Pune: As alliances between major political players ahead of the civic polls continue to be marred by mistrust and cautious probing, the pro-Maratha, anti-Brahmin Sambhaji Brigade is proving to be a complex variable in the ever-fluid political equation.
In terms of realpolitik, the Brigade’s supposed galvanising of the Maratha vote has always helped major parties in the recent past, notably Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.
The Sambhaji Brigade’s announcement in November last year to contest elections for the Mumbai and Pune municipal corporations, along with the Zilla Parishad elections, has lent grist to the political mills as to which big player will effectively manoeuvre this outfit.
Splinter group
The Brigade was founded by Purushottam Khedekar in 1997 as a splinter group of the parent Maratha Seva Sangh, which itself was born in 1990 in Akola. The outfit wields considerable influence in Vidarbha and parts of western Maharashtra.
A dramatic split within the outfit earlier this month underscored internal fault lines, where many old-timers were concerned that the Brigade was straying from its ‘principles’ and were disgruntled with Mr. Khedekar’s control of the outfit.
Former president Pravin Gaikwad, exited the Brigade with a large number of followers to ally with the leftist Peasants and Workers Party (PWP).
Proving once again that politics makes for strange bedfellows, former Brigade members say that the hardline, pro-Maratha Brigade is being used by the Brahmin-centric Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to wean the Maratha vote away from both the Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party.
BJP has an edge
According to them, Mr. Khedekar’s personal affinity with senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari gives the BJP an edge to manoeuvre the Brigade to its advantage in the upcoming civic polls.
“Both hail from the same region. Mr. Khedekar served as executive engineer in the Public Works Department in Akola and Amravati, when Mr. Gadkari was PWD Minister in the Sena-BJP coalition government which held power from 1995-99. In fact, Mr. Khedekar had even dubbed Mr. Gadkari ‘Shivaji of the PWD’ on one occasion,” said a former Brigade leader, requesting anonymity.
Acts of vandalism
A series of high-profile vandalism acts has accompanied the Brigade’s militant adoration of King Sambhaji (son of Shivaji) and deployment of virulent rhetoric: In 2004, it first made headlines with an infamous act of ransacking the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in protest against American scholar James Laine’s book on Shivaji titled Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India .
In 2010, the outfit allegedly forced the NCP-controlled PMC to remove the statute of Dadoji Konddev, Shivaji’s Brahmin mentor, from the city’s Lal Mahal, where the warrior king lived.
In both instances, the NCP, which helmed the State government, turned a blind eye to the Brigade’s acts, humouring their demands instead.
However, the recent vandalism of the bust of legendary Marathi litterateur Ram Ganesh Gadkari from the city’s Sambhaji Park has rattled the Sena and the NCP at a time when the BJP is in the ascendant prior to the civic polls.
Both parties lost no time in censuring the Brigade, terming the act “a gratuitous deed which sought to polarise society along caste lines”.
But the possibility of using the Brigade as a galvanised Maratha vote has not been lost on the other players in the fray.
On Monday, Congress legislator Nitesh Rane gave away a reward of ₹5 lakh to the four activists who had uprooted Gadkari’s bust, while praising them at a function in Tulapur.
“People like Gadkari distorted history and do not deserve to be honoured,” said Mr. Rane, who is the son of Maratha strongman and former Maharashtra Narayan Rane.
Brushing aside suggestions that the Brigade was ‘a shadowy front’ of a bigger party like the BJP, Santosh Shinde, who heads the outfit in Pune, said it would contest on 50 of the 162 seats in the PMC poll.
