empire was at its peak,
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like you point out from Peshawar to Tanjore and all the way to Bengal in the east and
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Another interesting phrase I picked up from your book, like I've spoken to many historians
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on the show and some of them have told me about how Shivaji's sort of kind of nationalism
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was an early version of the sort of Hindutva nationalism that we see today.
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And in your book, I learned the phrase Maharashtra Dharma.
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And I'll quote from your book where you say, quote Maharashtra Dharma simplified for those
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unfamiliar with the term, meant not just Hindu Dharma, but also nationalism.
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It manifested in 17th century India in various ways, such as a protection of the cow, protection
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of Brahmins, a fight for independence from Muslim Kings, and an attempt to restore morality
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in Indian Hindu society, which many felt had been destroyed by the Islamic rulers, stop
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And I almost feel like this is, you know, like it's the same, right?
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And I received a lot of flak for writing that, you know, I mean, and people could not accept
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there were lots of arguments, you know, during my book launch, et cetera, you know, saying
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that they didn't agree with this.
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But you know, see, Shivaji had a royal saint, you know, all things have their own residence
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saints and all that, which was Ramdas.
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And it was Ramdas's campaign to restore all these old traditional ancient values, et cetera.
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But Shivaji on his own, one must accept, you know, I mean, his closest generals, his most
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trusted generals were Muslims.
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His bodyguard was a Muslim.
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And when he went out to meet Afzal Khan, you know, it was a Muslim bodyguard who warned
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him that there is some conspiracy afoot, and you better be careful because they might be
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And Afzal Khan's conspirator was a Maharashtrian Brahmin.
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So there were really no straight lines dividing the Muslims from the Hindus.
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But yes, they wanted their cultural values to be restored.
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And Shivaji's campaign was for a Hindvi Swaraj, or a Hindvi Swaraj.
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That means an Indian self-rule, not like Hindutva-wadi, not exactly the Hindutva-wadi that we are
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You know, I mean, today it is only majoritarianism, it is only Hindutva, and which is where I
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distinguish today, in modern day also, I distinguish Hinduism from Hindutva, you know, I mean,
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which is very different.
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Hindutva is a political philosophy, is a political philosophy, and Hinduism is a religion.
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But Chhatrapati Shivaji had no problems taking advice from Muslim generals, having Muslim
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generals in his army, they used to lead him into battle, etc.
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So there was no communal divide at that point of time.
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You know, it's interesting that obviously Hindutva, like you correctly said, is sort
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of a political philosophy that the way I had understood it, goes back to the early 20th
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century, is basically Savarkar, RSS, Geeta Press, all of that happening in the 1910s,
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1920s, around that period.
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So I was sort of very intrigued to find earlier articulations of it, such as sort of Shivaji's
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muscular nationalism, and I guess even as Hindvi Swaraj, the way he understood self-rule
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by the people here, excluded the Mughal rulers and the Islamic rulers from that, from his
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understanding of, you know, what our nation is, right?
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You know, Shivaji, Shivaji was in Pune, you know, he inherited a patch of land from his
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father in Pune, which then one of his, what do you say, Acharyas, I could say, you know,
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I mean, he helped him, because Shivaji was a child at that point of time, and Shivaji's
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father was also separated from his mother, he was married a second time, and he was with
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the Islamic kingdoms in the south, in the Deccan, you know, he was a general in that
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And Shivaji was squashed between Mughals in the north and these Deccan Islamic kingdoms
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in the south, and he was in Pune, which was a really wild patch of land, there were wolves,
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there were hyenas, in what we know is Pune today, and a reward was given.
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You know, people said that if you can come and you can clear this patch of the hyenas
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and wolves and everything, we will set up a kingdom here.
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So a lot of farmers came and cleared that place, etc.
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And then he set up his kingdom over there.
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And he had a very difficult task, you know, I mean, squashed between these two sides,
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but then he did make friends with the Deccan Islamic kingdoms.
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Even if they were not very good friends, you know, they had an understanding, they had
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a military understanding.
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But the Mughals were really enemies because, you know, they kidnapped him.
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And even there, Raja Jai Singh, who was sent to kidnap Shivaji, he was a Rajput, he was
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a Hindu Rajput, and he was working on behalf of Aurangzeb.
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And Aurangzeb kidnapped him, kept him in the Agra fort, etc.
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He escaped from there, you know, so there was a big history between him and Aurangzeb
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and then Sambhaji, his son and Aurangzeb, etc.
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Sambhaji was put to death by Aurangzeb.
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And reportedly one of the reasons was he refused to name the Mughals who helped him.
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Yes, the collaborators, including Aurangzeb's son, who was in Sambhaji's army.
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You know, he refused to give away his position.
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And Sambhaji's position was given away by a Maratha general, you know, the More family.
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So these things, you know, are, what do you say, they're not etched in sharp black and
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I mean, it keeps moving between various things.
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No, and it's very interesting.
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And there also you see traces of what you see in contemporary politics, where no matter
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how strongly an ideology is stated, eventually you make friends and enemies of convenience.
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And you know, that way Balasaheb Thackeray is seen as a very sharp, vicious, violent
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Hindutvavadi, but it is interesting that in the, his party was set up in 1966 and the
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first time that he sort of won the municipal corporation elections, he won it on the issue
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of Vande Mataram, because that time, right from then, Muslim corporator from the Congress
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had said that I cannot sing Vande Mataram and Thackeray was looking for this issue to
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And so he just seized on Vande Mataram.
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And he had a very vicious campaign against the Muslims, but still he did not win a majority
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And now to form a standing committee, he needed the support of two or three more corporators.
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Who do you think he goes to?
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He goes to GM Banatwala of the Indian Union Muslim League.
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You know, you have just fought against that party.
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You have called them names, but neither Banatwala nor Bal Thackeray have any problem joining
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hands and becoming part of the standing committee.
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And this kind of a thing has now continued into, into this century, into this decade,
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you know, I mean, anybody who thinks it is politically convenient, years ago, I had Madhya
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Rao's India, the late Madhya Rao's India used to be the general secretary in charge
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of Maharashtra and it was Vajpayee's government in the center.
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So then I had said that, well, if they don't prove a majority, then they will have to resign
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and there will be elections.
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So he said, I don't have any hopes of that, you know, because they will break the other
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political parties and anybody, you know, who's getting a little slice of power will go with
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And so I said, what about ideology?
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So he said, ideology doesn't matter.
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It is only power that matters.
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So that is exactly what is happening even today.
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In fact, another interesting example of Thackeray and of course we will speak about him more
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later in this episode is he had the India Pakistan match stopped where he had the pitch
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at Wankhade dug up in 91 and yet not long after that, he's hanging out with Javed Meandad
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and saying, oh, don't worry, we'll have more matches here and all of that.
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So in private, it's one thing in public, another thing.
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And let's kind of sort of, you know, go back into history and sort of talk about, you know,
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the birth of the shaping of Bombay itself.
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In fact, like it's very interesting, like, you know, you had a lot of nativist claims
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made about Bombay in the last few decades by Thackeray and others, but the interesting
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thing about Bombay is that its origin is actually very syncretic and, you know, it was basically
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two islands owned by Sultan Muhammad Shah.
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He gives that to the Portuguese.
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The Portuguese give it as dowry to the British when Prince Charles marries Catherine of Braganza
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in 1662 and then the British don't really know what to do there and there are, you know,
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Koli fishermen on those islands and there's not much, but then it becomes a good port
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for shipping cotton and they set up cotton mills and Bombay becomes, as you point out
#
a mini Manchester of the East and what happens interestingly there is that all the migrant
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labor brought in is from other rural parts of Maharashtra and from elsewhere.
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So it isn't as if the original ingredients were necessarily Marathi, it's just a mix
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You know, see Surat was a port right from Mughal times, you know, they used to sail
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their ships from there.
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They had to go to Hajj etc.
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So they used to sail from Surat and the British also used Surat, Portuguese also used that
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port, Dutch also used that port, but then the British came into these seven islands
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of Bombay and they joined them together and they realized that strategically it was a
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very good port for military purposes and also for commercial purposes.
#
So when the importance shifted from Surat and Porbandar to Bombay, then there were a
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lot of Gujaratis, Hindu, Jain, Sindhis, Marwadis, Bora Muslims, Parsis etc.
#
You know, I mean, shifting quickly towards Bombay and they were amongst the first ones
#
to set up the textile mills etc.
#
And also, yes, there were these Koli fishermen and there was a migrant labor from interior
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of Maharashtra, but Bombay was actually built up by the Gujaratis, which is the core of
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the fight between the Maharashtrians and the Gujaratis at the moment.
#
So when after independence this became a Bombay state, it was a bilingual state, Paksis, Sorashtra
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and Kutch were in Bombay state and you know, the first chief minister of Bombay state was
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a Maharashtrian, but Muradji Desai was the second chief minister and there were these,
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you know, we talk about the Gujarati duo at the moment, you know, Narendra Modi and Amit
#
Shah, but there was also a Gujarati duo in the fifties, you know, I mean, which was Vallabh
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Patel and Muradji Desai, you know, who were accused of having overdue influence on Pandit
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Jawaharlal Nehru and Nehru preferred to listen to Sardar Patel and to Muradji Desai rather
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than to YB Chavan and the other Maharashtrian leaders.
#
And there was this movement, you know, I mean, for separating the two and all the Maharashtrian
#
leaders complained that whatever the funds are allocated to the Bombay state, these strong
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Gujarati leaders divert that towards Sorashtra and Kutch.
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We don't get anything, Western Maharashtra doesn't get anything, Vidarbhai at that point
#
of time was with Madhya Pradesh with Mahakosha and Marathwada was still with the Nizam of
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Hyderabad, it was part of Hyderabad state.
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So Western Maharashtra and Bombay were with Bombay state, so they say we don't get any
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funds, you know, all the funds are diverted towards Sorashtra and Kutch and so they started
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Incidentally, Barthakli's father was also a big part of that movement and they started
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and then the Congress in those days who did not have any competition began to lose a lot
#
You know, I mean, they began to lose a lot of seats and it went to all Chutput parties,
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I would say, you know, I mean, like Sanyukta Maharashtra movement party and communist party
#
They were not really very strong parties, but still people prefer to vote against the
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So Nehru got unnerved and then we gave in to Chavan's exhortations that Muradji said
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that if you are splitting Bombay state, you know, we want Bombay as our state capital
#
because we are responsible for building it up the way it is.
#
Then Nehru conceded and gave Bombay to Maharashtra.
#
But once Bombay came to Maharashtra, Maharashtra's local Maharashtra's discovered that they still
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did not have rights in their own state capital.
#
They were still second class citizens because this was full of South Indians.
#
If you go and look up the Bombay Municipal Corporation, the list of mayors up to the
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fifties and the sixties are all South Indians, Keralites, Tamilians, Kannadigas or Parsis,
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There's not a single Maharashtra.
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Gujaratis are also mayors, but not a single Maharashtra.
#
And then, you know, in South Bombay, in areas like Girgaon and all those kinds of places,
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there was a major redevelopment.
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The kind that is taking place in Muhammad Ali Road, which is under the Syedna, he's redeveloping
#
So Maharashtra government had taken a redevelopment and during that redevelopment, much of the
#
housing went to either the South Indians or the rich Gujaratis.
#
Nothing came to Maharashtra and this is what bothered Thackeray quite a lot, you know,
#
and that is how he set up the Shiv Sena saying that if there are jobs going in Bombay and
#
if there are, he was basically a Bombay based party at that point of time.
#
And if there are, there is a housing redevelopment, houses have to go to Maharashtra and jobs
#
have to go to Maharashtra.
#
And that is how the whole, what do you say, it's still cosmopolitan, but it shifted its
#
focus towards Maharashtra after that.
#
No, and in fact, your book Maharashtra Maximus does a very good job of sort of delineating
#
the second fault line, the Maharashtrians versus Gujaratis fault line, like as you point
#
out, you know, before independence, the British had set up the BMC and you could only vote
#
if you were a taxpayer.
#
So the majority of the taxpayers were Gujaratis, Parsis, Boras, Sindhis because the Maharashtrians
#
happened to be mostly the migrant labor brought into work in the mills and so on and so forth.
#
And then even after independence, when you have universal franchise, but still, you know,
#
as a sort of legacy of the past, your corporators and all that are Gujaratis, Parsis, Boras
#
and Sindhis, but your bureaucrats are all Tamil and you know, they are running the administration
#
and this is, as you point out, what led to the Samyukta Maharashtra movement coming up.
#
I was struck with this very amusing anecdote, which gave me a sense of how shrill the rhetoric
#
got where when Muradji was a chief minister, like at one point to just give context to
#
this, you say, I'll quote from your book, quote, the turning point in the agitation
#
came when he ordered, he being Muradji, ordered the police to fire on a protesting mob at
#
Flora fountain, which resulted in the murdering of a hundred and six protesters, a fact that
#
has not yet been forgotten by the local populace, stop quote.
#
And obviously this spilled out in the streets and Maharashtrian leaders, you write, who
#
were stalwarts of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, coined this beautiful slogan, Mumbai
#
ahi amchi nahi konachi bapachi.
#
It doesn't belong to anybody's father.
#
It's nobody's father's property.
#
And Muradji got really very angry with that.
#
You know, rural Karate is sometimes very rustic.
#
And even Thakri used to speak a bit like that.
#
He used to call it Thakri Basha, you know, very rough, very rural, very rustic, but they
#
probably don't mean anything with that.
#
So Muradji got a little angry about that.
#
So he said, but Mumbai tumchi ata bandi ghasa amchi.
#
That means now you come in, scrub our utensils.
#
What he meant to say is that we are the rich entrepreneurs and you are just domestic servants
#
And that is what really rattled the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, saying that, you know,
#
I mean, in our own state, in our own city, you know, I mean, they are making us feel
#
as second class citizens.
#
And then they came out on the streets and Muradji was again, you know, very hot tempered
#
So he ordered a firing and those 106 people were martyred and the movement never looked
#
You know, I mean, they had to concede Bombay to Maharashtra.
#
No, and in fact, I'm just thinking that if a chief minister today ordered a firing on
#
106 people dead in Flora fountain, I mean, it's almost unthinkable.
#
And so one can sort of imagine how deep the wounds went.
#
And you also, you sort of point out in your book about how there were all these different
#
little groupings which were coming up fighting for the cause of the Marathi people like the
#
Samyukta Maharashtra movement and so on and so forth.
#
But what made Bal Thackeray's Shiv Sena stand out was his oratory and his ability to draw
#
Yes, you know, if you have read my book on Bal Thackeray, I have insisted that, you know,
#
Bal Thackeray is a creature of the Congress, you know, because the Congress leaders also
#
were rebelling against this, you know, domination of South Indians, domination of Gujaratis,
#
They wanted a state for themselves.
#
And much of what Bal Thackeray said later, you know, speak Marathi in BMC, it did not
#
come from Shiv Sena or Bal Thackeray.
#
It came from the Congress leaders.
#
It came from George Fernandez.
#
It came from Rinal Gore.
