In the politics of deification, there are demi-gods who can’t be touched, much less allowed to crumble and fall. Every state has its iconic figures who are beyond the pale. In Maharashtra, there is no bigger hero than Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj. I learnt my own Shivaji Maharaj lesson in the 1990s when I wrote a column on the controversy over renaming Mumbai airport. I had pushed for JRD Tata to be given that honour since he had played a pioneering role in Indian civil aviation. Instantly, the Shiv Sena wrote an angry editorial, insisting that the airport be named after the Maratha warrior-king and no one else. We even received a few phone calls in the office threatening dire action if the article was not withdrawn.
The lesson I learnt all those years ago has come to haunt and embarrass the Maharashtra government today. The collapse of a newly constructed Shivaji Maharaj statue in Sindhudurg has led to a predictable emotional outburst and war of words. The Maharashtra government initially tried to pin the blame on the Indian Navy which had commissioned the statue only to hastily backtrack and promise to construct an even bigger statue at the same location. The opposition, has led protest marches, accusing the government of corruption in the statue construction. Elections in Maharashtra are only months away and the politicization of the issue is inevitable.
Even the prime minister, not known for making public apologies, was left with little choice but to express regret. It was, after all, prime minister Modi who had inaugurated the statue amidst much fanfare only last December. How a statue that was originally meant to be only 6 feet was suddenly built as a 35 foot statue without proper material being used is a matter of investigation. The suspicion remains that the speed of construction was tangled in a frantic desire to impress the national leadership without adequate regulatory oversight. If there was local corruption, then only a proper inquiry can reveal more.
But look beyond the noisy blame game and reflect upon what a fallen statue of a legendary figure tells us about the state of our polity and its priorities. There are hundreds of Shivaji statues, large and small, dotted across Maharashtra and the country. If a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar is a fixture in almost every town and village across the country, Shivaji Maharaj too occupies a prominent place in most towns of Maharashtra. A statue or a memorial is often the easiest option for any ruling party seeking to appropriate the legacy of a revered figure. When Mayawati came to power in Uttar Pradesh, the construction of Ambedkar statues and memorials was one of the chief concerns of her government. The Bahujan Samaj Party wanted to align herself to the cult-like following of Babasaheb without necessarily embracing his unswerving constitutional values.
In Maharashtra too, leaders who push for even larger Shivaji Maharaj statues to be built, mostly at tax payers expense, wont look at making investments in quality schools and hospitals with the same urgency. For example, in 2004, it was proposed to build a grand Shivaji Maharaj memorial in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Mumbai by the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance government. Since then, every successive government in Maharashtra has promised to construct the statue which was billed as Mumbai’s answer to the Statue of Liberty in New York. Twenty years later, caught in court and environment battles, the statue has still not been built even as costs have risen exponentially. In 2018, it was estimated that the statue would cost the Maharashtra government approximately over Rs 3,600 crores. In a city where a Shivaji Maharaj statue already exists at the Gateway of India, was it really necessary to build another statue off the coastline? But which Maharashtra leader or government would have the political courage to even suggest that a Shivaji statue is a waste of tax payers money?
According to the recent Maharashtra Economic Survey 2023-24, the state’s current debt stock has surpassed a whopping Rs 7 lakh crore while interest payment due was over Rs 48,000 crores. While the state remains an industrial powerhouse and the largest contributor to national GDP, there has been a slowdown, especially in the agriculture sector. A sub-par monsoon last year had led to a marked decline in crop production and a worrying increase in rural distress. Last year, the Maharashtra government declared ‘drought-like’ conditions in more than a thousand village clusters spread across several districts. A December 2022 audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) revealed delays and cost overruns in several major irrigation projects. In the first six months of 2024, more than 500 farmer suicides were reported, a familiar story over the last quarter of a century across the state.
The question is, which government will prioritise finding a resolution to a long-standing agrarian crisis? Isn’t it so much easier to grab the headlines by promising to build a large Shivaji Maharaj statue in the Arabian Sea than focusing on the nitty-gritty of governance by addressing the concerns of the state’s vast farmer population whose forefathers incidentally comprised a bulk of the great Maratha armies that are intrinsic to the Shivaji Maharaj iconography? Wouldn’t the legacy of the great ruler be better served if the state were to lift the per capita income of its farmer population rather than seek to build yet another memorial in his name?
Unfortunately, when politics is driven by emotion and not reason, then it is simply not possible to have a rational debate on misplaced priorities. More so, when the political climate is more polarized than ever before, when shrill rhetoric and name-calling becomes a substitute for meaningful dialogue. In the last five years, Maharashtra has seen three chief ministers, two regional parties being split wide open, a slew of inducements being offered to MLAs to switch sides and a cash and carry political culture that hardly is the recipe for stable, purposeful administration. To those politicians who today mourn the collapse of a Shivaji statue, here is a simple question: do you also lament the falling standards of political morality and public behavior? And if you don’t, then you do not have the moral authority or credibility to claim to be the true legatees of the one and only Shivaji Maharaj.
Post-script: The prime minister has speedily apologized for the fallen Shivaji Maharaj statue. But will he or any other senior leader share the agony and express remorse at farmer suicides in Maharashtra over the years?