Opportunism in Maharashtra

The New Indian Express
First Published : 30 Mar 2010 12:23:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 30 Mar 2010 12:49:37 AM IST

The kind of opportunism which marks Indian politics can be gauged from some of the recent happenings in the family of the late stalwart of the Maharashtra political scene, Pramod Mahajan. Not long ago, his youngest and now the sole surviving brother, Prakash, was in the MNS, which was odd since Pramod was one of the foremost members of the BJP. Now, however, Prakash has switched sides, moving to the Shiv Sena, which is the MNS’s parent organisation. The reason for the crossing of the floor was undoubtedly the MNS’s failure to advance his political career, for Prakash had lost an election to the legislative council some time ago.

Having moved to the Shiv Sena, it was perhaps only natural for Prakash to berate his former party. But what is perhaps more significant is the promptness with which he has been made the Shiv Sena’s deputy leader as well as spokesperson. Given the tight control which the Sena’s patriarch, Bal Thackeray, maintains over the organisation, the leeway given to Prakash, even though he belongs to a prominent family, points to an uncharacteristic loosening of the strings. For, as the spokesperson, it is not impossible that Prakash will get an edge over Uddhav, the party’s working president and heir apparent, whose lack of charisma is invariably referred to whenever his estranged and seemingly more popular cousin, the MNS’s Raj Thackeray, is mentioned.

What is evident in these manoeuvres is the cynicism which guides even budding politicians. Since several members of the Mahajan family are in the BJP, it might have been expected that Prakash, too, would have chosen the larger — on the national scale — of the three saffron parties. It isn’t only that Gopinath Munde is now a major BJP politician in the state after Pramod’s death, but the widow of Pravin, who shot dead Pramod, has also joined the party. When Pramod was alive, Prakash’s decision to choose the Shiv Sena would have been understandable because of the proximity of the two parties and also between Pramod and Bal Thackeray. But it is different now because the two have drifted apart. They are still allies in a formal sense, but there have been a number of occasions when Shiv Sena has cocked a snook at the BJP, as when it refused to support the latter’s presidential candidate, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, and opted for the Maharashtrian, Pratibha Patil. But such factors seem to count for little when political advancement is the sole guiding force.