#
It didn't come from Bal Thackeray because there was a subnationalism even in the Congress
#
But they were these Gandhi, Topi Wallas, they were these khadi clad leaders and they could
#
hardly descend on the streets and they could hardly say that, you know, throughout the
#
Now, you know, I mean, when the Shiv Sena came to power in 1995, Bal Thackeray in his
#
first address said that, you know, I mean, we will deny ration cuts to North Indians,
#
migrating North Indians.
#
By that time, North Indians were migrating in hordes to Mumbai.
#
The first claim like that was made by a Sayyukta Maharashtra movement legislator in the assembly
#
saying that we should deny ration cuts to South Indians.
#
We should not allow them.
#
You know, I mean, they are consuming our water.
#
They are consuming our natural resources, etc.
#
So Bal Thackeray only copied those ideas.
#
However, the Congress could not openly come out and say these kind of things.
#
So they kind of, you know, I mean, set up Bal Thackeray and in those days, in the 70s,
#
Shiv Sena used to be known as Vasan Sena.
#
And Vasanth Rao Naik was the chief minister and Vasanth Dada Patil was the Maharashtra
#
Pradesh Congress president.
#
So it was a clear indication that, you know, they are the ones who are funding and fueling,
#
you know, Bal Thackeray's sub-nationalism and his regionalism.
#
And at that point of time, there was a sharp divide between Maharashtrans on one side,
#
South Indians, of course, because they were white collar workers, but they were more easily
#
And the Gujaratis were the moneybags and the Congress needed the moneybags for themselves,
#
So they had to be very careful and they had to do it in a, in a very diplomatic fashion
#
and Bal Thackeray was their answer to that.
#
And the tactical element of this is very interesting because again, another thing people might
#
not realize today, where the communists have pretty much been decimated everywhere.
#
But in those days, in the 50s and 60s, the communists were very big, they were, you know,
#
the biggest threat in a sense, in a local sense to the Congress.
#
And you know, they had all the mill workers with them and all that.
#
So tactically, it made total sense for the Congress to have their so-called D Team, you
#
know, the Vasant Sena and then let these guys fight the communists while they can just sit
#
back and, you know, sort of be the mature party.
#
Like there's a political concept I think of in this regard, which is the Overton window.
#
So the Overton window basically is, it's sort of this space within which this linear space
#
within which there is a window which constitutes acceptable discourse, right?
#
So for example, if it is drawn along the line of freedom, at one extreme you have complete
#
freedom, at the other extreme you have complete authoritarianism.
#
And in between there's a window of what the discourse is.
#
And the Overton window can shift where if one party makes a lot of noise, say in terms
#
of total freedom, then people who would, the window shifts in that direction.
#
So people who would otherwise not have been acceptable in the discourse suddenly seem
#
And I'm just sort of thinking aloud, tell me if you agree with this, that what this
#
also made the Congress, it made the Congress look more mature and more reasonable and almost
#
like the adults in the room, because you have these two crazies on either side.
#
And that is what their intention was, you know, I mean, they did not want to soil their
#
hands, you know, by getting into this whole thing and becoming parochial and pushing out
#
The constitution allows freedom of movement anywhere in the country and the Congress,
#
you know, just coming out freshly out of freedom, just 20 years into freedom.
#
They just really could not do this kind of a thing.
#
So they set up this maverick, you know, I mean, who was, but how did he get away?
#
Because you know, there's also a murder case.
#
They murdered a communist leader in Lal Bagh.
#
And then the Shiv Sena man contested that seat, you know, and he became the first legislator
#
in the Maharashtra assembly.
#
How did the Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray get away with it?
#
You know, I mean, unless they had the sanction of the authorities, unless the government
#
was protecting, you know, I mean, he could not have got away with it.
#
The case is still in court.
#
Dange was another person with whom Bal Thackeray temporarily, although he was a communist and
#
Bal Thackeray was a, what do you say, sharp regionalist, Dange and Bal Thackeray came
#
together briefly, maybe one or a couple of meetings in Lal Bagh.
#
And then, and then Thackeray never liked to concede second place to anybody.
#
And Dange also had a great oratory, not in Thackeray's style, but he had a great oratory
#
with which the mill workers reacted to and listened to and they, they resonated with
#
So Thackeray did not like the fact that Dange was overshadowing him, you know, so he promptly
#
dropped that alliance with Dange.
#
No, and I remember you mentioned this part in your book that, you know, Thackeray calls
#
him and they give a speech and Dange gives, speaks first and he's so reasonable and yet
#
he gets a crowd with him and Thackeray is of course, you know, a rabble rouser and Thackeray
#
immediately the nervous and, and the person accused of the Desai murder eventually became
#
a minister in the 95th cabinet.
#
Yes, he became, he became a minister and he was not brought to book, you know, I mean,
#
so it could not have happened without the complicit sanction of the rulers at that time
#
and the rulers were only the Congress, you know.
#
And in your book on Thackeray, Hindu Riddhaya Samrat, you've got these very evocative early
#
sections that give us a glimpse into Thackeray's early resentments, like when he worked at
#
the free press journal, for example, RK Laxman was one of his colleagues and everybody else,
#
all the senior management, the editors and all that was South Indian and they kept referring
#
Laxman's cartoons to his and he felt that that was a discrimination and, and his cartoons
#
have been described by various people as being extremely crude and not quite in the Laxman
#
But he took that resentment with him almost like a generation earlier and I don't mean
#
to imply an equivalence, but almost as if, you know, 50 years before that, you know,
#
Hitler took the knocks he got at our school from his, from the Jews and so on and carried
#
that resentment all the way through.
#
My question is, you've known Thackeray pretty well personally as well.
#
On the one hand, one can say that this was a genuine ideology, that he really felt strongly
#
about this, that we Marathis must have a place and he was really committed to that subnationalism.
#
But then as you also point out, there are so many contradictions in his actions and
#
his targets keep shifting according to what is tactically feasible at different points
#
in time from South Indians to Muslims to North Indians later and so on.
#
So was he a man who had firm beliefs of any kind and ideology of some sort, or was he
#
a political tactician who wanted to be a politician and then just picked whatever niche was most
#
promising at a given point in time?
#
No, I think he was a political tactician, you know, he was not committed to any ideology.
#
Otherwise he would not have aligned with the Muslim League.
#
He would not have called for a school or a hospital on the disputed site in Ayodhya,
#
which he did after participating in the riots post the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
#
He then later called for a school or a hospital when he realized that the Muslims were voting
#
for him because Muslims had extended an olive branch.
#
And you know, I have always insisted that his only ideology was himself.
#
He did believe in the Marathi Manus.
#
He did want to get something for them.
#
But there again, if you notice, you know, the generational change that has happened
#
in the Shiv Sena, he worked with lumpens, you know, he wanted an army, you know, like
#
one call to the army and you know, they are all in the streets, they are flooding the
#
streets and they are causing problems, you know, they're causing riots, etc.
#
So he had an interest in keeping them slightly undereducated, you know, I mean, people who
#
will not turn around and ask questions, like, you know, a friend of mine told me that when
#
you join the NDA, they of course, they fail you if you get three out of 10, but they also
#
fail you if you get eight out of 10.
#
So it's between four and seven, four and seven, because they don't want you to be too intelligent
#
and ask questions and question your commanding officers.
#
So that is what was with Abbar Thackeray.
#
He did not want too educated and too questioning people, you know, so yes, you know, I mean,
#
he was moderately educated and then, you know, like with his Loka Dekar Samiti and with his
#
trade unions, he will come to know that there are jobs opening up in Air India or Mazgon
#
Dogs and, you know, they will be very happy, Balasaheb got us a job as fitter loader turner
#
in all these places, but they never had any ambition beyond that, you know, I mean, it
#
is only the second generation, which has woken up and realized that they were not qualified,
#
you know, I mean, their children were not qualified, etc., or they were not qualified
#
and so they started to send their children to better schools, wanted them to become graduates,
#
wanted them to speak English and not restrict themselves to Marathi.
#
I have quoted, you know, someone in my book, Arun Tikhekar, who was the editor of Lok
#
So he said, Maharashtrian society suffered a generational setback thrice in the past
#
One was this war of Panipat, which the Peshwas lost, the Marathas lost, it took them 25 years
#
The second was Mahatma Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse.
#
People did not trust Maharashtrians for a long time after that, and there were very
#
few Maharashtrians in Nehru's cabinet or in Deera Gandhi's cabinet, etc., they didn't
#
And the third was when Bal Thackeray set up the Shiv Sena.
#
You know, because outside of Maharashtra, everybody got the picture of Maharashtrians
#
as, you know, I mean, wicked, evil, writers, you know, I mean, they are terrible, you know,
#
I mean, they kill you, you know, I mean, they don't allow you to seek jobs in the state
#
and things like that in which the middle class Maharashtrians hated that picture.
#
They hated that picture because they knew that they were not like that.
#
So there was one time when only the lumpens were supporting Bal Thackeray.
#
But then when Uddhav Thackeray took over the thing, he realized what had happened and he
#
wanted a better class of Maharashtrians to be supporting the Shiv Sena, to be representing
#
the Shiv Sena, which is why this change has taken place, you know, I mean, and also the
#
government that we have got it is essentially because the Shiv Sena has stopped being the
#
kind of violent party, you know, okay, fine, it is saying Hindutva, it is asking for the
#
Ram temple, but they have managed to keep that on the back burner and they managed to
#
form a government essentially because they are nonviolent and they believe in the constitution.
#
Bal Thackeray never believed in the constitution or in nonviolence.
#
No, and in fact, another thing I realized while reading your book is the key shifts
#
in the Shiv Sena, like we see that when it starts, a lot of the people who are with Thackeray
#
are actually educated people who are reading because he started this magazine called Marmek
#
as you point out and they are all educated middle class Maharashtrians who are sort of
#
But then he goes completely the lumpen way and the rowdies sort of take over the party
#
and that is happening through the 70s into the late 70s and you know, that earlier the
#
thinking rationalist educated middle class kind of goes away from him and it becomes
#
And you have got this very evocative chapter in your book called Marathi Manus, which in
#
fact I first read as a Kindle single, it was I think released on its own and it is also
#
there in Jagannath on its own I think and I will link that from the show notes and that
#
describes it very evocatively how because he would get these menial jobs for his Shiv
#
Sena foot soldiers through the use of force and all that, that they will be factory watchmen
#
and they will be you know, jobs of that sort, that there was not a stress on education and
#
so on and because of that an entire generation lost those opportunities and they just kind
#
of went forever and the interesting thing is that in that particular case, normally
#
politicians don't walk the talk, but in that particular case, even his the kids of his
#
own family, Uddhav and Raj didn't really have a great education in the sense they were.
#
That is one thing you have to give credit to Thackeray, you know, I mean, he imposed
#
me Marathi and he imposed, you know, I mean, Marathi medium, so he sent his children to
#
Today, they feel handicapped, they feel handicapped, which is why they have sent their children
#
to Bombay, Scottish and St. Xavier's and things like that.
#
And I think Rashmi and Uddhav Thackeray are very proud of Aditya Thackeray that he's able
#
He's part of the Patri crowd, he's part of the bold and beautiful, which they were never
#
You know, I mean, because not only that, you know, I mean, Uddhav and Raj were not really
#
educated in that sense, but you know, I mean, they were also seen as such, you know, I mean,
#
in the sense, you know, these are not the kind of people we want to associate with because
#
they are violent, they beat up people and even, even middle-class Maharashtrians didn't
#
Forget about North Indians and South Indians and other people, they didn't want to do it.
#
So it has been a conscious shift in this Shiv Sena and in that chapter, which you just quoted,
#
I have a story about this person who's now a very top-ranking PR person and he was living
#
in Lal Bagh and his mother was teaching English in a government school, in a government or
#
a municipal school, but you know, long before Thackeray's policy of me Marathi, she wanted
#
her children to learn the mother tongue.
#
So she put her children into Marathi medium schools initially, you know, primary, et cetera.
#
But whenever they wanted to read English books, you know, she always went to the library and
#
got them, you know, so she got them Shakespeare, she got them Burnaby, et cetera.
#
And as these children grew up, they began more interested in reading English literature,
#
And then they began to question and Lal Bagh was really right in the heart of the Shiv Sena
#
So this particular person began to question Thackeray's parochial policies and he got
#
beaten up right royally by all the Shiv Sena supporters, et cetera, every time he used
#
to get beaten up whenever he used to ask questions.
#
First, he became a journalist, then he moved into PR and now he lives in a huge flat facing
#
the sea and he has about two or three cars parked in his basement, et cetera.
#
And then he told me that, you know, I mean, I'm still friends with those people that I
#
grew up with and then I invite them home and then they come and then they look at my cars
#
and then they look at my house and they look at the sea facing window, et cetera, and they
#
And even I don't say anything, although I want to tell them, I tell you so.
#
And I want to tell them that, you know, around the time when you were lending your muscle
#
to Bal Thackeray, I was sitting in the libraries of Mumbai reading Shakespeare in Bernard Shaw
#
and getting mocked for it, which is why I'm here and you are where you are.
#
You know, I mean, so that, that difference has been understood by the second generation
#
So they don't want that.
#
And if you remember, I don't know whether you were in Bombay that time.
#
There was a time, you know, when these Shiv Sena used to go to all these convent schools,
#
you know, St. Anne's, Don Bosco, et cetera.
#
And they used to beat up the fathers and the nuns, et cetera, because they wanted their
#
children to be admitted to those schools.
#
And these missionary schools, you know, they have a very strict thing, you know, I mean,
#
and they also put a lot of weightage on their parents.
#
Are your parents educated?
#
Are your parents speaking English?
#
You know, I mean, are they capable of doing your homework?
#
I mean, helping you do your homework, do they beat up the teachers because you're not admitting
#
you're not admitting, you know, I mean, that kind of a thing.
#
And then Archdiocese, you know, they passed a law saying that we are not going to listen
#
I mean, we are not going to admit politician children just because they are, you know,
#
I mean, they are politicians' children.
#
They have to come here on merit, you know, the parents have to come and they have to
#
And when they realize that they're not getting admission in these schools, then they shifted
#
to certain other schools, like, you know, Bombay Scottish, which doesn't have that kind
#
You know, it is not run by missionaries, et cetera, you know, American international.
#
They send their children to those schools, but they definitely got them a proper education.
#
And it's interesting that you also talk about like the second interesting shift that happens
#
like one is, of course, a shift to the shift in the late seventies becoming this lumpen
#
And the other shift is after they come to power in 95, they get drunk on power.
#
And your common shifts in our foot soldiers are doing extortions and taking money from
#
At one point you write in your book that people stopped buying cars or doing any kind of conspicuous
#
Yeah, but that essentially changed because people reacted to that.
#
This was between 96 and 98.
#
Even people like doctors and lawyers and professionals like that, they were dressing down.
#
They would probably drive in a Maruti 800 instead of Mercedes-Benz and things like that,
#
because they knew that they were under the focus of all the Shakha pramukhs, et cetera.
#
You know, it got so bad because the Shiv Sena has got this labor unions in five star hotels,
#
in airports, in hospitals also.
