Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde from when Shiv Sena was undivided
Credit: PTI Photo
The tag gaddar is gaining momentum as the election campaigning in Maharashtra comes to an end, and this has put on tenterhooks those political leaders from the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Maha Yuti coalition to form the current government.
Recent news reports suggest that an angry Chief Minister Eknath Shinde stormed into an Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) election office in the Mumbai-Konkan region with his security in tow when an MVA worker shouted ‘gaddar’ at him as his convoy was passing the area. The worker was briefly held and later released.
This incident reveals the extent of fright as well as the uncertainty that has gripped the minds of those who, on various pretexts, dumped the regional political parties for greener pastures.
It also shows that the sting of ‘gaddar’, which means traitor, is still unsettling them.
As the campaigning is approaching its fag end, Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar too has started using the word ‘gaddar’ to remind his supporters to teach those who deserted him a lesson through the ballot.
Perhaps for the first time, Pawar used the word this week to go for the kill. Campaigning on his home turf of Pune district against senior Maharashtra minister Dilip Walse Patil, whom he had brought into politics, Pawar said that ‘one cannot allow those who have done ‘gaddari’ to go scot-free’.
“Those who have committed treachery need to be punished. Did the Maharaj allow any of the traitors to go scot-free? We have to defeat the traitors, and that too with a huge margin," Pawar told a public meeting.
The reference to ‘Maharaj’ was to Chatrapati Shivaji, the 17th century ruler who severely dealt with the traitors as he set up the Maratha empire, giving stiff resistance to the Mughals led by Aurangzeb who came in from the north.
One cannot reach the heart and mind of Maharashtrians till you’ve invoked Shivaji — it’s an unwritten rule. Narendra Modi’s rise in Maharashtra a decade ago was possible due to, among other things, the umpteen projections that he was bowing before Shivaji.
Pawar, who has taken a strong anti-BJP stand, was so far saying that it is a battle of ideological differences. Now the switch in line, to referring to the deserters as ‘gaddar’, is an indicator that the reference is striking an emotional chord among his supporters.
Since his government was toppled by the BJP with help from within his party, Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray has also been stridently campaigning on the ‘gaddar’ narrative.
‘Gaddar’ regaining traction also means that the BJP’s narrative that the anger among the people for the way in which the regional parties were split is a thing of the past is likely not true.
A few poll surveys indicate that the MVA has an edge over the ruling Maha Yuti, this despite several leaders crossing over and joining the ruling coalition. That said, Maha Yuti leaders, especially BJP leaders, whom these authors spoke to insisted that they were winning.
If the ‘gaddar’ narrative further gains currency, it would blunt the ruling coalition’s focus on the Ladki Bahin Yojana, or the ‘batenge to katenge’ and ‘ek hai to safe hai’ slogans.
For the BJP it is important to distance itself from being associated with what happened in the NCP or the Shiv Sena and project the splits as the respective party’s internal affairs. Such a spin is belittling the intelligence of the average Marathi voter.
Either way, the national party will be looking forward to further widening its Right-wing support base in the state, and in the process it could be cannibalising the vote share of its current allies.
(Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are senior journalists.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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