First the obvious, even if it triggers a yawn. Dynastic politics has come to stay. Over the years, it has only strengthened, even if Aditya Thackeray gives a few TV bytes about why Bharatiya Janata Party was getting too ambitious and then goes off to a restaurant with friends and mother a day after the break-up. That’s serious, level headed politics.
The belief is, as is with the Nehru-(not Mahatma) Gandhi - no one knows when Indira changed the spelling of her surname from a ‘y’ to an ‘I’ – dynasty, the next generation waits in the wings, is ushered in, and anointed. It only involves a minor inconvenience of an election where the succession has to be democratised.
BJP's Pankaja Munde. Image courtesy IBNLokmat
It is a legitimisation of a sense of entitlement.
Maharashtra has had its several lineages, and when Marathas dominate politics, the tendencies to promote the kith and kin are not unnatural. You can’t throw a brick without hitting a dynast; there are as many lurking in the bushes. Even in the BJP dynasts are in abundance. The Munde clan is out there, emoting, politicking for votes.
The Bhujbals – they comprise at one time a deputy chief minister, a son in the Assembly and a nephew in Lok Sabha – are an OBC dynasty. An entirely urban political clan is the Naiks of Navi Mumbai too have been having a stranglehold on most elected posts, civic body to parliament and a ministry too. This togetherness eliminates serious rivals in the power games.
In Maharashtra, a new trend has been developing where political families with feuds have taken it to the public domain asking the people to choose who among the rivals they want to represent them. Such developments are a far serious a matter than members of a family voting differently in an election.
The dynastic politics works two ways.
One, dynasts have no qualms in promoting another. After Gopinath Munde passed away, his daughter Pritam was fielded in the bye-elections to Lok Sabha now under way. Both Shiv Sena, now run by the founder’s son and grandson, and NCP with Sharad, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule being the dynastic leading lights did not field a candidate against her.
That was goodwill and or expression of respect, as proclaimed by both Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, because of the stature of Gopinath Munde, easily the biggest mass leader after the elder Pawar, or had he been alive, ahead of Pawar, with four-five decades in electoral politics.
Two, and more significantly, it does not mean that people are fielded in an election because they want to extend the political lineage. They also do it because there are internal feuds in the political families, more like a vicious, public, palace intrigue. Curbing the rival is the intent.
As many as eight such examples can be found in the ongoing Assembly elections.
A former Maharashtra Congress chief, Ranjit Deshmukh’s son, Ashish, on a BJP ticket is fighting his uncle, NCP’s Anil Deshmukh in Katol.The other son, Amol, is on an NCP nomination in Ramtek against Congress’ former Union minister. Ranjit, after the date for withdrawal, resigned from the party though he was a ticket aspirant himself. It is family politics playing out as electoral politics.
Nothing better illustrates a rivalry going public with such intensity as the Raj-Uddhav Thackeray duo for the control of the Shiv Sena which led to the formation of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. However, bitterness have seen a former chief minister, Shivajirao Nilenagekar fighting and losing to his grandson Shambaji, in BJP, in Nilanga constituency in 2004.
Five years later, the grandpa got the better of his grandson and revelled in satisfaction. This time, Shambaji is contesting against his uncle Ashok Patil Nilangekar, former nominated by the BJP, the latter by the Congress. The surname, Nilangekar, is derived from the name of the constituency, Nilanga. Again, family issues are playing out as politics.
Pankaja Munde-Palve, Gopinath Munde’s daughter, whose “importance” has been publicly been acknowledged by no less a person than Amit Shah at a rally, is fighting her cousin Dhananjay Munde who is on the ballot for the NCP. When Munde preferred the daughter to the nephew for the Parli seat in 2009, he switched to the NCP. The dirty linen is now on a political platform.
Sitting MLA Omraje Nimbalkar is contesting the right of his cousin Rana Jagatsinh Patil to represent Osmanabad, once the seat held by Rana father, Padamsinh Patil who once almost became a chief minister. He would have, had Sharad Pawar not been sent back packing by PV Narasimha Rao. Patil is an accused in the alleged murder of Nimbalkar’s father.
When a minister in the just-ended cabinet, Sanjay Deotale did not get his nomination from the Congress, but his sister-in-law, Asawari Deotale got it, the gentleman leaped to the BJP. They are now locked in a keen contest in Warora. If there are no deep fissures, politics, and ambitions, it is believed, can cause a family crisis.
From the possible to the improbable, politics throw up twists and turns. In the previous elections, Sanyogita Nimbalkar had canvassed hard for Yashomati Thakur – marriage changed the surnames of this pair - even managed her constituency, but this time Nimbalkar opted to stand as an Independent.
A lot many others are in the elections in several of Maharashtra’s Assembly elections, seeking to retain or extend the family’s proprietorial control on politics in their domains. As The Indian Express reported today, for instance in Satara, as many as eight constituencies are on the stump, what the clans "say matters more" than party honchos views.
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