What ails regional leaders like Sharad Pawar or Lalu Prasad Yadav is not just their ill health.
As companies that fail to quickly adapt to new technologies lag behind, the regional politicians who fail to grasp innovations in politics are bound to stagnate.
Sharad Pawar admitted that he went for talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form a government in Maharashtra in 2019. No one would have been surprised with the revelation – Pawar’s “mixed signals” are anyway a stuff of legend. But five years after that fruitless discussion, Sharad Pawar is the leader of a depleted party, losing a large chunk of his votes and party to his nephew Ajit Pawar, with seemingly no way back into electoral politics.
Sharad Pawar was once in competition to become the Prime Minister of the country, although he ultimately lost out to Narasimha Rao. Today, even his shadow over the western Maharashtra region is diminishing. What went wrong for Pawar?
How The BJP Brought in Its Own Version of Caste Politics
Pawar is not alone in his troubles. One may look at the Hooda family and many other one-caste leaders such as Mayawati who have been struggling for over a decade. Their undoing, it must be said, is not entirely due to their own faults. A historical change in the way in which politics is conducted in the country underpins their slow decline. We may call this process the ‘sub-casteisation of politics.'
The manner in which caste politics has been conducted has not changed much after Kanshi Ram. Successful caste politics usually followed the formula of a region-specific numerically dominant caste plus minorities plus a few assertive backward castes.
Even though the BJP is seen as a party against caste politics, it has brought something new to caste politics. Its decisions forced it to think beyond the electoral reliance on dominant castes in Indian states. We have ample evidence to believe that the BJP is not just focused on winning elections, they want to win elections on its terms, i.e. without an over-reliance on the power of dominant castes.
Into the stagnating mire of caste politics, the BJP brought two innovations.
First, it displaced the dominant castes by assembling accumulated resentment against their political domination. Thus, the BJP’s new caste politics has consciously tried to undermine the political power of Jats in Haryana, Patidars in Gujarat, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Marathas in Maharashtra and so on.
Second, it assembled the politically marginalised sub-castes as an electoral tour de force. Hindutva as an ideology helps the BJP to prevent the total consolidation of a dominant caste for itself as well as to provide a glue to stick various sub-castes together.
Even if some sections of the upper castes revolt, the promise of Hindutva retains the majority of upper caste voters. This seems to work even if society structurally tends towards social dominance of upper castes under Hindutva regimes.
Neither Hindutva nor caste politics alone can consistently win elections. However, the synthesis of both presents a lethal combination. Narendra Modi’s, along with Amith Shah's, true contribution to the Hindutva movement is this synthesis of Hindutva with subcaste politics.
The upper castes tend to be ideologically bound to the BJP; thus they vote for the BJP irrespective of what’s on offer. Since the BJP has this upper caste vote bank assured, it is at ease with wooing subcastes. Hindutva reductionism, or the inability to see BJP as something more than Hindutva, often blinds opponents to these tactics and thus prevents them from countering it.
The Bagdis and Matuas in Bengal and the Vanjara in Maharashtra, among many others, were brought to the electoral mainstream by the BJP. This sub-casteisation of politics works by building a ‘coalition of coalitions’—a coalition of small castes at the local level, and a coalition of these coalitions at the state level.
The Trajectory of Sharad Pawar
Within this broader framework of change, the story of Sharad Pawar has its own unique trajectory. Pawar is hardly the passive victim of the BJP’s machinations, but rather an architect of his own downfall, albeit in an indirect way.
Sharad Pawar was shaped as a leader of the Maratha peasantry—but he also imbibed two other traditions which propelled him into national significance.
First, he played the role of a benevolent patriarch, much loved in Marathi politics which produces one patriarch after the other.
Second, he was deeply shaped by the non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra; in an interview with Jabbar Patel, he admitted to being influenced by the egalitarian legacy of the Bhakti movement, whose spirit he wanted to carry forward in a secular form. He has frequently been accused of being an atheist. Whether true or not, that he faced such an accusation and was forced to deny it in public speaks about the modernist position he occupied in Marathi society.