#
So even if a heart patient was admitted to a hospital and he went in for heart surgery.
#
And after that, the doctor would get an extortionist call and even the patient would get an extortionist
#
They'd say, we know that you paid, you know, so many lakhs for this operation.
#
And then they would tell the doctor that we know that, you know, you earn so many lakhs,
#
you know, so you can afford to pay us this much, et cetera.
#
It became really, really very bad.
#
And then it came to businessmen also, you know, I mean, these businessmen who had wanted
#
to support the Shiv Sena, et cetera.
#
So at that point of time, I think it was in 98, that they all got together and they held
#
a meeting at Chowpatty.
#
And then they said, enough is enough.
#
We are not going to stand this nonsense.
#
And they got a lot of support from the police commissioner at that time, et cetera, because
#
even the police commissioner was sick and tired of all those extortionist calls and
#
extortionist complaints and things like that.
#
So they got together and they said, we are not going to pay you a single naya paisa.
#
Not only that, you know, I mean, businessmen going to Thackeray's house, you know, in posh
#
cars would have to leave the keys there and come back without their cars, you know, I
#
mean, so they would always go there in taxis.
#
And you never knew, you know, there would be something like, you know, Thackeray is
#
He's going to somebody's house and he sees this cake shop.
#
He gets into the cake shop and he pays and he buys the cake to take it somewhere.
#
But after that, there would be a line of Shiv Sena for days and days saying that we want
#
this cake, we want this pastry, et cetera.
#
And they would just walk away with it without anything.
#
You know, I mean, so this kind of thing used to happen.
#
And then they all got together and they said, enough is enough.
#
We are not going to pay you a single thing.
#
And then Thackeray realized that he was in danger.
#
You know, I mean, if he lost the popular support and also he lost the support of people who
#
were donating to his party, I mean, proper donations to his party, then he would be in
#
But having said that, I have to say that the Shiv Sena in Thackeray's time always had three
#
If I may say so, I mentioned it in my book also, one was the pure extortionist.
#
You know, he would go and he would extort.
#
You know, somebody told me that every other political party, the political leader collects
#
money at the top and passes it down to the workers.
#
Shiv Sena was the only party where the workers collected it from the bottom and passed it
#
You know, but Thackeray, knowing that he could not walk into those shops himself and extort
#
the money from them, he would pass on 20% of the collections to his Shiv Sena, which
#
is how they went from slums to Charles to flats to high rises to bungalows in some place
#
And they were very grateful to Thackeray because, you know, I mean, they said he shares it.
#
He shares it with us because they know that they cannot extort in their own name.
#
If they go and walk into a shop, nobody is going to pay them a second look.
#
They're not going to give them a second look.
#
So that was pure extortionism.
#
Then there were those who believed in violence along with extortion.
#
You know, if you resisted, then they would be violent.
#
You know, I mean, and they were the more dangerous ones.
#
And then there was a third one who was there only for Marathi asmita, Marathi pride, Marathi
#
They are the ones who got really tired of this kind of a thing, extortion and extortion
#
And then, you know, Sharad Pawar broke the Congress in 1978 and he formed his own regional
#
So the Marathi ethos people all shifted to Sharad Pawar.
#
So Thackeray lost a lot of his base at that point of time.
#
The middle class intellectual Maharashtrian just shifted away from the Shiv Sena and went
#
It would take another eight years for Sharad Pawar to rejoin Congress.
#
And then those people who didn't like Congress, they shifted base back to Shiv Sena.
#
But by that time, Thackeray had learned his lesson.
#
He knew that he could not be a pure extortionist and pure violent party.
#
No, I always think of political parties as sort of rival mafias, which are basically
#
just fighting for, you know, that period in time when you get the monopoly to power, you
#
But the thing is, even if you steal public money, there's a subtle way to do it, which
#
is you form the government and you steal public money in so many ways.
#
And there is the unsubtle, crass way of doing it, which is, I guess, what Shiv Sena getting
#
carried away into the business of politics.
#
I mean, you could call them a nouveau mafia and they did for that period in time.
#
And then they also changed.
#
And let's kind of talk about Sharad Pawar a bit, because what is also very interesting
#
is that back in Thackeray's early days when he was in the Free Press Journal, Sharad Pawar
#
used to hang out with him.
#
Yes, Sharad Pawar used to hang out with him and he sat in and all the meetings and discussions
#
that happened about the formation of the Shiv Sena, they used to sit somewhere in Elphinstone
#
They used to hire a hall and sit in Elphinstone College and there was, you know, I have mentioned
#
in the book also that it is the industrialists of Bombay, along with the congress politicians
#
who had an interest in seeing the formation of the Shiv Sena so that they could use this
#
kind of this army of lumpens, you know, I mean, to get what they couldn't through the
#
So Sharad Pawar was a youth congress leader at that point of time.
#
And although he may not admit it, I'm convinced, you know, I mean, that he was asked by some
#
of the senior leaders, most probably the chief minister of Maharashtra at that time, Vasanth
#
Rao Naik, you know, I mean, to sit in on those meetings and guide Thackeray into it.
#
And they used to be a secretary of Ramakrishna Bajaj also who used to be sitting in on those
#
So, you know, whether he had a real big role in the formation of the Shiv Sena, one cannot
#
say, but he definitely sat there and he guided Thackeray and they have been friends from
#
And everybody thinks that, and I have mentioned, you know, that they are bitter political rivals,
#
but in private life, they're the best private friends.
#
And there were at certain points, there was an overlap between the voters that they were
#
competing for, which is basically the Marathas, isn't there?
#
Yes, Marathas in the sense, you know, I mean, Thackeray never really had, although he is
#
based his party on Shivaji and, you know, on his name, he never really had Maratha Marathas
#
His Maratha vote was always with the Congress and later the NCP and then it shifted to the
#
BJP for certain political reasons.
#
But a lot of, you know, the ones who believed in Marathi ethos, Marathi pride, and those
#
are the ones, you know, Sharad Pawar had been the chief minister in 78, then again in 88
#
And, you know, he acquired the reputation of being a great administrator.
#
And I won't call him a visionary in the sense of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, but you know,
#
he definitely was farsighted.
#
He saw many things, you know.
#
So Marathas prefer to, what do you say, identify with him rather than Vartha Thackeray, you
#
know, I mean, the more educated, the more soft spoken, the more, what do you say, knowledgeable.
#
And Sharad Pawar is not very good at hype and beating his own, blowing his own trumpet,
#
but he has done a lot more for the people in the villages and rural areas and particularly
#
his constituency and people wanted to associate with him rather than Vartha Thackeray.
#
Ajit Pawar, his nephew, once said, you know, what has Vartha Thackeray done for the people
#
Has he set up a single educational institution?
#
Has he set up a single sugar factory or has he set up anything else that is benefiting
#
the common people of Maharashtra?
#
He's only been doing for himself, himself, you know, he's been just, you know, he's
#
been building a house, he's been building something and, you know, I mean, he's been
#
doing nothing for the people, which is true also.
#
In your book, you quote him as saying, all he's done is built a house with 27 air conditioners.
#
Yes, there were 27 air conditioners in his house, you know, so, and which is really true.
#
He never did anything for the Maharashtrian people.
#
He never thought about it.
#
He didn't set up a hospital.
#
He didn't set up a school.
#
Sharad Pawar has done much of it, you know, although it is under the radar.
#
He doesn't tom-tom and he doesn't blow his own trumpet, but Maharashtrian, middle-class
#
Maharashtrian intellectuals wanted to identify more with Sharad Pawar at that time.
#
And with Bal Thakri and until he rejoined the Congress, because, you know, these people,
#
some of these people, they don't like the Congress.
#
They have never liked the Congress from the beginning and they always wanted an alternative.
#
So they thought that they were getting an alternative in Bal Thakri when they realized
#
how violent and extortionist that party was and that they were not like that and they
#
They shifted to Sharad Pawar when he formed the Congress S. When he came back to the Congress,
#
many of them shifted back to the Shiv Sena.
#
By that time, the BJP was also kind of in alliance with the Shiv Sena.
#
And if you notice, every other regional party, whether it is Telgu Dasam in Andhra Pradesh
#
or Aham Ganparesh in Assam or even Trinamool Congress and Mayavati, Mulayam Singh Yadav,
#
all of them have come to power in their respective states within five years of their existence.
#
You know, they formed a political party, maybe five years or at the most, most the next term,
#
sixth year, seventh year, they have come to power.
#
Shiv Sena is the only party which took 30 years to come to power in Maharashtra.
#
And that too only in alliance with the BJP because, you know, they didn't look upon themselves
#
as a political party and governing Maharashtra was never their intention.
#
Like I said, they were just extortionist, you know, I mean, they were collecting left,
#
That is all that they were interested in, you know, I mean, and Bal Thakri was only
#
He was not interested in anything else.
#
You know, I mean, I would endorse Ajit Pawar that he never did anything for the people
#
And it's very interesting.
#
Like in your book, you point out how one point of disillusionment and obviously there was
#
a sense among many people that they are a beating of the Congress and the Congress is
#
But one major disillusionment came in 75 when Thakri went on TV to support the emergency
#
after earlier having come out against it.
#
And that is also because, you know, I mean, he was forced, Isbi Chavan was the chief minister
#
and they sent a posse of policemen to Mata Sree and, you know, Thakri wanted to protect
#
his magazine Marmik and all journals were being shut down at that point of time and
#
he didn't want that to happen.
#
So they gave him a choice, you know, I mean, saying that, you know, either you come with
#
us to Doordarshan and support the emergency or else we are taking you to jail and you
#
will be shutting down Marmik, you know, so they gave him half an hour.
#
He came out in 10 minutes and said, come, let's go to Doordarshan and they shut down
#
Yeah, later on, you know, I mean, so never trust the devil as they say, you know, I mean,
#
But he wanted to protect Marmik and he was also afraid of jail, you know, because once
#
he went to jail for three months in 1969 during the, you know, the Belgaum riots, anti-Muradji
#
Basically, you know, I mean, they wanted to stop Muradji Desai and give him a petition
#
I did not want to stop and he ran his vehicle over some ships and et cetera.
#
So everybody went on rampage and then they arrested Thakri and put him in prison and
#
he didn't like that experience of three months.
#
So he didn't want to go to jail, you know, I mean, so he preferred, you know, and he
#
Actually, the opposition was very disappointed because at that point of time they had needed
#
They had needed his foot soldiers and then suddenly the foot soldiers were not available,
#
you know, I mean, and he had supported the Congress, but he had supported Indira Gandhi.
#
He also met Indira Gandhi during the emergency and Mrs. Gandhi also struck the Shiv Sena
#
of the band parties list after meeting Bal Thakri.
#
So there was a quid pro quo there.
#
But after she died, he did not feel obliged to support the Congress anymore.
#
So if you see, there is a shift in his philosophy from region to religion from 1984 onwards.
#
And from 1984 to about 1987, when there was a by-election in Vilepalli in Mumbai, Dr.
#
Ramesh Prabhu was contesting that election.
#
He became a very sharp Hindutva-wadi and his Hindutva was even too sharp for the BJP at
#
The BJP had just come out of this Jantadal experiment, you know, I mean, 1978, etc.
#
And they had supported a Janta party candidate and Congress was contesting and Shiv Sena
#
was contesting and Bal Thakri made these very, very incendiary speeches against Muslims,
#
And he has the record of being the first Indian to be disenfranchised by the election commission
#
for basing his election campaign on religion rather than on secular issues.
#
But his campaign was in 1987, but it took 10 years for the decision to come.
#
So he was disenfranchised for six years and he couldn't vote until 2004.
#
And so was Mr. Ramesh Prabhu.
#
It destroyed Ramesh Prabhu's career, but it didn't make any difference to Bal Thakri because
#
he was not contesting elections anyway, and he continued with the same thing.
#
But you know, what happened is after 1987, after his sharp Hindutva focus, then Pramod
#
Mahajan, you know, I mean, realized that, you know, they were also going, BJP was also
#
shifting towards a sharp Mandir focus, etc.
#
And he said that we don't want our Hindutva votes to be divided.
#
They came together and it is in company with Pramod Mahajan that Thakri realized the value
#
of really seriously fighting the assembly elections and coming to government.
#
So for the first time, usually he used to get only one MLA at a time in the Maharashtra
#
But in 1990, for the first time in alliance with the BJP, he got about 80 or 85 MLAs.
#
And then the next election, 95, he managed to get a government.
#
So you know, we'll talk about 1980s politics and the rise of the BJP and also the cooperative
#
movement and the part that played in politics after the break.
#
But before we go to the break, you know, you knew these people very well.
#
For example, you knew Bal Thakri very well, you interviewed him countless times.
#
If I remember correctly, you broke the news to him that the Babri Masjid has broken and
#
people are sanctioned the shifts and has done it.
#
So in your personal interactions with him, and I'm assuming after a while, like, was
#
there some kind of friendship developing there?
#
And B, did you find that in person he was reflective about what he was doing or was
#
he always drunk on his school aid or was he always putting up a front for everybody, including
#
Did he realize the mistakes he had made or did he regret things he had done?
#
I used to have a love hate relationship with him.
#
You know, I never agreed on certain issues, but maybe, maybe there were some things that
#
For example, when he said that, you know, I mean, do only criminals have human rights?
#
You know, I mean, and the victims don't have human rights.
#
Yes, I could not disagree with him over there.
#
But you know, and then once I challenged him, I said, how can you label all Muslims as anti
#
national and how can you label all Muslims as terrorists?
#
And there is an Abdul Hamid also, you know, I mean, the famous Abdul Hamid, you know,
#
who fought against Pakistan in on the border, and he was killed and posthumously awarded
#
the Parambit Chakra, etc.
#
So he said, yes, I have to make a difference.
#
I have to make a difference between loyal Muslims and disloyal Muslims.
#
But if they want to stay in this country and if they want to, you know, part of our gross
#
national product, you know, the gross domestic product, then they have to act like Indians,
#
which was also an acceptable thing, you know, I mean, like you can't have anybody living
#
here in being a terrorist, you know, I mean, you have to follow the laws, you have to follow
#
But I personally would not make a difference between the religions.
#
Tafni used to make a difference on that between the religions.
#
But this was before a lot of saffron terrorism came to light, you know, I mean, so so I could
#
not argue with him on that, you know, by the time the saffron terrorism came to light,
#
he was a very sick man.
#
He was always in hospital, you know, I mean, I never got a chance to go and have those
#
long conversations with him that I had had in the 80s and the 90s, etc.
#
And was he someone who read books a lot or, you know, I mean, what was his intellectual
#
engagement with the world per se?
#
Were there thinkers he was influenced by?
#
You know, he had the advantage of having a lot of, like I said, the Maharashtrian intellectuals,
#
the early days, you know, like Dr. Ramesh Prabhu, he was a medical doctor.
#
He was his private physician.
#
You know, he joined the Shiv Sena the day Thackeray held that rally in Shivaji Park.
#
He signed up for the Shiv Sena and then he got noticed by Bal Thackeray and Thackeray
#
called him home and he became Thackeray's physician.
