How Devendra Fadnavis is playing it safe on separate Vidarbha demand
It was expected that when the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti, Vidarbha Pradesh Vikas Parishad and few other organisations hoisted a flag of a separate Vidarbha state in Nagpur, on Maharashtra Day, during a programme led by the former attorney general of Maharashtra, Shreehari Aney, the Shiv Sena will criticise this move by Aney and other supporters of a separate Vidarbha.
In Mumbai, near the Sena Bhavan, the Shiv Sena put up many hoardings against a separate Vidarbha. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray clearly said in a function in Mumbai, "We don't need to pay attention to people like Aney. We will not allow them to separate Vidarbha. We will fight till our last breath." Hoisting of the specially prepared multi-coloured flag was seen as a mark of protest against the merger of the then Vidarbha and Berar into Maharashtra on May 1, 1960.
Aney, whose comment on a separate Vidarbha had sparked the controversy which ultimately led to his resignation as the attorney-general, said that the flag of a separate Vidarbha is being raised on May 1 for last three years. Now political circles in Mumbai and Nagpur are clearly buzzing with the speculation of Aney being supported by the BJP.
The BJP is trying to assess the situation in 11 districts on how much momentum Aney’s movement can generate so that the party can decide whether to finally go ahead and form a separate state of Vidarbha as promised in their election manifesto.
The BJP wants to avoid a situation that the Congress faced while carving out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, eventually losing out in both the states. Currently the BJP is in a strong position in Vidarbha, and out of 62 Assembly seats from the region, the BJP bagged 44 in the 2014 Assembly elections which they fought on its own but because it is short of full majority in the Maharashtra Assembly and running the government with Shiv Sena'support, it doesn’t want to take the risk of openly coming out in support of a demand for a separate Vidarbha. Therefore it looks like Aney has brought it on himself to re-energise a nearly dead movement for a separate Vidarbha.
History shows that a separate Vidarbha movement could never became an outright mass movement at least in 11 districts of the Vidarbha region. It did have its peak but what separate Vidarbha activists could manage is to keep the movement alive even in a minuscule form.
The history of a separate Vidarbha movement is quite interesting even though the first State Reorganisation Committee (SRC) under the chairmanship of Fazal Ali, and appointed by the government of India had recommended a separate state of Vidarbha, which was supported by former Bihar governor Madhav Aney, the grandfather of Shreehari Aney.
Even though BR Ambedkar was in favour of a one state one language policy, he was okay with having more than one state with people speaking the same language, for administrative purpose. His proposal was, however, shot down by the Congress.
The united Maharashtra movement forced the Central government to have one large state for the Marathi-speaking people. So the Marathi-speaking area from the proposed Vidarbha state was carved out and made part of the Maharashtra state.
Before that, to pacify a separate Vidarbha activist in 1953, the Nagpur Pact was signed by Yashwant Rao Chavan who later became the first chief minister of Maharashtra after it came into existence. An important feature in the pact ensured that there will be one session of the Maharashtra Assembly held in Nagpur every year.
Since then every winter session of the Maharashtra Assembly meets at Nagpur. For those six weeks, the whole government machinery in Maharashtra shifts to Nagpur. This did ensure that Vidarbha didn’t defect from the state of Maharashtra but most of the major defections had happened during the Nagpur session of the Maharashtra Assembly, be it Shiv Sena strongman Chhagan Bhujbal defecting to the Congress, or Janta Dal MLAs defecting the party to join the Sharad Pawar government. Sessions at Nagpur are always known in Maharashtra politics for causing political quakes.
But Nagpur sessions of the Maharashtra Assembly didn’t stop the demand for a separate Vidarbha. Madhav Aney himself got elected to the Lok Sabha as an independent candidate. Later only two candidates, Raje Vishveshvar Rao won the Chandrapur Lok Sabha seat in 1977 and Jambuwantrao Dhote won the Nagpur Lok Sabha seat in 1971 as a Forward Bloc candidate on the plank of a separate Vidarbha.
Rao and Dhote even tried to make this a mass movement but got only limited success even though many from the Congress thought that a separate Vidarbha was a viable option but many from Congress, specially stalwarts like Shrikant Jichakar opposed the move saying a separate Vidarbha was a difficult idea to sustain. Despite these ups and downs, the movement for a separate Vidarbha is again on the forefront of political agenda.
Leaders from Vidarbha have always thought that they never got their dues, thanks to a strong Maratha lobby of western Maharashtra politicians in the state. Even though Devendra Fadanvis is the fourth chief minister of Maharashtra who hails from Vidarbha, the mindset hasn’t changed.
Opponents of a separate Vidarbha point out that Vasantrao Naik was the longest-serving chief minister of Maharashtra for 11 long years. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray is one step ahead and read out the list of various leaders from the Vidarbha region and the positions they had got in the government at various times to set aside the charge of political backwardness by separate Vidarbha activists. But most of the political leadership have one complaint in common. It is about the regional imbalance that Vidarbha faces in sectors like irrigation, infrastructure and overall development, and the leadership of the state time and again has had to face this outcry.
The current Maharashtra government may fulfil this backlog for the region. Not only has the chief minister kept important portfolios like home, housing with ministers from Vidarbha, but the state's finance minister, power minister and even social justice minister also hails from Vidarbha. But despite this, the BJP is still pushing for the demand for a separate Vidrabha from behind the curtains.
Suddenly even the Shiv Sena has jumped into it by raising united Maharashtra slogans vis-a-vis Shreehari Aney’s separate Vidarbha movement. The Shiv Sena thinks a united Maharashtra (in Maharashtra it is popularly known as Sanyukta Maharashtra) will reinforce their Marathi agenda, especially in cities like Mumbai which are now due for municipal elections in 2017 .
The Shiv Sena believes that even though the BJP wants a separate state of Vidarbha, looking at its strong position in the area, it is not ready to push for the demand fearing political backlash from other parts of Maharashtra. So at this point Fadanvis is playing the RSS' favourite game... wait and watch.