These two traditions and Pawar’s role within them need some unpacking. It is a truism to say that Marathi society is patriarchal. This would be true of nearly every social group in the subcontinent, including the diverse matrilineal groups. But patriarchy is expressed quite literally in Marathi politics—from Yashwantrao Chavan onwards, the presence of commanding male figures in Marathi politics is no coincidence.
It was Sharad Pawar who played this role most successfully, however, and it is in his image that later one-caste patriarchs in the state shaped themselves in every party.
Pawar was the most benevolent among such patriarchs by most standards. First and foremost, he served the political and economic interests of the feudal Maratha lords, the stereotypical owners of the farmlands and sugarcane factories. Hardly any discontent is registered against him, and much of the corruption allegations he faced as the agriculture minister in the UPA government came through his defence of their interests. But, beyond this patronage of his core support base, Pawar is the only Marathi patriarch who successfully balanced constitutional values with his reign. He always had good relations with Muslims, and even with Dalits to some extent.
During his tenure as chief minister, Maharashtra did witness terrible caste atrocities—but Pawar was always considered approachable by the wave of leaders who gave fresh energy to the Dalit movement in the state. Ramdas Athawale, for instance, continues to have a sense of comradeship with Sharad Pawar, in spite of switching camps.
Such a network across the board was one of Pawar’s strong suits. He knew everyone from Gautam Adani— whom Pawar claims to know before everyone knew his name—to the now-sidelined Left parties in the state, and conversely, everyone knew and trusted Pawar to satisfy their interests.
He was a full-time politician in a true sense, engaging in solving everyday conflicts as much as intervening to stop communal riots in the aftermath of the demolition of Babri Masjid. Pawar remains one of the few faces who has given a victorious look to the non-Brahmin social reformist forces and movements of Maharashtra, even though the politics in the state has been dominated by non-Brahmins. Moreover, his feminist interventions are understated—he played a role in opening the armed forces to women, legislating reservations for women in panchayat elections and also in winning them property rights.
Fitting with this quality that is unusual for patriarchs, he shaped his daughter Supriya Sule into a popular leader within his party.
Sharad Pawar: A Universalist, An Ardent Social Democrat
Pawar is something of a universalist in these senses, an ardent social democrat who is not a factionalist unlike Bal or Uddhav Thackeray who secure only the interests of Mumbai. Naturally, he thrived in a post-imperial society like Maharashtra, which prides itself in its quasi-collectivist ethos and tries to securely bind itself under one figure.
The projection of unity so characteristic of Marathi society was represented perfectly on the political scene by Sharad Pawar. The very criticism against Pawar was not that his principles were wrong, but that he did not live up to them all the time.
Pawar was thus a politician of one community and also useful to others at the same time. His personality, his gender role, and his manner of functioning were deeply rooted in his particular contexts. These strengths were raised to a higher degree of effectiveness by his association with the Congress ecosystem, of which he continues to be a part even though to a lesser extent.
This combination is what propelled him to Delhi, where he was a mainstay for years. As a Congress politician, he came close to the highest executive post in the country and in the party but was left out, each time in favour of a different rival. Finally, he snapped against Sonia Gandhi after she became Congress president and broke away from the party to form the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He and his supporters pushed it as a moment of Marathi asmita on the part of the slighted leader. Nonetheless, he was a major part of successive UPA governments, but only after a brief courtship with the BJP—he must have thought 2014 would arrive a decade earlier.
In Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi had made a similar mistake. Seeing that Hindutva was not becoming dominant just yet, Pawar and the NCP returned to the secular camp, as did the DMK.
The Congress could not replicate Sharad Pawar’s charisma in the state once he left. At the same time, Pawar could never shed the Congress affiliation fully, and it retained a place in the name of his new party too. His rebellion against Congress would eventually prove to be his undoing.
Once he left the grand old party, Pawar became more and more a representative of his limited social base primarily revolving around the Maratha agrarian economy, slowly losing the universalism which characterised his peak. The Congress typically produced its best results when it combined the landed caste leadership at the regional level with the strong nationalist and unifying impulse at the central level. Without this central impulse, the leaders who quit the party quickly descend into a structurally feudal way of functioning.