#
So there were lawyers, there were professors, there were doctors, there were engineers,
#
all these kind of people who joined and I'm sure they gave him inputs.
#
I'm sure they gave him inputs.
#
But like I said, he alienated all of these people and he decided to focus more on the
#
He got a lot more out of the lumpens and he got out of these intellectuals.
#
But I don't think he was very fond of reading.
#
I don't think he, you know, because he was never taken to quoting and things like that.
#
But then he would say Hitler was a nationalist.
#
He never read Hitler to know what Hitler had done.
#
And then when you challenged him and you said, do you know what he did to the Jews?
#
And he equated the Jews only with the Muslims, you know, and then when you told him that
#
the Jews at that point of time were all intellectuals, they were professors, they were doctors, you
#
know, I mean, they were philosophers, they were scientists, you know, he was a little
#
They were not always like this.
#
I said, no, they had to become like this because of what happened during the Holocaust.
#
You know, I mean, they were not militant because, you know, Israel is now a very militant country,
#
you know, I mean, so and I told him that, you know, Israel has to be like that because
#
it is surrounded on all sides by Islamic nations, you know, I mean, so they have to do something
#
to keep their heads above water, you know, but they were not like that always.
#
And they were taken advantage of, so he would be taken aback a little bit.
#
So I don't think he really actually bothered to read, but there were people who were feeding
#
him a lot of information, including from newspapers, he would always have a lot of clippings marked
#
in red and things like that with him.
#
So he had a lot of inputs.
#
And then attraction towards intellectuals like even Suresh Prabhu later on when he brought
#
him into the party and, you know, insisted that he become a minister in the central government
#
We'll take a quick commercial break and we'll continue this conversation.
#
Hey, everybody, welcome to another great week on the IVM Podcast Network.
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We have Intel, Cambly and Storytel.
#
This week on Cyrus Says, Cyrus is joined by writer Daksh Tyagi.
#
Daksh talks about his debut book, A Nation of Idiots.
#
He discusses what goes into writing satire, which is critical of the people and governments
#
in power and what are the legal hassles in doing so.
#
On the Filter Coffee Podcast, Karthik is joined by brand builder and author Siddharth Banerjee
#
and corporate mythologist and author Eka Chaturvedi Banerjee.
#
Together they talk about the art of hyper learning and discuss their journey on setting
#
On Edges and Sledges, Varun Ashwin and DJ talk about India's T20 series win over the
#
West Indies and the first ODI in Chennai.
#
On The Habit Coach, Ashton talks about motivation, grit, self-discipline and about finding purpose
#
in the everyday things that you do.
#
On Tapri Tales, Madhuri narrates a story titled Reshma's Purse.
#
Tune in to hear the backstories of the little things that reside inside a woman's purse.
#
On Storytellers and Storysellers, Vineeth is joined by actor Amol Parashar and content
#
strategist at TVF Akansh Skaur.
#
They talk about the risks and rewards they encountered after quitting their traditional
#
jobs for digital media entertainment.
#
And with that, let's get you on with your show.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Sujata Anandan about Maharashtra politics.
#
And you know, before the break, we've spoken a lot about the Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar
#
and we'll continue to do so as we go on through the 80s and 90s to the present time.
#
But tell me also a little bit about how the Congress is evolving in this time and also
#
about the very unusual role of cooperatives in Maharashtra politics.
#
See, I'll tell you, cooperatives are the backbone of the Congress and of Maharashtra politics,
#
which is why the Congress has lasted as long as it has done in Maharashtra.
#
It lost power in so many other states and even in 1978 when the Congress split, it did
#
not quite go out of power and the two wings, you know, the Sharad Pawar Congress and the
#
Vasanth Dada Patil Congress, they continued because they were joined by the common interest
#
And the cooperatives are very interestingly placed in the sense the farmers have to be
#
members of these cooperatives and they elect a chairperson and then the chairperson goes
#
ahead to contest either the assembly election or the Lok Sabha election.
#
So your local chairperson is either a member of parliament or a member of the legislative
#
And for these sugar barons or cooperative barons, their politics is dependent upon their
#
business and their business is dependent upon politics.
#
And this sense was there only with Sharad Pawar, which is why in 1999 when he split
#
the Congress again, most of the sugar barons went to Sharad Pawar.
#
You know, the Apex Cooperative Bank, Ajit Pawar, his nephew was the chairperson of the
#
Apex Cooperative Bank and all these sugar barons who were not necessarily Pawar supporters
#
and who may have wanted to support Sonia Gandhi or the Congress.
#
You know, they have their loans pending with the Apex Cooperative Bank.
#
And then if they are not on the side of Sharad Pawar, you know, they don't get their loans
#
and that destroys their business and the business destroys their politics because if they don't
#
have a factory, they don't have waters at the assembly elections or parliamentary elections.
#
And it has really been their backbone and it also saves the farmers.
#
You know, I mean, sugar is a very water intensive crop.
#
So sometimes that might cause problems during drought, etc.
#
When these sugar barons set up, you know, dairying, you know, I mean, so a lot of dairies
#
have grown up in Maharashtra, so many names, you know, Varana and so many other things.
#
And so if you have a bad monsoon and you cannot grow crops, you cannot grow sugarcane, then
#
you depend upon dairy farming, you know, I mean, milk, you know, other things, cheese,
#
butter, all those things help the farmers.
#
So and that is what the BJP had been trying to break in the past five years.
#
And I have a feeling that the, you know, the farmers problem in Maharashtra particularly
#
got compounded because of that, you know, because they would bring their crops or their
#
pulses or whatever they have to the agriculture produce marketing committee and, you know,
#
the government would not give them the minimum retail price or whatever, you know, I mean,
#
they won't give them that.
#
And they would have to do distress sales, etc.
#
They would not even be able to recover.
#
And particularly with regard to tuvar dal, for example, you know, I mean, they would
#
pack this, you know, I mean, they harvest the tuvar dal sometime in March, April, and
#
they bring it to the APMC, you know, I mean, around that time.
#
And if you do not lift their pulses around that time, there are these sacks of pulses
#
sitting in the market yards, and then there is monsoon in June, and it rains and the sacks
#
get soaked, you know, I mean, and then they get mildew and things like that, and their
#
entire crop is destroyed.
#
And this happened for three or four years, it has happened in Maharashtra, which is why
#
the problem that the Maharashtra's farmers are facing has been much, much more than farmers
#
And this was done deliberately to break the back of the NCP in the Congress because all
#
these farmers voted for the NCP in the Congress.
#
Even the ruling dispensation hoped that if the farmers suffer, then they would not vote
#
for the Congress and the NCP.
#
But like someone told me that, unfortunately, the BJP and the Shiv Sena do not understand
#
what a cooperative movement is.
#
They just, even a cooperative bank, they do not understand what a cooperative bank is
#
there for, and cooperative bank is there for this only.
#
And the demonetization also broke their back, you know, because the farmers all have their
#
accounts only in cooperative banks, and then you say that cooperative banks are not entitled
#
to exchange the old notes.
#
They didn't have money, and you brought the demonetization at the mouth of the Rabi season.
#
They were waiting to buy their seeds and fertilizers, and you brought this in.
#
And one farmer told me, then ma'am, I was not getting money out of farming, so I shifted
#
You know, I mean, I bought seeds and fertilizers, and I thought that this season I'm going to
#
But now there's nobody coming and buying my seeds, and you know, I mean, I spent so much
#
money and my seeds are sitting here, my fertilizer, and what do I do?
#
So he started to give it to the farmers and credit.
#
He said, because it is if I gave it on credit, I can recover something, otherwise it will
#
So that also broke their back in the context of Maharashtra, particularly, I think the government
#
had hoped that the Congress and the NCP will lose their grip on the farmers by breaking
#
But they do not understand, and when they set up a cooperative bank, they think it is
#
about giving car loans and giving housing loans.
#
They don't understand how the system works.
#
And they didn't understand the connection between farmers and agriculture and industry
#
And they just didn't understand the connection that, you know, if the farmers do not have
#
a proper deal, if they are not producing proper crops, you know, I mean, that there is no
#
demand for tractors, there is no demand for machinery, there's no, you know, I mean, those
#
kind of things, they just didn't understand the connections as a result of which I have
#
a feeling that the past dispensation has driven the rural economy to the ground.
#
I have had multiple episodes on demonetization, which, of course, was massively disastrous
#
for the entire economy, regardless of timing.
#
There was an interesting observation in your book also about cooperatives, where you quote
#
someone talking about how cooperatives were really only good for the rural elites.
#
And you know, the way you describe the systems of how the cooperatives function, that the
#
average farmer at the bottom of the food chain has no option but to go to a specific place
#
and sell and buy at specific prices.
#
And there are basically no functional markets for him.
#
He's almost like a feudal.
#
Like I told you that, you know, I mean, their business depended upon politics, politics
#
But you know, at the bottom level, there is a zoning in Maharashtra.
#
You know, there are so many sugar cooperative factories and one factories in one particular
#
zone, say the Satara zone or Sangli zone, or even Satara and Sangli may have two or
#
So the farmers are within a radius of that zone, and they have to necessarily take their
#
sugar cane to that factory.
#
You know, I mean, even if another factory is giving a better rate, they cannot take
#
their sugar cane to that factory.
#
And if they have not voted for that particular chairman or chairperson, they have not voted
#
for him and they have not elected him to office either the legislative assembly or parliament.
#
What happens is their sugar cane is not crushed in the sense of a cutting season is the harvesting
#
season is October to November.
#
If you go now, I mean, it is December now.
#
So if you go now into the rural areas, you'll see loads and loads of trucks and tractors
#
and bullock carts piled high with sugar cane, you know, heading towards these factories.
#
Now the yield of the sugar cane, it has to be pressed within about 10 days of cutting.
#
It has to be crushed within 10 days of cutting.
#
Then it gives you a 90 to 95% yield.
#
And the longer you let it be, the juice yield will not be so much.
#
So if you crush it in April, it'll come down to 10 or 20%.
#
And the farmer gets paid according to the yield of his sugar cane.
#
So if you don't get, if you don't vote for the guy, this is how you get punished.
#
If someone suspects that you have not voted for him, he will not crush, he will not say
#
He will just not crush your sugar cane.
#
He'll say that, yeah, it is in the queue.
#
It's not yet come up for crushing.
#
By the time it comes up for crushing, he gets only a 10 to 20% yield on that.
#
He gets only that much money and everything is dependent upon that.
#
And only when he gets the money, he can buy for the seeds, he can hire labor, et cetera.
#
So it is really a very futile system.
#
But there's so many poor farmers sort of trapped in this system.
#
I would imagine that at some point there would be a movement among them and some political
#
entrepreneur would take advantage of that or...
#
There was an attempt around the 90s to set up some private sugar factories.
#
But I don't think the private entrepreneurs took it very seriously because some of them
#
drove it to the ground.
#
Some of them had other reasons why they set up the factories.
#
And basically these kinds of things continued.
#
And once upon a time, it was only Congress and NCP who was setting up the sugar factories.
#
Later on, even the BJP, even the Shiv Sena, they all started to set up because they realized
#
I mean, this is how, but they had to be rural people.
#
Like Gopinath Munde, the late Gopinath Munde, for example, I mean, in 1994, 95 when Sharath
#
Pawar was the chief minister, he was the opposition leader and we called him a fantastic
#
opposition leader because he was taking on Sharath Pawar, he was saying things, etc.
#
and Pawar was seen as a very strong chief minister, but he could not answer any of Gopinath
#
But after Munde came into government, he went and set up his own sugar factories.
#
He lost a lot of steam after that.
#
After that, he could never take up farmers' issues.
#
So this is what happens in Maharashtra.
#
It's very easy to be virtuous in opposition.
#
So, let's kind of get back to the 80s and we are at a point where what has already happened
#
by the late 70s and by the early 80s is the Shiv Senas, basically, they've lost a Marathi
#
middle-class intellectual to Sharath Pawar's breakaway party and they're basically a lump
#
They're a force on the streets and not really a political force.
#
And the Congress now wins an election and everyone's expecting that Vasundhara Patil
#
will be the chief minister, but instead, Indira Gandhi puts AR on today in that place.
#
Tell me a bit about that and the sentiments that that then evoked within the political
#
You know, Antilay was good friends with Bal Thackeray and when he went and he requested
#
Bal Thackeray in 1980, when they held the election because Sharath Pawar was leading
#
the Congress as at that point of time and everybody expected the Congress vote to split.
#
And of course, there were the Janata Party, communist parties, all the ones who had been
#
part of the Janata Party formation in 77, they were also in the free.
#
But then Bal Thackeray decided at that point of time to support Indira Gandhi, which meant
#
that he did not contest the election.
#
He did not put any Shiv Senaks in the free and people said that that helped the Congress
#
And Antilay was a good friend of his.
#
Antilay used to go up to Matushri and chat up Bal Thackeray.
#
And if you have seen Mantralay, the state headquarters, as soon as you enter, there
#
is a huge portrait of Shivaji and that is Antilay's doing.
#
He said that he knew that there was this portrait of Shivaji and he searched the premises of
#
Mantralay and then he found it in one room, you know, I mean, gathering dust, etc.
#
He had it dusted off and polished up and then he installed it over there and Thackeray quite
#
appreciated that, you know, I mean, that, okay, fine.
#
And Antilay also insisted, Antilay had hired a historian to write some 14 volumes on Chhatrapati
#
Shivaji and he said, I wanted it to be called only Shivaji the great, like Akbar the great
#
or Ashoka the great, you know, or Alexander the great, you know, so I wanted that.
#
So Thackeray appreciated that also and Antilay wanted the sword of Bhavani to be returned
#
by Queen Elizabeth, you know, because the British had taken it over there and he made
#
moves also to have that and all these were appreciated by Bal Thackeray.
#
So they were very great friends.
#
So until Antilay was the chief minister, Thackeray was quite supportive of the Congress and until
#
But in 1984, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated.
#
But simultaneously in 1984, also, if you remember the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front in the UK,
#
they kidnapped a diplomat called Ravindra Mathri, you know, and Ravindra Mathri was
#
You know, and Thackeray had this talent of marrying two sentiments together.
#
You know, like he married the Marathi sentiment and anti-left sentiment together to defeat
#
Krishnamenon in Bombay after Nehru's passing away when he got it to 69 or something.
#
So now, you know, Thackeray was, if nothing, he was at least a supporter of the Marathi
#
So Ravindra Mathri was a Marathi Manus.
#
But this is also when, ahead of the BJP, he spotted this feeling growing in the Indians,
#
anti-Muslim appeasement feeling growing up amongst Indians and the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation
#
Front was responsible for his kidnapping and killing.
#
Like I said, in 87, he came into a shop focused that got him disenfranchised also.
#
But he built up to this from 84.
#
Mrs. Gandhi was gone and he was now building it up at that point of time, even extreme
#
Hindutva organizations like Patit Pawan Sangh and all, they did not pay any attention to
#
Thackeray because they felt that he was too maverick.
#
He was saying all kinds of nonsense and everything.
