Eyes on Maharashtra: Is BJP now a party without ‘gentlemen’ ?

BJP is turning out to be a party full of ‘no gentlemen’. Most of its lower rung leaders seem to be taking their cue from Narendra Modi, who has no respect for women. He once called Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s wife his ‘50-crore girlfriend’ and Sonia Gandhi a Jersey cow and Rahul her hybrid calfmaking several BJP leaders including L.K. Advani of older vintage squirm.

Now BJP in Maharashtra has sunk to an even lower depth by making sexual innuendoes against Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar.

Pednekar belongs to the Shiv Sena and Ashish Shelar, the Mumbai BJP chief, is the man who made the objectionable remarks. With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections around the corner, the war of words between them has sunk to new depths and now escalated to a full-scale conflagration.

It began with a minor incident of a cylinder blast at a home in Worli. Now under normal circumstances no one would pay heed to a cylinder blast; but Worli is Maharashtra environment minister Aaditya Thackeray’s assembly constituency and Aaditya is the son of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Shelar therefore decided to make an issue of it.

He did it by trashing Pednekar’s reputation for compassion. Pednekar is a former nurse and during the first Covid crisis in 2020 had charmed the city by donning her nurse’s uniform and visiting government hospitals to boost the morale of nurses working in the Covid wards. Shelar now tried to protect her as self-centred and asked, “Was she sleeping for 72-hours after the blast?” Then he went a step too far and too low by adding, “Who was she sleeping with?”

That remark caused an uproar in the state. Even Sharad Pawar was compelled to condemn the tasteless remark. Pednekar has complained to Maharashtra Minister for Home Dilip Walse-Patil and under advice has filed cases under Section 354 (for sexual harassment) and Section 509 (for use of obscene words and gestures), against Shelar.

Pushed on the back foot, Shelar now denies making the second part of his remark but contradicted himself by pleading that Pednekar’s own remarks against him had provoked him into retaliation.

Now what were Pednekar’s remarks?

Knowing the motives behind Shelar’s targeting of the Shiv Sena, Pednekar had asked, “Who is provoking him into this?”

Here begins the real word play. Both were quarrelling in Marathi and Pednekar insists Shelar heard her wrong.

She used the word ‘udyut’ which is the Marathi for ‘provoke’. Shelar insists she had said ‘uddit’ which in Marathi means sexuality or sexually exciting.

While the jury is out on that one, most reporters present when Pednekar made the statement did not pick up the sexual innuendo and took it as plain provocation. However, they did hear Shelar’s innuendo.

Now that Shelar is saying words are being put in his mouth, Shiv Sena supporters say the use of the word ‘sleeping’ in the context of a woman is enough to make a case for obscenity. The slugfest is continuing in Marathi media and on social media.

Shelar has since written to the Mumbai Police Commissioner complaining that trumped up charges are being brought against him. It is ironical because his own party had engineered to throw a comedian into prison for not even cracking the joke that they charged him with cracking.

There is also the example of the mighty Narayan Rane who was arrested by Maharashtra police for merely expressing the desire to slap the chief minister. Rane posted bail within 24 hours but with charges of sexual harassment against him, Shelar might not be so lucky.

He, as everybody else, is also conscious of the fact that Sharad Pawar has sworn vengeance against the BJP for jailing his acolyte Anil Deshmukh on what many consider trumped up charges. Pawar has promised to exact revenge for every hour Deshmukh spends in prison and the government could well make a beginning with Shelar, who belongs to no particular camp in the BJP and had once annoyed Modi by refusing to allow him to campaign in his assembly constituency for fear he would lose substantial Muslim votes there to his Congress rival. He lost that election in 2009 by just a thousand votes and the loss was attributed to Muslim ire with the BJP, though he won the next two elections on the Modi wave.

But, unlike Pawar, who is so protective of Deshmukh, no BJP leader might wish to stick his neck out for Shelar and he is well aware he might be collateral damage in soothing Pawar’s ruffled feathers. For even the NCP does not know whether Pawar really means to take the BJP to the cleaners and Shelar could well become the bargaining chip in securing the release of Anil Deshmukh.

But would the Centre really want to drop the charges against Deshmukh, who is big fish compared to their own small fry? That must worry Shelar, particularly as charges of harassing a woman and that too Mumbai’s Mayor could be a far more serious charge that any politician in Maharashtra has faced before.

If Shelar had been a gentleman, he could have saved himself all this worry by refusing to react to Pednekar’s remarks, presuming he heard them right, and say that he did not wish to respond in kind. But he did lower the political discourse and may well end up paying the price for it.

(The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald)

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)