The result of Pawar’s newfound confinement was that the NCP remained limited to western Maharashtra. This restriction to one region is, incidentally, one of the biggest weaknesses of non-BJP parties in Maharashtra. Even though they speak for Marathis as a whole, none of them are a pan-Maharashtrian party in any meaningful sense. Pawar thus sacrificed presence on the ground in favour of a particular ideological positioning, and it benefitted him for some years. The rise of the BJP under Modi, when it finally came a decade after Pawar parted ways with them, kickstarted the new milieu in caste politics to which Pawar never really adjusted.
There is another reason, paradoxical and less appreciated, which led to Pawar’s decline. The BJP and the Congress, for various reasons, have lasting power even without electoral power. Regional parties like the NCP can't last without political power—even more so if they represent comprador classes such as capitalists or the big peasantry.
Rich third-world farmers need state power to get subsidies, Minimum Support Prices, disaster compensation, the right prices in the global market and at every step of the way as they try to be competitive in the global market. Without the right connections at the Centre or at least the state, such parties would collapse as they would not serve any of the interests of their social base. This dependence on state power is what makes such classes take on a comprador nature.
The very source of Pawar’s strength—that he was from a non-Brahmin agrarian, dominant caste in a feudal society—thus turned into his weakness in two different but connected ways. The BJP was determined to end the political dominance of Marathas in Maharashtra, and chose Devendra Fadnavis, from the slighted Brahmin caste, as the right antidote. This decision was as much driven by the push from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose Nagpur bastion is famously Brahminical, as much as it is by the need to blunt the achievements of Maratha dominance. In the final instance, however, the choice of a Brahmin leader is more incidental than a planned push of Brahminism—it so happens that the Brahmin caste was left out of direct power by the non-Brahmin politicians and are well placed to lead a reconciliation of castes under Hindutva.
The BJP is not against Marathas, it is against the dominance of Marathas; the same goes for the BJP's relations with similar landed castes elsewhere. One-caste dominance, be it of Brahmins or Shudras, is an impediment to Hindu unity as it makes caste contradictions visible and unavoidable. On the other hand, democratic elections are crucial arenas for marginalised groups to seek recognition.
The first-past-the-post system is also more conducive for numerically small groups to play an outsized role in politics. Through Hindutva-ised subcaste politics, the BJP could both recognise the aspirations of small castes and their latent political potency. This double recognition is what makes the BJP win unprecedented victories even when the wind is against them. The opposition parties that proudly articulate issue-based politics often fail to think beyond their traditional vote banks that do not include small castes.
Sharad Pawar was a victim of this determined Hindutva project of constructing Hindu unity.
As the BJP spread across Maharashtra, they weaned away smaller OBCs from the necessity of voting Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena or any other party. This reduced the electoral power of the Maratha agrarian economy, by giving political representation to many of its dependents. Once the BJP became the biggest party, the class factor also kicked in. Invested agriculturists, entrepreneurs and their regional leaders could not afford to be at odds with the ruling party, and they soon buckled to the BJP via Ajit Pawar.
Now, thanks to his declining health, local leaders are not likely to see a future with Sharad Pawar. In politics, longevity—the remaining years of the leader—matters. Sharad Pawar is already living on borrowed time, and it is likely that the healthy Pawars will prevail in the long run.
In any case, a Maratha being forever a chief minister was not possible. The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) now has to reckon, even if belatedly, with the changed equations in caste politics. Supriya Sule, or another leader, would have to take up the mantle for this change in direction.
Old leaders find it difficult to reinvent themselves, not just because of their physical limitations, but also the sedimented debts, relations, and emotions which reduce their flexibility. So, Sharad Pawar himself is unlikely to reinvent himself—but Maharashtra, let alone India, is even less likely to roll back the years to a time when a dominant caste leader could stitch together a winning electoral coalition on the basis of caste arithmetic.
(Kuriakose Mathew teaches politics and international relations at PP Savani University, Surat. He holds a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. Viplov Wingkar is an assistant professor of philosophy at BK Birla College (Autonomous), Kalyan. Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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