#
But then Pramod Mahajan spotted what was happening and then he aligned with the BJP.
#
In 87, of course, Thackeray was too extreme Hindutva for even the BJP.
#
But by 1988-89, the BJP was clear that they were going to push for the Ram temple in Ayodhya,
#
etc., and they wanted to consolidate their Hindutva vote and they came together.
#
So from 84 to about 89-90, Thackeray shifted focus to Hindutva.
#
He forgot the Marathi management.
#
But by that time, I mean, 75% of jobs, government jobs, etc., were all gone to Maharashtra because
#
even when Raj Thackeray in the 90s or in the 2000s when he held an agitation saying I want
#
job for locals, they discovered 85% of the jobs are with local government jobs, etc.
#
Because it was a conscious policy that was introduced by the Maharashtra government.
#
So Thackeray had nothing to do and he had become a paper tiger.
#
After having achieved his, you know, subnationalism, he was a paper tiger.
#
So then he shifted to Hindutva and then he joined up with the Shiv Sena.
#
And of course, 91, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, etc., that the Sena and the BJP did
#
But, you know, I don't think the Shiv Sena demolished the Babri Masjid, not, I mean,
#
as much as they may claim that they demolished.
#
In fact, in my book, there is a whole chapter on that because Thackeray never had the guts
#
to do anything like that.
#
You know, he would not be that extreme to bring down a mosque, etc.
#
Moreover, there were certain reasons.
#
There was no Shiv Sena leader present in Ayodhya.
#
They were sitting in Calcutta on the day the mosque was brought down.
#
But then, you know, the BJP leader said that the Shiv Sena has brought down the mosque.
#
So Thackeray was one of those people, you know, he would always claim credit for anything
#
if it gave him any political mileage.
#
So at that point of time, he had said, in fact, he had told me, I had called him and
#
I had told him and he had said that, you know, I mean, you call me back in 20 minutes because
#
he was very taken aback that the Shiv Sena had brought down the mosque.
#
You broke the newsroom.
#
And I told him that there is a flash, you know, that has come.
#
And then he knew that his leaders were sitting in Calcutta.
#
It was the days before mobile phones, so he could not really contact them like that.
#
And then when I called him back in 20 minutes, he said, if my Shiv Sena had brought down
#
the mosque, then I can be only proud of them.
#
I as a junior reporter did not recognize the if.
#
So even my story said that, you know, Thackeray is very proud of the Shiv Sena for bringing
#
Then he began to get into trouble with the Liberance Commission, which probed the demolition
#
and with the Allahabad High Court.
#
So then he backtracked, he said, my Shiv Sena did not bring down the mosque.
#
You know, I mean, the BJP did not have the guts to accept that they had done that.
#
And so I said that if my Shiv Sena have done it, then I can be only proud of them because
#
I'm not afraid of anybody.
#
But actually he was afraid of the court, you know, which is why he backtracked.
#
So from then, from the 80s, from 1984 to about 1991, 92, during the riots, etc., it was a
#
very sharp Hindutva focus.
#
Then, you know, the Muslims were also very disappointed with the Congress at that point
#
They said that for so many years we have supported them.
#
People have been saying Muslim appeasement, but where have we got anything from the Congress?
#
And then, you know, I mean, it is much better to make friends with the Shiv Sena and join
#
You know, I mean, at least let's make friends of an enemy, then we might be protected.
#
So Urdu papers at that point of time, you know, there was an election due in Maharashtra
#
in May, that those days, the election used to happen in May.
#
So in May 1995, there was an election due and the Urdu papers were full of letters from
#
Urdu readers and intellectuals and professors, etc., saying that let's vote for the Shiv
#
When I broke the story, even Thapri did not believe it.
#
He said some reporters are saying this because, you know, how is it possible that you have
#
gone against them during these riots, etc., and how is it possible that they will vote
#
But when the results came out, the Congress won only one seat in Mumbai, which is Colaba,
#
where there's a huge Parsi population, so they probably voted for them in large numbers.
#
But even the Muslim majority areas like Umarkhadi, Paidoni, etc., Shiv Sena won it.
#
Okay, so then he realized that the Muslims had voted for him.
#
So after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 96 or 97, he called for the setting up
#
of a school or a hospital for the poor in Ayodhya, you know, he shifted like that.
#
And then in 1999, he lost the elections again, because by this time, the Muslims had kind
#
of, you know, gone back to the Congress and other parties.
#
And then he called for their disenfranchisement.
#
He said, you know, they should not be allowed to vote, you know.
#
So he has always been shifting his stances depending upon how politically convenient
#
It's also very interesting how, you know, and like, of course, on the one hand, the
#
Shiv Sena is shifting from being anti-South Indian, as they were at one point in time,
#
to then anti-Muslim, to then anti-North Indian migrants, as they later became.
#
Though when they became North Indian migrants, he realized that the Maharashtrians don't
#
actually want those jobs, which most of those North Indian migrants take.
#
I was also sort of struck by, like, one, of course, the Shiv Sena goes all out on Hindutva
#
in the early 80s, at a time where the BJP themselves, which had just formed experimenting
#
with Gandhian socialism and other soft things, later the BJP sort of comes around to Hindutva.
#
And you know, people often lump the two together and say that, okay, both are parties which
#
believe in Hindu nationalism.
#
But as you've pointed out so well in your book, that there is a lot of difference between
#
the sort of Hindu nationalisms that they believe in.
#
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
#
You know, the BJP's philosophy is entirely, what do you say, RSS-based.
#
You know, they believe in majoritarianism.
#
They believe that this is the land of the Hindus, and everybody else is a second-class
#
Even the NRC and the Citizenship Amendment Bill that they are bringing out, of course,
#
because of outrage, they have had to include other religions, but they have excluded Muslims.
#
Bal Thackeray's Hindutva was not really excluding Muslims.
#
I would say, rather, he was a bit like Shivaji in that sense, you know, I mean, although
#
Shivaji was not so sharply communal.
#
He was for self-rule, Hindu self-rule, but he had a lot of Muslim generals, etc.
#
Thackeray also tends to trust a lot of Muslims, and particularly, he makes a lot of, he used
#
to make a lot of difference between Maharashtrian Muslims, you know, the ones in the Konkan
#
Belt and Marathwada, etc., you know, for him, the Marathi Manus was really important, whether
#
the Marathi Manus was a Dalit, or whether he was a Muslim, or whether he was a Hindu.
#
Whereas the BJP would, for BJP, it is only the Hindu, and a certain kind of Hindu, because
#
I have a feeling the BJP also discriminates against the Dalits and certain lower-caste
#
Hindus, which will come up at a later date, you know, I mean, but they believe in majoritarianism.
#
They believe in either throwing these people out or rendering them second-class citizens.
#
Thackeray was not doing that.
#
Thackeray said that if they want to live in this country, you know, I mean, they have
#
to be loyal to this country, they have to be true to this country, which is, which even
#
I would say, as somebody who is a liberal and who believes in secularism, I would also
#
You know, I mean, BJP's Hindutva is not like that, you know, a Muslim is a Muslim, and
#
a Muslim is a traitor, he is a terrorist, and he has no business to be there.
#
That is the difference between Thackeray's and BJP's Hindutva.
#
Now, another interesting difference, which you point out, and another sort of interesting
#
dramatic strain that's happening in this time, is the Brahmin versus Maratha thing comes
#
And obviously, the RSS is all Nagpur-based Brahmins, and they are also Maharashtrians,
#
and they begin to feel a little resentful of, you know, a lot of the so-called Maratha dominance
#
of this movement, to the point that you talk about how at one point, you know, Mahajan
#
of course is a Brahmin, but his aide, Gopinath Munde, is an OBC, and as a counter, to counteract
#
those guys, they start promoting Nitin Gadkari.
#
No, no, they started promoting Devendra Farnavis.
#
Devendra Farnavis, I thought, was promoted by Mahajan and Munde.
#
The RSS, yeah, what I meant was the RSS, RSS started promoting Gadkari, and as a counter
#
to that, these guys then started promoting Devendra Farnavis.
#
Yes, because, you know, see, Gadkari was already part of the RSS at that time.
#
Gadkari became the president of the Maharashtra unit of the BJP, and he and Mahajan and Munde
#
never really got along, and I think I mentioned in my book, Maharashtra Maximus, that at one
#
point of time, Munde and Gadkari had come to blows, literally, you know, I mean, they
#
were rolling on the floor, etc.
#
You didn't mention rolling on the floor.
#
You know, and then Mahajan set about looking for somebody to counter Gadkari, and then
#
he managed to get this person who in every which way was like Gadkari, you know, he was
#
from Nagpur, he was also a lawyer, he was also a law student, his parents were also
#
part of the RSS, you know, I mean, there was nothing to, and both were Deshastra Brahmins,
#
you know, there was really nothing to distinguish between them, except that Munde and Mahajan
#
might never have thought that one day they will not be around in this world, and you
#
know, I mean, this man would kind of overcome everything, and he would become the chief
#
minister of Maharashtra, even Gadkari would not have thought that, but they deliberately
#
promoted Devendra Farnavis.
#
You know, and it's also very interesting, like how you find out that how Mahajan and
#
Munde to counteract the RSS support of Gadkari, promoted Farnavis, and a couple of decades
#
later, Modi does the same thing by making Farnavis chief minister of Maharashtra.
#
Yes, yes, because Gadkari is really very close to the RSS, he virtually grew up in the RSS
#
headquarters in Nagpur, which is not the thing with Devendra Farnavis.
#
His father believed in the philosophy, his aunt was also a minister in the Maharashtra
#
You know, they are ideologues, they are RSS ideologues, and maybe they have attended a
#
shakha or two, but you know, it is not like Gadkari is a child of the RSS, you know, I
#
mean, he was literally brought up over there.
#
So between Farnavis and, you know, that is what it is, Mahajan spotting was very good.
#
So he picked Devendra Farnavis.
#
So when it came to a choice between Gadkari and Farnavis, there is no way any of the RSS
#
leaders could argue that Gadkari is better than Farnavis or why Farnavis is not as good
#
And Farnavis is also smoother and less crude in the way he sort of addresses matters.
#
He is very clever also, slightly Machiavellian also, and Nitin Gadkari is more like, you
#
know, I mean, open about those kind of things, you know, aah main tujhe dekhata hu kind of
#
And another interesting fault line which again re-emerges in our narrative here is a Maharashtrian
#
versus Gujarati narrative because at this point the BJP has Modi and Amit Shah who are kind
#
of running the show and the Shiv Sena doesn't really like that because there is still that,
#
you know, simmering resentment right from the times of Muradji Desai.
#
Yes, from the times of Muradji Desai and it has resurfaced itself.
#
Now I have to tell you that my friend's father-in-law, he was a very hardcore BJP voter and what
#
he told me after this imbroglio last month, he said that, you know, had Nitin Gadkari
#
been in the negotiations with Uddhav Thackeray and had he said that we never promised the
#
Shiv Sena, chief ministership for two and a half years, I would have believed Nitin Gadkari.
#
But now I believe Uddhav Thackeray because the Gujarati duo cannot be trusted, he said,
#
you know, I mean, you know, because they will promise anything, they will promise the moon
#
to anybody and, you know, I mean, when it is advantageous to them, then they will kind
#
of withdraw and they will go back on their promise.
#
So now I tend to believe Uddhav Thackeray and he said, I don't want Achche Din, I want
#
So I'm now supporting Uddhav and I'll be voting for the Shiv Sena at the next election.
#
You know, so this has been a turnaround by a Maharashtrian hardcore BJP voter because
#
of this distrust of the of the Gujaratis.
#
And you know, the thing is the government, the Shiv Sena government has also come because
#
even Modi and Shah got a little worried because the Shiv Sena were on the point of descending
#
on the streets a couple of days before Uddhav got sworn in and they were all preparing to
#
target the Gujaratis in Bombay.
#
And if that had happened, you know, it would have completely gone against Modi and Shah
#
because two Gujaratis sitting in the central government, strong, powerful men, and you
#
are not able to protect your own in Maharashtra.
#
And you know, the Gujaratis know about that resentment and for a long time, they have
#
put their head under the radar, you know, they keep their head down and they continue
#
to work and they make some compromises with the Shiv Sena if needed.
#
You do your dhandho and let the boys do whatever on the streets.
#
Yes, that is what they do.
#
But you know, it manifests itself in so many ways.
#
You know, I think in my book, I mentioned about, you know, food habits, for example,
#
this beef ban and, you know, imposition of vegetarianism.
#
In fact, another difference, that's another difference between the BJP's Hindutva and
#
Shiv Sena's Hindutva that the BJP's Hindutva is a vegetarian Hindutva, but Shiv Sena,
#
Yes, yes, yes, everything.
#
And there was a fight also because they are building society somewhere in the suburbs
#
where, you know, a Maharashtrian family that day was, I think, on a Sunday was cooking
#
fish or something and the Gujaratis had a Brahma puja or something like that and then
#
they objected to that and they almost came to blows and the police had to be called in,
#
And Shiv Sena and MNS workers, all kind of descended and said, we are not going to allow
#
you to impose your vegetarianism on us.
#
We have a right to eat whatever we want in our house, we are not imposing it on you.
#
So these fault lines keep opening up between the two communities, you know.
#
And another interesting fault line that, you know, emerges later in the narrative is again
#
of caste, but the Dalits this time, like you pointed about how one very key moment in Maharashtra
#
politics was a renaming of Marathwada University to, you know, after Dr. Ambedkar.
#
Tell me a bit about that and how that affected the Shiv Sena's fortunes.
#
You know, that move was started by Sharad Pawar during his first term in 1978 as Chief
#
You know, he loves to think of himself as a social engineer and he has done a lot of
#
social engineering, in fact, you know, but he failed to realize this Maratha resentment
#
Even during his second or third term as Chief Minister when he had tried to mix up the populations
#
after the Latur earthquake, he had faced that problem.
#
But during this time, during the renaming in 1978, he just decided, you know, I mean,
#
that he would name that it was just known as Marathwada University.
#
And he said there is already a Shivaji University in Kolhapur.
#
And other intellectuals had been given, you know, other universities named after them.
#
So he said, we will name this after Babasaheb Ambedkar because this was also the Karimabhumi
#
of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
#
He did not realize the extent of Maratha resentment.
#
There was real violence, the kind of violence that Mumbai had seen in 1969 during, you know,
#
the Belgaum's term and later in 1991-92, that kind of violence happened in about 79-80.
#
And Sharad Pawar was really very taken aback, you know, because he was a Maratha, he belonged
#
to the Maratha, he was slightly liberal, etc.
#
He thought that all Marathas might be like that.
#
And when the violence really went out of hand, he had to drop the idea of renaming the Marathwada
#
And everybody then pushed it on the back burner.
#
No Chief Minister who came after that dared to rename that university.
#
And he went to the center, but then he came back again in 1993, I think he came back after
#
He came back after that time and in 1993, he decided to rename the Marathwada University.
#
But by this time, he had learned his lesson a little bit.
#
So he decided that instead of just calling the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar University, I will
#
call it the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University.
#
So it is now known as BAMU, Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University.
