War is fought by soldiers, but won by generals. Elections are fought on ideologies and won by gladiators. The unique Maharashtra Mahabharata between the Maha Vikas Agadi and the Maha Yuti is fought on the battlefield of opportunism, tergiversation, perfidious propaganda and political fratricide between the three dominant political parties.
The main formations are the MVA comprising the Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (SCP) led by Uddhav Thackeray, and the Maha Yuti commanded by current CM Eknath Shinde with the BJP and Ajit Pawar’s breakaway NCP. Whoever wins, the verdict will transcend the significance of parties to envelop two giants whose mark on the polity is indelible. They are enemies by circumstance and friends through mutual respect.
The Maharashtra hostilities are a straight face-off between Sharad Pawar and Narendra Modi. It will be Pawar’s last battle in all likelihood. And Modi’s crucial test for the absolute validation of his charisma. Pawar must prove he remains the Mighty Maratha par excellence. Through a series of political machinations and collusion, he lost his party’s name and symbol; but the masses are loyal to him. At every important public or party meeting, he occupies the centre-stage.
Betrayed by his own kin and trusted sycophants who were given plum posts, Pawar’s vengeance is calculated to restore the clout of the NCP he founded 26 years ago. He is a wounded tiger snarling at destiny, ready to spring out of his cave. Hunters say there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded lion; in Pawar’s case, he is not licking his wounds, but is strategising to give his enemies a licking and a kicking.
A Congressman by DNA and dynast by choice, he failed to groom effective successors in the hope that daughter Supriya Sule would be equal to the task. To ensure her survival sans his rizz, he must bring the MVA back to power. He has proved his mass mojo by engineering the victory of 30 MVA Lok Sabha MPs in May. He is holding more public rallies and meetings in the past four weeks than he ever did before. He has kept the alliance together and minimised defections and rebellion within his ranks.
Considered the most resourceful politician in the Indian scenario today, Pawar faces a formidable challenge to deliver more than 150 seats in the 288-member assembly. He has won the first round by getting almost an equal number of seats for MVA allies. At stake is his status as king-maker, as against many junior regional leaders in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and J&K.
Pawar is that rare political species—indefinable even in the sunset stage of his six decades-old career. Age and affliction have slowed him, but not his Machiavellian mind as he leads the entire non-BJP opposition to put the kibosh on the Modi onslaught on India’s most affluent state and drive it back north of the Vindhyas.
By birth, Pawar is a Maratha. By conviction, he is the original Congressman. He may have shuffled his political companions over half a dozen times, but remains the only unifier on Maharashtra’s super-divisive and polarised mosaic. Even when his voice has been enfeebled by poor health, his whisper is louder than a lion’s roar. Despite not winning double-digit seats in the Lok Sabha, he is considered either the gray eminence or effective disruptor even at the national level, depending on whom you ask. He is the only state chieftain who enjoys the image of a national leader.
He is an effective administrator, because none of his adversaries could question his ability and agility to convert any adversity into an opportunity. In 2019, Pawar snatched victory from the saffron jaws by forging an ostensibly impossible alliance. The BJP and Shiv Sena had fought the state elections together and won an absolute majority. But all wasn’t well. Pawar stepped in to exploit the rift between them and forged a government that included the NCP, Shiv Sena and Congress.
Pawar’s genius is his ability to cajole staunch enemies to hug, because his vintage political conduct and dignified humility generates credibility and commendation. He abjures foul language, nor gets angry in public. Neither friends nor foes have cracked the Pawar formula: unleash power play as the victorious victim.
At his 75th birthday celebrations in New Delhi in 2015, then President Pranab Mukherjee, Modi and Sonia Gandhi were present to facilitate the uncrowned monarch of Mumbai. Modi had called Pawar’s party the ‘Naturally Corrupt Party’. On that day, he said: ”Sharad Pawar is a politician who was born in an era of constructive politics. He spends most of his time in constructive work... He struck a balance between cooperative movement and his political life… There was a decade when Mumbai underworld brought pessimism in Maharashtra, but Sharad Pawar saved Mumbai from the underworld... He has qualities of a farmer, who gets to know when weather changes. He makes use of this quality very effectively in politics.”
The Modi government honoured Pawar with the Padma Vibhushan. Even Sonia Gandhi, who was prevented by Pawar from becoming prime minister in 1998, complimented him: “His friendships with his political opponents and adversaries are legendary. In the modern language of IT, his networking skills are formidable and those skills are much needed when politics takes on a bitter partisan flavour, as it does every now and then. He is a politician through and through in the best sense of that term.”
The éminence grise of Indian rajneeti has come a long way since he toppled Maharashtra’s Congress government in 1978 and became chief minister at the age of 38. In 1996, he challenged Narasimha Rao for the top job. When he was denied the Congress president’s seat after Sitaram Kesri was hounded out, he quit the party questioning Sonia’s foreign origins. Yet he became a Union minister in 2004 and accepted her as the UPA chairperson.
Since then, Pawar has stayed a committed ally of the Congress for 20 years. The Congress has reciprocated by accepting him as the unchallenged leader of the alliance in Maharashtra. The MVA is totally dependent on his organisational skills and connectivity with both rural and urban masses. The only irony is that Pawar, who until recently was a front-runner for the PM’s post, is spending his last breath to retain his little fiefdom.
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, a former viceroy of India and poet, said, “To other cities I may go as a tourist, but to Delhi I come as a pilgrim.” In Delhi, power is god. Pawar, until now, if not a tourist, has been a regular career traveler to Delhi. This election will mark his final political pilgrimage to Mumbai, where he still reigns as the god of go-betweens. It is also his last stand, defending his legacy and dynasty. Whether the way to Modi’s Dilli runs through Pawar’s Mumbai is the big question.
prabhu chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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