Sharad Pawar has ended his ambivalence and thrown his weight firmly behind the opposition alliance, I.N.D.I.A.
The beleaguered Pawar coming out of the NDA shadow in the wake of the parting of ways of his nephew Ajit Pawar is the best thing that has happened as of now for the opposition in Maharashtra as the I.N.D.I.A alliance meets in Mumbai.
“There is no confusion”, Pawar declared signalling his commitment to the Maha Vikas Aghadi and the I.N.D.I.A alliance, brushing aside all speculation, likely to the dismay of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
This means, to use Mamata Banerjee’s words, there would be ‘khela’ (game) in Maharashtra, an unprecedented khela between the opposition alliance and the Modi-Shah duo who are out to dominate the premier state in the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls.
It is a huge relief to the detractors of Modi-Shah given the fact that Pawar senior has been undoubtedly the fulcrum of the opposition in Maharashtra. The ageing leader’s recent somersaults had raised quite some suspicion about his intentions and plans for the opposition alliance and for the Maha Vikas Aghadi in particular.
To put it bluntly, the key question that was weighing heavily on the minds of opposition leaders ahead of the Mumbai meeting was: Will the real Sharad Pawar please stand up?
The Fog Over Sharad Pawar's Political Intentions
This was bound to be so given the fact that ‘Saheb’, as Pawar is called by his supporters and detractors alike in Maharashtra with reverence, had been low on the trust and credibility index in his half-a-century political career.
The fog over his intentions had become thick after the ‘secret’ meeting he had with Ajit, now the Deputy CM in the BJP-dominated government three weeks back. Reports that Sharad Pawar was being offered the Union Agriculture Ministry were being floated after the meeting.
The matter got compounded with Sharad Pawar’s remarks that there was no split in the NCP and his indication that Ajit is more like a prodigal son. It had baffled his supporters and detractors alike.
But before such an awkward question could be put, the octogenarian leader himself was on the forefront against Ajit and the BJP, wondering why the Narendra Modi dispensation was not ordering a probe into the irrigation scam and the scandal in the apex cooperative bank in Maharashtra in which the newly installed Deputy CM is allegedly involved.
It was a double whammy for the brash and ambitious Ajit ahead of the I.N.D.I.A meeting.
He stood isolated in the Maharashtra government with his bete noire and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde joining hands with another Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis against a decision taken by Ajit that had affected cooperatives run by the BJP leaders. It was a bolt from the blue for Ajit whose unconventional ways have hitherto not endeared the CM or the Deputy CM.
Leaders of I.N.D.I.A, especially Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress as well as Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena have always shown maturity by ignoring occasional ‘wide balls’ from Pawar senior and not rubbing him the wrong way.
They have almost ensured that no one from among their ranks talks ill of him.
They realise that ageing Pawar is a man under siege. And the siege is so tight that any brave man is going to get suffocated and frightened. So one has to sympathise with the old and sick man on the fate that befallen him.
Why Pawar Senior is no Ordinary Leader
At the same time, everyone who is anyone in the opposition knows the worth of Pawar on the battleground of Maharashtra, notwithstanding his age and the fact that he has lost almost the entire second line of leadership of the NCP to Ajit.
The failure of senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan to make it to the newly reconstituted CWC was a signal that his criticism of Pawar senior is neither backed nor liked by the leadership.
In fact, like the Gandhis, Kharge has a good rapport with Pawar and often talks to the NCP leader in Marathi. Kharge’s constituency Gulbarga in Karnataka is adjoining Maharashtra where Marathi is spoken along with Kannada. For Uddhav, Pawar is an “uncle” as Sharadrao was a close friend of the late Bal Thackeray despite practising diametrically opposite politics.
Though he will be turning 83 this December, Pawar is no ordinary leader as he is the only one who knows the state with 48 Lok Sabha seats, next only to Uttar Pradesh’s 80, in and out, like the palm of his hand.
Pawar had once shocked a young Congress leader at a chance meeting at the Mumbai airport after the 2014 polls telling him that he would be winning by just 5,000 votes in his maiden venture, decoding in detail from which of the Assembly segments he would lose and from where he would get a push.
Right or wrong, PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah feel that the marginalisation of the octogenarian leader is the key to the BJP’s total dominance over Maharashtra.
The Modern 'Shelar Mama'
Politics in Maharashtra has been going through turmoil for the past year since the toppling of the Uddhav Thackeray government.
The Modi-Shah duo is worried as the Maharashtra political riddle is getting more complex by the day with pulls and counterpulls from rival sides that have made the scene messier and messier.
Adding to this, the pre-poll surveys suggest that the BJP-led NDA and the Maha Vikas Aghadi would equally share the state's 48 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, which means a huge setback for the BJP. The ruling party along with its allies have secured more than 40 seats since 2014 which saw the emergence of Modi on the national scene.
In the historical context, the coming Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly polls later are like the battle for Simhagad fought by Shivaji Maharaj which led to the foundation of the Maratha empire. In the 1670 battle, Tanaji Malusare, the brave general of Shivaji, who led the blitzkrieg assault on the impregnable fort, was killed and the Marathas panicked and started fleeing.
Shelar mama, who was Tanaji’s Mama and the second in command, told the fleeing Marathas that they had either to jump from the fort and die or fight back and avenge the fall of their leader. Shelar Mama’s spirited words worked wonders and the rest is history.
Sharad Pawar is the modern Shelar mama.
With his detractors out to demolish him, entirely and wholly, the last stand of Pawar will determine the shape of things to come up in Maharashtra. It is not an easy battle.
But this ‘Shelar Mama’ is no pushover either. There is still much fight left in the old man.
(Sunil Gatade is a former Associate Editor of the Press Trust of India. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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