#
But even so, the Marathas did not like it.
#
You know, I mean, because there is really a sharp focus in Chavdhiv, the Marathas consider
#
themselves upper caste.
#
They don't want to study in a university which is named after a Dalit leader.
#
Even if he's such a big icon as the father of the Indian Constitution, they didn't like
#
And at that point of time, Thakri again spotted his chance.
#
He said that I will not allow and Thakri never liked the Buddhist Dalits.
#
You know, he preferred the Hindu Dalits to the Buddhist Dalits.
#
And he didn't like Ambedkar very much in that sense.
#
So he decided to oppose the whole thing.
#
And that is where a real shift took place, because he decided to go to Aurangabad and
#
he decided to hold a rally, etc.
#
Now once again, the government, you know, again, it was a Congress government in place.
#
They again use a trick, you know, of sending the police to him and saying that you either
#
go and you make your speech and come to jail or else you turn around and go back to Mumbai,
#
you know, I mean, otherwise you'll be sitting in jail.
#
And then he just turned around and went and he left the people sitting in the ground.
#
He did not address things.
#
But then the upper caste Marathas shifted focus to the Shiv Sena instead of voting
#
They were Congress voters.
#
And Pawar was so confident that because he was a Maratha and because he was making the
#
move, the Marathas will understand what he was doing, but they really didn't understand.
#
So that led to a, what do you say, voter change in Marathwada.
#
You know, instead of the Congress used to win elections, Congress, NCP used to win elections
#
there or at that time Congress used to win.
#
They shifted focus to Shiv Sena because BJP was in alliance of the Shiv Sena and the BJP
#
managed to get and get a leg into that area.
#
And that's a very interesting insight about how crucial that vote can be.
#
And you've also pointed out in your book quite correctly and quite naturally is what one
#
would expect that the leaders of the Dalit movement, so various Dalit leaders who have
#
come up like Athavalli and so on, basically acting purely out of self interest on getting
#
the best deal they could for themselves and not necessarily for the upliftment of the
#
people that they were representing.
#
So how has sort of the Dalit vote moved over the last 20, 30 years after this?
#
Like what has happened nationally, of course, is that all of a sudden Dalits have voted
#
more for the BJP than any other party.
#
So in certain ways, the BJP has sort of succeeded for the moment at least in wooing that section
#
How has it been in Maharashtra?
#
No, in Maharashtra it has been largely Dalits always go with the strongest party or the
#
And they are always looking the leaders as well as the community is always looking for
#
largest from the party in power.
#
So that is what is happening.
#
Athavalli is the biggest example of that.
#
He was first supporting the Congress and then when Sharad Pawar formed the NCP, he went
#
to the NCP and then he went to the Shiv Sena and then he went to the BJP.
#
And every time he got something from these parties and you know, you leave your voters
#
with practically nothing.
#
But you know, I mean, if you also try to and the same thing is happening with Prakash Ambedkar,
#
although he carries the name of his grandfather, Baba Sahib Ambedkar, he's not able to strike
#
He's not able to become an alternative to the Dalit community.
#
They vote in certain proportion for him, but essentially he's denting the Congress vote
#
because if they didn't vote for him or if his candidate was not standing in the free,
#
then they would all be voting for the Congress or they would be voting for the BJP.
#
And this time everybody says that, you know, I mean, the BJP set up certain political parties
#
to dent the Congress vote, you know, the Dalit vote, the Muslim vote, etc.
#
And the Dalits have always been dependent upon the bigger parties and they cannot, they
#
do not seem to be able to survive, although they have doctors, they have engineers, they
#
You know, I mean, they're all educated people, but they somehow don't seem to be able to
#
form a political group which will challenge parties like the BJP and the Congress and
#
Because politicians everywhere of whatever caste look after their self-interest first.
#
So you know, with that sort of cynicism, it's kind of hard to get ahead.
#
Another aspect I wanted to explore was the role of women in politics.
#
Now Indian politics like Indian society is very sexist and misogynist, but there's one
#
very interesting stand in your narrative of the Shivsona that you mentioned about the
#
role that women played in the Shivsona and you mentioned like three particular kinds
#
of roles, which I found very fascinating.
#
Can you elaborate on that?
#
You know, see, Thakri did not know what to do with women.
#
No, you know, this reservation for women came around about 1989 because Rajiv Gandhi, who
#
was the prime minister at that point of time, you know, he wanted to change the panchayati
#
And then they reserved some 30 percent, 33 percent seats for women.
#
At that point of time, frankly speaking, even the Congress, even the BJP, nobody knew what
#
You know, I mean, because although the Congress and the BJP had their Mahila wings, you know,
#
I mean, women's wings and all that, but they were not really very active politicians.
#
But the Shivsena was entirely a male-oriented party.
#
And the Sena leaders also, when I asked one of them, they said, Nanchi party, Purushi party.
#
You know, I mean, you know that it is very, it is only men in the party.
#
And then he needed to give the seats, 30 percent seats had been reserved in the municipal corporation.
#
You need to give women those seats.
#
So he fished out all these people who were either the wives or the daughters or sisters
#
in laws or mothers of many of these Shivsena, Shakha, Pramukhs and all those kind of things.
#
And he gave them tickets and many of them won the election.
#
But you know, I mean, it basically began, it basically began there at the lower levels,
#
you know, Shakha, Shakhas and slums, et cetera.
#
But then the women defined a rule for themselves.
#
You know, they used to come out in the sense, women used to, domestic servants used to be
#
exploited, for example, you know, I mean, maybe by their male employers, they used to
#
So they came out with this name and shame kind of a policy.
#
They would go outside the houses of these men who were mistreating the women, not just
#
in homes, but also in factories, for example, you know, sweatshops, et cetera, where the
#
women were employed and you know, they were being treated badly.
#
So they would go, they would name and shame and the men would get very scared.
#
So they, they formed their own, what do you say, militant wing.
#
So in a sense, it was like a sort of me too empowered by the Shivsena.
#
They would call them run-dragginis, you know, the beauties of the field, you know, I mean,
#
But, you know, he really did not know what to do with them.
#
And he thought that they should be supportive of their husbands, et cetera.
#
But, you know, interestingly, during the riots, I've said that in my book, Pramod Nawalkar,
#
who was this senior leader, his wife, when they came to him with some bangles and said,
#
wear these bangles, you know, because you are capable of nothing else.
#
So he said, what do you mean?
#
You know, he had been going out in the streets and trying to broker peace between the, you
#
know, warring communities.
#
And she said, you should be actually going out there and destroying those people, but
#
you are brokering peace.
#
And this was happening and Nawalkar, of course, his family was educated, et cetera.
#
But then, you know, later on, Nawalkar realized that this is happening in many Shivsena.
#
You know, these women, when their husbands were, you know, the husbands were reluctant
#
to go out and riot on the streets because they knew what the consequences would be and
#
So when the husbands were sleeping, they would hide their trousers and pajamas and give them
#
petticoats, give them petticoats, put bindis on them and bangles, et cetera.
#
And when the men woke up, you know, they don't have clothes to go out, you know, so they
#
said that, you know, I mean, you go out now, you know, I mean, this is all that you're
#
Reluctantly, the men agreed to kind of, you know, go and riot.
#
And then these women would throw a protective cordon around them.
#
When the police came that time, the Mumbai police did not have so many women in the police
#
So they were very afraid of manhandling the women, you know, I mean, any charges could
#
be locked against them.
#
So they would throw a cordon and by that time, those men would disappear into the woodworks.
#
They would, they would never be able to catch them.
#
This is a role the women defined for themselves, a real militant role.
#
And then after the riots were over, they were doing these things, going to offices, seeing
#
which woman is being exploited.
#
You know, I mean, somebody would come to them with a complaint and officer would be treating
#
A woman would lodge a molestation complaint or rape complaint.
#
So they were all there for that kind of a thing.
#
And at that point, before the riots, they used to make a distinction between themselves
#
and what they used to call the air conditioned women.
#
That is the women who live in high rises, who wear Paitani saris, you know, who wander
#
But the riots brought these both sections together.
#
This woman, Shiv Senik, who used to work in the, in this air conditioned house, you know,
#
and their common enemy was the Muslim man on the streets, you know.
#
So that kind of brought them together.
#
And it kind of changed the fundamental phase of the Mahila Agadi.
#
You know, from being just, what do you say, women lumpens, from just being women lumpens,
#
it kind of shifted to more, what do you say, sophisticated women who are bound by the common,
#
what do you say, aim of protecting themselves from the other.
#
I found this a very fascinating chapter because on the one hand, the role they play is very
#
salutary that they call out the oppression of themselves and other women because they
#
now have the Shiv Sena tag behind them and they can say whatever and everyone's scared
#
And on the other hand, it's also scary.
#
I mean, giving your husband bangles or a petticoat is in itself a slightly patriarchal thing
#
because why should somebody wearing bangles or a petticoat be any less brave than somebody
#
So they're sort of reinforcing those notions.
#
And this is obviously not salutary because they're exhorting their husbands to basically
#
And you know, the Shiv Sena women were more vicious and righteous than the men.
#
Why do you think that is?
#
You know, they came from a certain strata where they had always faced this problem with
#
the other, maybe not just the Muslim men, but they always faced the other in the sense
#
their employer, you know, I mean, who exploited them or a government officer, you know, I
#
mean, who, again, you know, in various ways exploited them when they went there for a
#
ration card or when they went there for something, there was this kind of a feeling in them and
#
they were not really hothouse flowers.
#
They could have come, you know, in fact, I don't know whether it has been reported too
#
much, but around that time I was reporting on the riots that actually pulled a Muslim
#
man out of a bus and got together and beaten him up and left him on the road and he had
#
You know, I mean, so they were capable of that kind of a thing.
#
And the men were not like Pramod Namalkar wanting to go and broker peace between the
#
two communities and the wife saying you wear bangles, you're not capable of anything else.
#
You know, I mean, men were like that, their rights might not have been so vicious, had
#
the women not been egging them on.
#
I'm just thinking aloud, is it possible that women, the way they are in Indian society,
#
much, you know, oppressed and, you know, have to face much more hardship than men that they
#
therefore have also have much more pent up anger at a time like this, this is one way
#
That is, you know, that is true.
#
And I call them the right wing feminists.
#
Certainly we associate feminism with the left wing, you know, left intellectuals, et cetera.
#
These were absolutely bottom level right wing feminists.
#
And you know, after the riots, they took to, you know, protecting themselves in the sense,
#
you know, if a woman came and complained that my husband is treating me badly, my mother-in-law
#
is treating me badly, my father-in-law, you know, these people would be there in the home,
#
they would be beating up that man and things like that.
#
And those men went and complained to Bal Thackeray that this is what is happening, you know,
#
and you have to do something about it.
#
And even Bal Thackeray did not know what to do about it because the women had completely
#
He did not, then he tried to tell them that you have to support your husbands, you know,
#
I mean, you have to help them in there, but they were not listening.
#
And many of these women did not like the compromises that he later made, you know, I mean, with
#
the, with the Muslims and things like that.
#
They did not like that.
#
They said, we are not going to support it, et cetera, you know, so it is a, it is a wing
#
which could have turned into Frankenstein's monster.
#
But because the women were probably had other preoccupations like bringing up their children,
#
you know, I mean, making sure that their families are fed and, you know, comfortable and all
#
They did not have so much time to go out and become monsters, but they were capable of
#
They're so fascinating.
#
I mean, so many novels and graphic novels and web series can be made out of this.
#
I've taken a lot of your time.
#
So let's skip to the present and let's talk about what happened this month.
#
And you've obviously been writing a lot about the sort of how the SENA and the BJP can't
#
get along and it is not possible that they will ever really be together for a long time.
#
So in a sense, you saw that part of it coming.
#
Can you sort of, and we all know what is Sharad Pawar's opportunism and how, you know, no
#
one's an enemy forever.
#
No one's a friend forever.
#
Equally, you have written a lot about Ajit Pawar's resentments over the years and years
#
and how they have been playing out.
#
So you're reading your books and I read your two books recently after these events happened.
#
And I was like that, you know, you practically saw it all coming.
#
So tell me a little bit about how Maharashtra politics has been for the last seven, eight
#
You know, after Balasaheb Thackeray, Uddhav was slightly directionless.
#
He did not know which way to swing, although he has defied all predictions of the critics
#
that the Shiv Sena will collapse after Bal Thackeray.
#
And actually that is what the BJP intended.
#
Right from the time, even when Balasaheb was around, the younger lot of BJP leadership
#
wanted to break the alliance because they thought this alliance was curtailing them
#
They could not put down roots in the villages, in the talukas, in the block levels, et cetera.
#
And you know, people like Nitin Gadkari and Gopinath Munde, who did not get along with
#
each other, they agreed that we have to break ties with the Shiv Sena.
#
But at that point of time, Advani was in the leadership position in the BJP and he was
#
You know, I mean, he wanted to become the prime minister, et cetera.
#
And he knew that he needed the Shiv Sena.
#
And if you break ties with the Shiv Sena, you are likely to lose a lot of seats.
#
Maharashtra in terms of Lok Sabha seats is the second largest state after Uttar Pradesh.
#
You know, Uttar Pradesh sends about 80 and Maharashtra sends about 48.
#
Just as Bihar, after Bihar broke up into Bihar and Jharkhand.
#
So he did not allow these younger leaders to break ties with Bal Thackeray.
#
And you know, they waited patiently for Bal Thackeray to pass away.
#
And they thought that after Thackeray dies, the Shiv Sena will collapse, which is why
#
in 2014, when Modi realized that he had stormed through the nation and he had got such a majority.
#
And he said, and the BJP leader said, this is the time to break ties with the Shiv Sena
#
and they'll be completely finished.
#
And just 15 days before the elections, they broke ties, they broke the alliance and they
#
thought gone because Uddhav had 12 stents in his heart.
#
He had just come through this heart operation and they were sure he will not be able to
#
They were sure he wouldn't be able to do anything.
#
And he comes up with 63 seats in the assembly and the BJP gets only 122, which is of course
#
double the Shiv Sena, but it is far below the mark and it is far less than expected
#
considering how Modi was blazing through India at that point of time, you know.
#
So now they are in a position where they have to ally with the Shiv Sena.
#
Of course, the NCP helped it to win the vote, but you know, they have to ally with the Shiv
#
And for five years, Uddhav Thackeray played the role of an opposition leader.
#
He never allowed the BJP to rest in peace.
#
He even targeted Modi, he targeted Shah, he targeted the government, both in the center
#
and this one, and the Congress and NCP were doing nothing at that point of time and he
#
occupied the role of the opposition, which was appreciated a lot by the people, including
#
It was appreciated a lot by the people.
#
But by the time 2019 came around, the BJP was now no longer sure, anti-incumbency kicking
#
They were no longer sure whether they would be able to win an election on their own.
#
So Amit Shah kind of, you know, I mean, catch a hold, persuaded, threatened, and you know,
#
somehow brought Uddhav on board.
#
But one strategic mistake that Uddhav made was to lose sight of the Marathi Manus.
