A sense of deja vu pervades the Maha muddle

Sharad Pawar appeared to have been felled by his own games; but by inducting a party it has constantly targeted for graft, is BJP risking its own prospects?

Despite all the stunning twists and turns in Maharashtra this week, any story with Sharad Pawar as a key protagonist evokes a sense of deja vu.

Sharad Pawar may have been consumed by his own games. ( (File Photo))

We all feel we have been here, in this very moment, before.

Ajit Pawar, who is today being attacked as a backstabber for betraying his uncle, did exactly the same in 2019, in a sudden joining of hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That stint as deputy chief minister of Maharashtra lasted less than 80 hours.

When it collapsed, Sharad Pawar was hailed as the craftiest fox of Indian politics. His nephew’s power gambit was described as some deep game of subterfuge that the senior Pawar played to checkmate the BJP.

Was Pawar’s cleverness overstated then? Or has he finally paid a price for always sailing too close to the wind?

In the rebel camp of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), leaders insist that Sharad Pawar was flirting with the idea of switching camps for a while, but would always stop short at the precipice of the jump.

As far back as 2009, Pranab Mukherjee, then Union foreign minister, told me that, “Pawar always gives mixed signals. He has been doing this always.” It was election season and there was speculation that Pawar could abandon the Congress. Mukherjee, no less of a deep political player, was matter of fact in his appraisal of Sharad Pawar’s penchant for somersaults.

Today, in 2023, a lifetime of mixed signals appears to have devoured the veteran politician, who, in the unkindest cut of all, is also being targeted for his age.

Sharad Pawar may have been consumed by his own games. But he is not the only one who may eventually suffer for playing an over-calculated hand.

At the moment, the BJP can certainly afford the last laugh. It has successfully hollowed out Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. Word is that the Maharashtra Congress is also vulnerable. If Sharad Pawar really tricked them in 2019 by sending Ajit Pawar into enemy territory as a decoy, the BJP made a deserter out of him and showed the senior Pawar his place.

But in the process, the party may have unleashed a set of contradictions that it will find difficult to manage.

To start with, how will it manage the sentiments within its own cadre that has long been training their guns on the NCP as a target? Maharashtra BJP’s irrepressible Kirit Somaiya, for instance, known for being a document excavator, will be left red-faced. Just recently, he released a video warning Hasan Mushrif, the NCP leader now sworn in as minister, to “be ready with your bags.”

Instead of the Enforcement Directorate sending Mushrif to jail, as Somaiya may have expected based on his allegations of money laundering, Mushrif is today in a position to call the shots. Similarly, one of the main reasons for the discontent among Shiv Sena legislators who defected with Eknath Shinde to the BJP camp was the alliance between the Sena and the NCP. Ajit Pawar’s alleged corruption and ideological differences over Hindutva were quoted as key factors that hurt the sentiments of the Sena’s loyal base.

What will Eknath Shinde and his loyalists say now? And will they even have a choice?

With the NCP broken, Shinde is no longer necessary for the BJP’s survival.

If he is among the 16 legislators who may be disqualified – that decision by the speaker of the assembly is pending, despite instructions from the Supreme Court – he will be out in the cold and neither here nor there.

If he remains chief minister, he will be hobbled and undercut, and possibly trapped by his own inconsistencies.

Of course, it is true that the other side has barely been consistent either. The BJP is right to point out that the alliance between Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar and the Congress was also counter-intuitive to what people voted for.

Maybe the BJP is counting on the cynicism of the Maharashtra voter who has seen some of her representatives change sides often and finds it hard to remember their original politics. Chagan Bhujbal, the newly sworn-in minister, for instance, has been with the Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the NCP under Sharad Pawar, and is now with Ajit Pawar.

Maybe the BJP believes the voter will not care about the fact that it is in alliance today with the very people it attacked as corrupt. And maybe the voter is jaded enough to believe that no politician is an ideological purist. But what is left to manage is still a Maha mess.

Sometimes, as Sharad Pawar learnt the hard way, being too clever is injurious to one’s political health.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal.