The Bhaurangari Ganpati, said to be the first of Pune’s pandals, to organise public Ganesha festivities in Maharashtra has objected to the Pune Municipal Corporation’s plans to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the festival popularised by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
The PMC, led by Mayor Mukta Tilak — a scion of Lokmanya Tilak’s family — has earmarked ₹2 crore for the grand quasquicentennial celebrations this August. The Bhaurangari Trust, which has been struggling to reclaim the memory of Bhausaheb Javale as the progenitor of the public festivities, has threatened to file a writ in the Bombay High Court if PMC decides to go ahead with the celebrations.
The trust has consistently claimed that it was in 1892 that ‘Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav’ began and it was the brainchild of Bhau Lakshman Javale, the royal physician who ran a charitable dispensary at his two-storey home behind Shaniwarwada fort. (As the family vocation was dyeing ethnic Maharashtrian sarees, the moniker ‘Bhau Rangari’ caught on)
The trust celebrated its 125th anniversary last year with the Revolutionary Pune of the 1870s as its theme.
“We cannot understand the basis of the PMC’s celebrations as Lokmanya Tilak, his great contribution notwithstanding, had nothing to do with it in 1893. It was the following year, in 1894, that Tilak held Ganesha festivities of his own,” said Suraj Renuse, one of the trustees.
According to trust members, it was in 1892 that the first community Ganesha festival celebrations in Pune (and in Maharashtra) took place with the installation of three Ganpatis: the first at Bhau Rangari’s residence, the second at Ganpatrao Ghotavdekar’s place and Sardar Nanasaheb Khasgiwale installing the third in his home.
The spur behind Bhausaheb Javale’s idea was the defeat of the 1857 rising which was etched deeply in his mind. As a result, Javale mooted ways in which people cutting across class and caste lines, could be unified under a common idea.
The ten-day festival culminated with the ‘Anant Chaturdashi’ or the grand immersion of the Ganesha idols. A special note of it was made by an enthusiastic Tilak, then 37, in an editorial in his ‘Kesari’ newspaper on September 26, 1893.
In glowing words, Tilak had remarked that one “ought to be gratified to the householder [Bhau Saheb Javale] who came up with this concept.” The following year, Tilak installed a Ganpati at his own residence, thereby using the festival as a powerful social tool in the battle against English imperialism.
“If Tilak began celebrating Ganesha festival publicly in 1894, then how can the PMC claim 2017 to be the 125thyear of ‘Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav’ festivities,” asked Mr. Renuse.
He demanded that the government ought to officially acknowledge that it was Bhausaheb Javale, and not Tilak, who was the progenitor of the concept of ‘Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav’. The trust has further demanded that a statue of Bhausaheb Javale be erected in the Old Pune area of Tilak Chowk.
Aggrieved trust members have met with Pune Mayor Ms. Tilak, who has said that the matter would be looked into. Rohit Tilak, the Lokmanya’s great-grandson, acknowledged that the issue of firsts’ was indeed a convoluted one, but said that it was Tilak’s efforts that really popularised the concept.
Supporting the PMC’s claim, a city-based historian, requesting anonymity, said that it was 1893 and not 1892, that the three pandals including Bhaurangari, celebrated the Ganesha festival publicly.
“1893 as the starting date was mentioned by J.S. Karandikar in an article published in Kesari in 1953, almost 60 years after the event. While there persists the question as to who exactly started the first public Ganesha celebrations, there can be no doubt that it was Tilak’s efforts and The Kesari’s lead that led to the widespread popularity of the Ganesh festival. There was a time when only Kesari among all newspapers carried detailed information about the Ganesha festival. In fact, in 1942, at the height of the ‘Quit India’ movement, when the British government cracked down on the festival and any mode of assembly, people followed Kesari’s lead on how to go about the immersion,” he told The Hindu .
Meanwhile, the opposition has slammed the PMC, and the Mayor’s, initiative to go ahead with the celebration, calling it a “sheer waste of public funds”.
“It is ludicrous to celebrate the anniversary twice and spend precious funds. The Bhaurangari Trust has already celebrated theirs last year and have documentary proof to support their claim. We demand that the Mayor constitute an expert committee to determine the exact date,” said senior Congress leader Arvind Shinde.