#
You know, he started a me-Mumbai girl policy once upon a time, Raj Thackeray sabotaged
#
it, but then Raj Thackeray found his MNS and went and then, you know, Uddhav was going
#
on, I want the Ram temple, I want the Ram temple.
#
Now if you want to vote for the Ram temple, why do you want to vote for the duplicate
#
when you have the original?
#
You know, the BJP practices Hindutva much better than the Shiv Sena can.
#
It will at the most sit back and say, I want the Ram temple, but you can't do anything
#
So there is a vote in Maharashtra.
#
You know, there is a real regional Marathi ethos vote.
#
You know, I mean, they would vote only for the Shiv Sena, they would not vote for the
#
But amongst the Marathi Manus, there is also a Hindutva vote.
#
Now the BJP wants to capture that Hindutva vote.
#
You know, so Uddhav recognized in time what was happening.
#
He realized that they were not able to finish me from outside.
#
But if I now become part of their government and I become a place second fiddle to them,
#
they'll finish me from inside.
#
And in this arrangement, his young son, inexperienced, raw son would have been made the deputy chief
#
BJP would have expected him to keep quiet, you know, we gave you a deputy chief minister,
#
but Aditya would not understand, you know, I mean, how they were destroying the party
#
So Uddhav recognized that on time and then he pushed.
#
Now if the BJP would have agreed for a two and a half year chief ministership, he would
#
He would not have broken ties with that, but he would have used the two and a half years
#
in government to shore up his water base, Marathi Manus, you know, and but that did
#
And then, of course, in the beginning, Sharad Pawar kept seeing that we have been given
#
the mandate to sit in the opposition, we'll be sitting in the opposition, etc.
#
But then there was a push from the Shiv Sena, Sanjay Raut going again and again and meeting
#
Sharad Pawar in this one and Pawar, well, he's, you know, I mean, Chanakya and Machiavelli
#
may have rolled into one.
#
So he realized the opportunity and the Congress was a little wary of this, but this time the
#
Congress was completely dependent upon Pawar, even for the election and, you know, the kind
#
of result that they got, what the NCP got, what the Congress got and what the BJP did
#
not get, because considering the kind of role that the BJP was on, instead of one hundred
#
and five, they should have got at least about one hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty
#
They were talking about two twenty, those who be sparred, but I thought they may get
#
one eighty because the Congress's best position at the height of its power was one eighty.
#
I thought they would get one eighty.
#
I also never expected that they would stop at hundred or one hundred and five, you know.
#
So what that shows is and the NCP got more seats.
#
The Congress actually improved upon its twenty forty position, considering that they had
#
a chief minister in twenty fourteen and they were completely down and out in twenty nineteen.
#
So that was quite commendable.
#
Now this has happened entirely because of the kind of water that you have in Maharashtra.
#
You know, like I said about Chhatrapati Shivaji socialist ethos, he wanted a Hindu Swaraj,
#
but he was not anti-Muslim in that sense.
#
And like someone had told me, being anti-Mogul is not being anti-Muslim.
#
He was anti Aurangzeb, but he was not anti-Muslim.
#
So that ethos remains with the people of Maharashtra.
#
And it is a socialist ethos, you know, which takes along Dalits, which takes along Marathas,
#
which takes along Brahmins, because even Vaibhichawan and Vasanthada Patil and Sharad Pawar had accommodated
#
They've been made, you know, I mean, chairman of the literary societies, you know, I mean,
#
so many other things like that, they were not made to feel left out, like they were
#
not completely sidelined.
#
They were also included in governance, in government, in all the subsidiary bodies.
#
So everybody takes everybody along and goes.
#
It's only when RSS comes into the picture that this sharp divide comes between the Brahmins
#
and the non-Brahmins, you know, I mean, without that, there is not such a sharp difference.
#
So Sharad Pawar realized, and during the 2014 campaign, assembly campaign, I had been very
#
critical of Pawar when he had said, when he had told the people, do you want a return
#
of the Peshwai to Maharashtra?
#
You know, do you want them to gobble up the Marathas the way the Peshwas had done to Chhatrapati
#
Shivaji and his progeny?
#
And I said, why is he bringing out this caste and things like that?
#
But you know, I mean, he's the only leader, I think, in Maharashtra who has a sense of
#
history and he knows what has happened in the past, etc.
#
And then, of course, you know, I mean, the BJP came and the Marathas are the ruling
#
Lots of Maharashtrians will tell you that, you know, they did not really fight for freedom.
#
In the sense, a lot of Brahmins did, MG Ranade, you know, Gokhale, you know, all these people
#
were there in the forefront, Tilak also, he was also a Brahmin, etc.
#
He said, only when we came close to independence, and then they realized which way the wind
#
was blowing, that they quickly jumped into the Congress bandwagon and, you know, they
#
came close to Mahatma Gandhi, etc., and Pandit Nehru, and then they again came and captured
#
the independent government in Maharashtra, you know, so they are the ruling class.
#
And even when Vasanth Rao Naik was the Chief Minister, the longest serving Chief Minister
#
for 14 years, he could not do anything unless he had the sanction of the Maratha leaders
#
And he was from Vidarbha, and everybody grumbles about that, that the longest serving Chief
#
Minister of the state, and he left Vidarbha backward and undeveloped, and he developed
#
Western Maharashtra, because that was a condition of the Marathas to keep a non-Maratha in power.
#
You know, there have been exceptions here and there, even Manohar Joshi was a Brahmin,
#
but it was in a Shiv Sena government, etc.
#
Then when Devendra Fadnavis came, now he belongs to Nagpur, you know, he comes from a RSS family,
#
and now the RSS, Fadnavis, everybody were determined to kind of sideline the Marathas,
#
not give them, you know, and linked into the cooperative thing.
#
Cooperative is also captured by Marathas only, mostly.
#
So all those things kind of kicked in, and the Congress and the NCP were also in danger
#
of losing their identity, you know, and when Pawar saw what was happening, and when there
#
was a push from the Shiv Sena that, you know, I mean, let us form the government together,
#
he just grabbed that opportunity with both hands, and it's only he who could have pulled
#
What was the Ajit Pawar side plot?
#
You know, see, Ajit Pawar, there is a problem with nephews in Maharashtra, Raj Thackeray
#
and Bal Thackeray, and Ajit Pawar in Sharath Pawar, etc.
#
And the thing is, blood is thicker than water, blood is always thicker than water.
#
So Thackeray chose Uddhav over Raj, and Sharath Pawar is too wily and too wise to declare
#
Supriya Suli as his political heir.
#
Every time I've asked him that, why don't you declare, you know, because a lot of NCP
#
officials tell me that Pawar Sahib is Pawar Sahib only because Vaibhichawan took him under
#
his wing and declared him as his political heir.
#
Now, let him choose anybody, let him choose us, let him choose Supriya, let him choose
#
Ajit, let him choose a lamp post, but at least we know who to rally around for the second
#
You know, so, but he doesn't do it when I ask him, he says he or she will rise from
#
Now, the use of the word she has been observed by Ajit Pawar, you know, and when Supriya
#
was first brought into electoral politics, when she was admitted into the NCP, it was
#
somewhere around 2006, 2007, Ajit Pawar had told us reporters that, you know, simply because
#
Rahul Gandhi is the son of Sonia Gandhi, he doesn't automatically become the number one
#
in the Congress or the number two in the Congress.
#
A sly reference to Supriya.
#
You know, so, so that was the thing.
#
But Pawar was very careful because in any case, you know, you know, Supriya's education
#
is such that she can hold her own in parliament, you know, I mean, and he kept them separate
#
also like Ajit in the state and Supriya goes to the Lok Sabha.
#
Yes, he's kept them there.
#
But you know, I mean, see, Pawar is aging, you know, and he wants to make sure that he
#
used to once upon a time say that Rahul Gandhi has no spark, Rahul Gandhi has no spark.
#
But now lots of people are saying even Supriya has no spark.
#
You know, I mean, like she has not grown in the manner that he expected her to grow.
#
Okay, she's a member of parliament, she holds good debates, you know, she raises good questions,
#
you know, she speaks well, etc.
#
But not like, you know, I mean, like, you know, like a blitz across the state, you know,
#
she has not been like that.
#
I think it's a bit like reversion to the mean that all children of great parents will always
#
Yes, it is a bit like that.
#
But he's very, very concerned about her.
#
He wants to secure and ensure her future.
#
And he knows that if he leaves, leaves it in Ajit Pawar's hands, Ajit will never do
#
You know, Ajit will sideline her.
#
He'll make her sit at home at the most, make her president of the Mahila Gadi or something.
#
And that is not what he wants for her.
#
And Ajit is always afraid that there will be some point where he will choose the daughter
#
Why doesn't he just get it over with?
#
He knows his party will break.
#
And you know, much as Ajit may not be like him, Raj Thackeray was a chip of the old block,
#
but Ajit Pawar is not so.
#
So Ajit may not be like him, but there are more people in the NCP who would rather have
#
Ajit as a leader than Supriya.
#
He knows that the party will break in that sense.
#
They'll all go to Ajit and Supriya's future will be again in the doldrums.
#
So that is why he doesn't do it.
#
But somewhere I think Ajit wanted to strike out on his own and tell his uncle that I'm
#
And some years ago, just before he died, Vilasrao Deshmukh was a former chief minister of Maharashtra.
#
Ajit was facing the scandal of the education scam, etc.
#
He had told me that Ajit is as wealthy as Sharad Pawar, even wealthier.
#
He said, you know what, it took Pawar 40 years to earn, Ajit has earned in nine or 10 years.
#
You know, it was a way of telling me that all those allegations are probably true.
#
But then he said, but there is one thing that he will always be dependent upon Sharad Pawar
#
He said the currency with the common man.
#
You know, he will never be able to win elections and connect with the common people the way
#
The way Sharad Pawar thinks politics, Ajit is not capable of it.
#
You know, and there was also a time, I think there's a central, when Chidambaram was the
#
finance minister in the UPA government, and there is a central body where, you know, I
#
think a finance commission or something, where the finance minister of some state heads that
#
And Sushil Modi, who was the finance minister of Bihar, was the head of that.
#
And then this Nitish Kumar broke off from the BJP, and so the BJP was out of the government.
#
And then they were looking for, looking for someone.
#
So Chidambaram called Prithviraj Chavan, who was the chief minister, saying, I would rather
#
now give it to a finance minister from a formless led government than to a BJP led government.
#
So please recommend your finance minister's name.
#
So Prithviraj Chavan asked Ajit Pawar, and Ajit Pawar said, can I have the bureaucrats
#
sitting with me at this meeting?
#
So Prithviraj Chavan said, no, this is a meeting of finance ministers, not for bureaucrats.
#
Bureaucrats can't advise you.
#
He said, then I don't want to be.
#
Because he could not hold his own with the people in Delhi.
#
He's okay in this pocket borough of Baramati.
#
He doesn't even understand Vidarbha properly, as Sharad Pawar does.
#
He doesn't even, you know, about Sharad Pawar, one story that I really love about him is,
#
you know, he went up in a helicopter.
#
In fact, there are two stories.
#
He went up in a helicopter and that helicopter would not, kind of, it could not take off.
#
There were headwinds, so it could not.
#
He was coming from Pune to Bombay, I think.
#
And then he went back, he shed some luggage, he shed some people, still couldn't do it.
#
So he came by road and he was very late for the meeting that he had and he said, I need
#
to have a road, which will take me from Pune to Mumbai in two hours.
#
And that is how we got the expressway.
#
His brainchild, even though Gadkari gets credit for it.
#
But like I told you earlier, Sharad Pawar doesn't know how to take credit.
#
He doesn't know how to hype.
#
He doesn't know how to tom-tom, but it was his brainchild, you know.
#
But the second story, he was in this helicopter with about two journalists and the chopper
#
ran out of fuel and the pilot was in a panic, said, sir, we have only about 15 minutes of
#
fuel left and we are nowhere near landing.
#
So Sharad Pawar said, you just tell me, you look at your compass and tell me exactly where
#
you are, you know, which is, you give me your coordinates, you give me your coordinates.
#
So he told him that we are here.
#
So Sharad Pawar said that if I go by road, I will turn right.
#
How do you have to go by air?
#
So the pilot took the chopper in that direction.
#
So he said, then I would turn left.
#
How do you go from here?
#
You know, so the pilot took this one.
#
Then he said, now you kind of go this way, go that way.
#
Then finally when they came with just about five minutes fuel left, he said, there has
#
to be a school ground here or a market yard here.
#
Let's see whether it is there and land there.
#
You know, they found the school ground and they landed in the school.
#
And those two journalists are never going to give him bad press ever again.
#
You know, he knows Maharashtra like the back of his hand.
#
Once when I went, you know, election coverage, I took a car and went all the way from Bombay
#
and I went all the way to Latur, which was a South Maharashtra point, you know, next
#
was Hyderabad or whatever.
#
And then when I was coming back, so Pawar said, where are you going?
#
I said, I think maybe I'll halt in either Karad in Pune, Mr. Pawar.
#
And then I will go to go to Bombay tomorrow morning.
#
So you know, he actually directed me, go from here.
#
Then you will come to this village and then you will find this tree and this tree shaped
#
And from there you go like that.
#
And then you go so many miles and then this village is there and you turn that into and
#
You know, I said, how does he know?
#
And then I told my driver, so he said, actually, I cut the decision.
#
I mean, by about two or three hours.
#
So he knows Maharashtra like the back of his hand.
#
Ajit Pawar does not know that.
#
But he probably tried to strike out on his own, tried to tell his uncle that I can also
#
But the reason why Pawar did not declare anybody as his heir and he did not allow people to
#
rally around the second generation was why he got the result.
#
He got, you know, because, you know, the moment the MLAs realize that Ajit doesn't have Sharath
#
Pawar support, they all kind of came back and they left Ajit with no opportunity but
#
You know, so it was a, what do you say, a storm in a teacup.
#
And then Sharath Pawar, the master manipulator and strategist, but not good at optics.
#
But also note, Amit, that, you know, Sharath Pawar has taken both now taken both Raj Thackeray
#
and Uddhav Thackeray under his wing, Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
#
Great parties who occasionally, you know, go against, North Indians, South Indians are
#
violent, are pro-Hindutva, etc.
#
He has secularized them.
#
He has brought them into the mainstream.
#
You know, the space there, you know, is completely different now.
#
He's got to socialize them, socialize them.
#
Maharashtrian ethos is a socialist ethos.
#
It is not a pro-Hindutva ethos.
#
So he has left now the BJP and the RSS, which is only a 5 to 10% vote, pure Hindutva vote.
#
The rest of them vote for Shiv Sena, vote for MNS, but they're also the Marathi Manus
#
vote, which comes up to about 25% and 30%.
#
So he has separated the two, Hindutva on one side and Marathi Manus on the other side.
#
So to end this episode, what I'll ask you for is I'll ask you to evaluate each of the
#
Each of the five parties one by one for me, where do they stand?
#
Let's start with the Shiv Sena because we've spoken so much about them and you've written
#
so much about them and you know them all personally.
