While the Ganesha darshan at Mumbai ‘Lalbaughcha Raja’ is a massive spectacle replete with celebrity spotting, the Ganpati pandals of Pune’s reverberate with the echoes of history where the semantics of the festivities have a deeper, underlying meaning.
One of Pune’s hallowed pandals, the Bhaurangari Ganpati occupies a hallowed place: it was here, in 1892, that the genesis of public Ganesha festivities or ‘Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav’ took root. On its 125th anniversary, the Bhau Rangari Ganpati trust is striving to regain the focus squarely back on the historic importance of the Ganesha festival.
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.
As the city reels under the relentless onslaught of mushrooming Ganpati pandals, the ones sited in Pune’s old quarter, under siege from the pomp and gaudy splendour of new pandals, attempts to salvage tradition and history.
“People seem to have forgotten that it was Bhausaheb Javale who first began this concept which was transformed into a socio-political movement by Bal Gangadhar ‘Lokmanya’ Tilak two years later,” said Sanjeev Javale, on of Bhausaheb’s descendants, bemoaning the lack of recognition that the trust had received.
With this in mind, the organisers will showcase arms used by the revolutionaries in the last decade of the 19th century. The arms movement against the British Raj had gained momentum in the late 1870s with the Ramoshi movement, spearheaded and galvanised by Vasudev Balwant Phadke in and around Pune district.
Sited in a rickety ‘wada’ in the bylanes of Pune’s Budhwar Peth, the building which houses the Bhaurangari trust was a hotbed of conspiratorial and clandestine revolutionary activity during the 1890s.
It was in these bylanes that people of the eminence of Tilak, Narsimha Chintaman Kelkar, the legendary poet, playwright and historian, Balwant Natu and Ramchandra Patwardhan among others sowed the germ for the early phase of India’s independence.
“The larger purpose to showcase arms is to remind and educate people, especially the younger ones, of how and why the community Ganesh festival came to be. It is, we feel, an important slice of social history which is being sadly neglected,” says Ganesh Urunkar, one of the organisers of the Bhau Rangari Ganpati celebration.
With the defeat of the valiant 1857 rising etched deeply in his mind, Javale mooted ways in which people cutting across class and caste lines, could be unified under a common idea.
In 1892, the first community Ganesh celebrations 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 ten-day festival culminated with the Anant Chaturdashi
The following year, enthused by the success, more public Ganpati celebrations took hold. 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 remarked that one “ought to be gratified to the householder [Bhau Saheb Javale] who came up with this concept.”
In 1894, Tilak installed a Ganpati at his own residence, thereby taking the momentous step to popularise the worship of Lord Ganesha and using the festival as a powerful social tool to mobilise the populace in the battle against English imperialism.
Till today, the Ganesha idol, made of pulp and paper, is lightly touched and preserved down the years.
According to trustee Anant Kusarkar, the original chariot, used in 1892 to ferry Lord Ganesha, is still preserved and used.
“We forbid the use of colours or gulal; nor of loudspeakers,” says Mr. Kusarkar.
Further, the mandal does not collect donations (‘vargani’) from the public; the trustees and voluntary contributions constitute the fund pool for the celebrations.
“Pomp and gaudiness and loudspeakers with crass lyrics has regrettably becoming the norm of celebration…in this din, the raison d’etre for celebration is often forgotten. One of our larger aims is to show noisy revellers that an alternative is very much possible,” Mr. Kusarkar says.