#
It's been said that Bal Thackeray once said or repeatedly said, in fact, that Uddhav is
#
a fine strategist and one of the best minds he knows.
#
What's your take of Uddhav?
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And my follow up question to that is that what is the future of the Shiv Sena in the
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sense that in terms of what niche do they occupy in the political marketplace, like
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initially they started off with the whole Marathi Manu Singh.
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Then they attacked South Indians for a while.
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They attacked Muslims for a while and when the Hindutva way, they attacked North Indian
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What niche in the market?
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Where are they going to position themselves in the future?
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And what kind of a leader is Uddhav, is he sort of a tactical, go with the flow kind
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of person or does he have an ideology and beliefs of his own?
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See, so far he has proved that he's only go with the flow kind of a person.
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He has gone with the flow, but if he wants his party to survive, this is a miracle that
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he has managed to become the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
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Nobody expected that, but he must use his tint as the Chief Minister to broaden the
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base of the Shiv Sena now.
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He has to kind of move away from the, what do you say, from the, you know, the sixties
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and seventies Marathi Manus, the kind of sixties and seventies Marathi Manus, if I may be politically
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incorrect and say the lumpens and the extortionists, et cetera, because Maharashtrians are also
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There are youth, they want to take their place in the world.
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They want to earn the same kind of salaries that other people are earning.
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They want to go abroad.
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You know, I mean, they want to do things and they never got a chance.
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The Shiv Sena voters never got a chance to do this.
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Those Maharashtrians who managed to achieve all these things were never the Shiv Sena voters.
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So he has to make sure, you know, I mean, that, you know, Maharashtra also does not
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have a trader class, you know, which is why there are a lot of Gujaratis and Marwadis
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and Sindhis and others from Shivaji's time, they don't have a trader class.
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And Shivaji had actually invited traders from Gujarat and neighboring states to come and
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So, so he has to make sure that, you know, there are some Maharashtrian entrepreneurs
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who are given a kind of, I won't say subsidies, but they're given encouragement, a leg up
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and everything to do something.
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Enabled in a friendly environment.
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He must broad-based the Shiv Sena.
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Otherwise, even the stint in power will not take him anywhere.
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And I think he will consciously put the Ram temple in the back burner because according
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to him, I think what he thinks is that now the Supreme Court has already given its verdict.
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There is no political mileage left in that.
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You know, I mean, the minority community is not opposing it.
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In fact, many in them are saying that let it go.
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You know, I mean, we will take the five acres of land and we'll do something over there.
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So there is no political mileage in it.
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You know, I mean, and then he's already needling the BJP saying that don't claim credit for
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You know, I mean, you didn't have the guts.
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We asked you to pass a law.
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You know, you're fighting from the shoulders of the Supreme Court.
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So you know that politically it is over.
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So he has to broad-base the Shiv Sena.
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But my question there is that if you broad-base it, how do you differentiate yourself from
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the NCP and the Congress?
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Because they are also kind of broad-based in a sense.
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What is the difference?
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And yeah, you know, that is it, you know, I mean, but you know, this is Marathi Manus.
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His competition is mostly with NCP, not so much with the Congress because the NCP also,
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however much it has tried in the past 10, 12 years, it has remained only a regional
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party and that to Western Maharashtra.
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You know, Sharad Pawar, such a tall leader like Sharad Pawar, he's not been able to give
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a push to his party beyond Western Maharashtra, Vidarbhaami, there is nothing, you know.
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I mean, Mumbai also, they don't win anything.
#
They don't get anything in Mumbai.
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So Pawar will also make that effort.
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So that will, while the BJP was cannibalizing the Shiv Sena on Hindutva, it is likely that
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the NCP will cannibalize the Shiv Sena on the Marathi Manus thing.
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And once again, I don't know people like industrialists, Kiloskars, Garvaris, I don't know who they
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I think they might prefer Sharad Pawar to Uddhav Thackeray, but you know, if Sharad
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Pawar doesn't manage to get someone in place, Ajit Pawar, Supriya Asule to take his legacy
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forward, then they might choose Uddhav Thackeray because he's the younger, he's already put
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Aditya Thackeray in place, you know, I mean, they might prefer him.
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Also being CM will help his brand a lot over the next few years.
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I mean, they didn't do anything in this election, of course, but are they going to be
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Do they have any issues?
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Because like you pointed out, the early issues Raj took up were a non-starter because the
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Marathi Manus had already gotten all the jobs, right, Bal Thackeray had once, you know.
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Actually, Raj Thackeray, I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for him.
#
You know, he kind of, of course, he tried to take off on the 60s, 70s thing, but it
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didn't work, you know, I mean, because, because there are two things, one, of course, the
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locals have got the jobs.
#
The second thing is if you're still fighting for jobs for feriwalas and, you know, taxi
#
drivers and all that, that means in 30, 40, 50 years, you know, I mean, the Marathi Manus
#
has not progressed, you know, I mean, then, then whose fault is it?
#
You know, I mean, it is not, not anybody else's fault.
#
It's your own fault that you were not able to bring them out of it.
#
Now, he realized that and he stopped his anti-North Indian rhetoric.
#
He stopped his anti-Muslim rhetoric, et cetera.
#
And at that point of time, he was occupying a space during the Lok Sabha elections.
#
He was occupying a space clearly opposed to the Shiv Sena and the BJP, you know, and until
#
the assembly elections, when the assembly elections, of course, he didn't succeed very
#
much, but he was still occupying that space.
#
He had wanted an alliance with the Congress and the NCP and he went all the way to Delhi
#
and he met Sonia Gandhi.
#
You know, I saw that as a paradigm shift that, you know, Sonia Gandhi even gave him an audience,
#
you know, I mean, she allowed, considering how it used to be between the two parties.
#
But then apparently Sonia told him directly that, you know, my leaders in Maharashtra do
#
not want this alliance because they feel that your votes do not get transferred to the Congress,
#
which is also true because a lot of MNS voters kind of told me that, you know, although Raj
#
was saying vote for Congress and NCP during the Lok Sabha elections, you know, when I
#
went for voting, my finger automatically went on the button of Shiv Sena and BJP, I didn't
#
have the courage to go on the Congress button.
#
So, you know, I mean, their mentality is that now he has to rescue and he has to save those
#
He has to now evolve something and he's in the most trouble now.
#
Congress will survive, NCP will also survive to a large extent, but either he has to merge
#
with the Shiv Sena and they have to go back, you know, now Uddhav has achieved everything,
#
has become the chief minister.
#
They have to go back, you know, he'll be the campaigner, Uddhav will be the chief minister,
#
he'll be the strategist.
#
Either they have to do that or he has to evolve in identity.
#
Let's talk about the NCP, I mean, Sharad Pawar and we probably could, you know, devote a
#
full episode to the man because what a fascinating man and what an incredible career he's had.
#
But he is growing old, you know, he's got these two kids who haven't really marked themselves
#
out in spectacular ways at all.
#
What does the NCP stand for?
#
What do you see ahead for them?
#
See NCP is only another wing of the Congress and for the past five years, you know, what
#
We heard that he went, you know, he went and he met Modi in Delhi, Narendra Modi in Delhi
#
and he himself admits that Narendra Modi suggested that the NCP support the BJP and we form a
#
government and I told him that not possible because my party is a small party.
#
What he actually meant is that ideology is very different.
#
He would have got swallowed up faster than the Shiv Sena if he had done.
#
And over the past five years, there was a bitter fight between NCP supporters.
#
You know, there was one group saying that we should align with the BJP and another group
#
saying that no, we should stay secular.
#
And they almost came to blows about two or three years ago.
#
And then suddenly Sharath Pawar decided that no, we are realigning with the Congress.
#
And they had begun to lose, they had been confusing their voters because Pawar was also
#
making very pro-Modi statements.
#
Sometimes Modi was saying that he handed me through politics and voters were getting
#
Then Pawar came out openly with some anti-Modi statements and then the election results
#
that he has got, he has realized that this is the anti-BJP vote that he has got.
#
So he cannot afford to align with the BJP.
#
And he has to face a lot of Zilla Parishad and municipal corporation elections in the
#
And the BJP has managed to capture his home turf of Pune and also some bodies in Baramati,
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He needs to rest them back, you know.
#
So his near term focus will be on that, how to get it back.
#
And I have a feeling eventually, eventually there will be a merger between the Congress
#
The way there has to be a merger between MNS and Shiv Sena, there will have to be a merger
#
between Congress and NCP.
#
At a purely human level, do you think of sort of Sharath Pawar sitting down alone and thinking
#
to himself that, look, I have achieved my political peak, which was becoming chief minister
#
and central minister and all that and achieved it many times and I am never going to be prime
#
And so my best is clearly behind me and now it's sort of struggling to maintain status
#
quo, you know, running to stand still.
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Why would he be motivated by that?
#
He's a political animal.
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He's a real political animal.
#
You know, the pictures that we saw, the viral video of him standing in the rain and campaigning,
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Lots of NCP people say, but he's like that.
#
He was always like that.
#
Only thing is there is so much technology now.
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You know, I mean, so those pictures become viral.
#
You know, I mean, they get shared on social media, etc.
#
But he was always like that.
#
He was almost in semi-retirement, you know, just before the, with answer by elections
#
and then they fingered him and then he got, you know, he got up like, you know, like on
#
his horse and charged off, you know, I mean, like an ancient knight would do something
#
He got into his car and he went.
#
And when I called him for an interview, I wanted an interview.
#
He said, I'm not coming back to Mumbai for a very long time.
#
I said, then I will meet you wherever you are, you know, so he said, okay, I'll tell
#
You know, so he really has the energy even at this age, he will never retire.
#
And now he's becoming the fulcrum of opposition unity.
#
The experiment in Maharashtra has told the opposition that they can achieve it if they
#
He's becoming the fulcrum of opposition unity and he will still wait.
#
You see Muradji Desai at the age of 99, he still thought that people will call him to
#
become prime minister again.
#
You know, they never lose their ambition.
#
I think Sharif Pawar will never use his ambition.
#
I don't know if that's more inspiring or more sad, but let's move on to the Congress.
#
You know, where are they now?
#
I mean, nationally they've been going down just massively.
#
They've had two consecutive Lok Sabha elections where they've got like 50 seats or and at
#
the same time they are still getting all those millions of votes, all those crores of votes.
#
So what are they in Maharashtra?
#
Do they have a chance of ever coming back or is it just a big old machine gradually
#
grinding to a halt slowly?
#
See what the Congress needs to do, frankly speaking, is to build a leadership in the
#
You cannot be centralized anymore.
#
You know, a party president needs to be there to glue the sides together.
#
Last election, I remember when the Congress and the NCP shared their seats, the Congress
#
gave the NCP 125 seats out of 288.
#
And at that point of time, the NCP was virtually on its last legs.
#
All stalwarts had gone to the BJP.
#
You know, I mean, there was hardly any chance and hope.
#
So I asked one AICC general secretary that, you know, I mean, why so many seats?
#
You could have given 100 and Pawar would have been satisfied.
#
So he said, I asked Sonia Gandhi the same thing.
#
And Madam told me, tell me, do we have anybody in Maharashtra who can match Sharad Pawar's
#
stature, who can get me the kind of seats that I want from Maharashtra?
#
So until you can find me a leader like that, I have to do what Sharad Pawar tells me.
#
And even in this entire government formation, she went entirely by Sharad Pawar's advice.
#
What Sharad Pawar said, she did.
#
She signed on the dotted line.
#
Even Raoul Gandhi was overruled, even, you know, I mean, some of the South Indian leaders
#
who remember the anti-South Indian campaign of the Shiv Sena, they were overruled, etc.
#
So taking lessons from that, okay, Sharad Pawar, she said, Sharad Pawar technically
#
an NCP, but basically he's a congressman.
#
And it is because he broke away from the Congress that he has acquired this kind of a stature.
#
Now there is Mamata Banerjee, who has broken away from the Congress.
#
So many other people, even, even Chandrababu Naidu is technically a congressman, you know,
#
I mean, he went with his father-in-law.
#
So even if you are not able to get them back into the Congress, you have to develop state
#
leaderships because, you know, each state is different from the other.
#
Sitting in Delhi, you will not be, if you want to be a national party, you will never
#
be able to understand unless you have regional leadership.
#
So you have to develop that regional leadership.
#
If they don't do it, then they are doomed.
#
And now finally, let's end with talking, of course, about the BJP because, and there,
#
this is like the BJP in the Maharashtra is just one arm of this phenomenon that's kind
#
of erupted in Indian politics in the last five years to the dismay of many.
#
But it's all very interesting.
#
So what are they trying to do?
#
How do they position themselves?
#
You know, are they going to be a behemoth in the state as they are nationally, or is
#
it eventually going to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions?
#
See, I'll tell you, BJP in Maharashtra also suffers the same syndrome that the Congress
#
They have a strong state leadership, although one might dispute that the Congress doesn't
#
really have a strong, strong state leadership, but for whatever it is worth, it is there.
#
But without that national leadership, no leader in Maharashtra will be able to win any number
#
Had it been left entirely to Devendra Fadnavis, they would not even have got 105 seats.
#
And at the moment, the manner in which they conducted, and particularly Fadnavis conducted
#
himself, you know, I mean, sidelining lots of his rivals, you know, I mean, and Pankaj
#
Amunde is complaining that, you know, I mean, he conspired with my cousin to defeat me.
#
We hear that she has gone to Udda when she said, I have the support of 12 MLAs.
#
Anytime you say, I will come over with my MLAs to you.
#
There are a lot of people who are not given tickets because Fadnavis didn't want them
#
to contest and did not want it to be a competition.
#
So there are a lot of factions developing in the state, BJP, and it is on the point
#
of cracking and coming to the surface.
#
And left on his own, Fadnavis will never be able to win an election.
#
So until you have the strong leadership in the center, maybe they will win the elections.
#
But they also need to develop a better, you know, like in the sense if they had given
#
charge to Nitin Gadkari, they would not have lost the government.
#
Because Nitin Gadkari is a better campaigner, Nitin Gadkari is better at gluing things together.
#
You know, he's better at putting together alliances, you know, the backroom work would
#
So they will also have to do a lot of rethinking until they are there.
#
But even with their being at the height of power, they managed to get only 105 seats
#
So what, who knows what they might get next time.
#
It's been really fascinating talking to you.
#
You've just brought Maharashtra politics so alive for me and I urge all my listeners to
#
go out and buy Maharashtra Maximus and Hindu-Ridhe Samrat immediately as well as a Kindle single
#
Thank you so much, Sajatha.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hop over to your nearest bookstore online
#
or offline and buy Hindu-Ridhe Samrat and Maharashtra Maximus.
#
You can follow Sajatha on Twitter at Sajatha Anandan.
#
You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. You can browse past episodes of The Scene
#
and the Unseen at www.sceneunseen.in, www.thinkpragati.com and www.ivmpodcast.com.
#
The Scene and the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution.
#
Master's courses for Public Policy begin again in January.
#
For more information, head on over to www.takshashila.org.in.
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Thank you for listening.
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tune into the Gana Tantra Podcast where new episodes are out every Wednesday on the IVM
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