Is Devendra Fadnavis today’s Nana Phadnavis?

By Anil Singh*

Mumbai: With Devendra Fadnavis beating the odds and returning as Maharashtra Chief Minister the comparisons with his historical namesake, Nana Phadnavis, are obvious.

Although both, Devendra Fadnavis and Nana Phadnavis, are Maharashtrian brahmins, the former shares no kinship with his historical namesake; he is a ‘Deshastha’, a community whose roots are in central India, whereas Nana Phadnavis was a ‘Chitpawan’, who come from coastal Maharashtra, Velas near Shrivardhan to be precise.

To begin with, Phadnavis was not a surname. It was the office of the finance minister under the Peshwas. Derived from two Persian words, ‘farad’ and ‘navis’, it translates into English as ‘maker of the lists’.

In the late 18th century, Nana Phadnavis, an influential minister and statesman, was the de facto ruler of the Maratha Empire stretching from the Kumaon hills in the north to the Cauvery river in the south and from Gujarat to Odisha. To the British, whom he kept at bay for three decades, he was the Maratha Machiavelli.

Can Devendra Fadnavis live up to the comparisons? He has yet to show the sagacity and finesse of Nana Phadnavis, a team player who joined hands with 11 other chieftains to depose the unpopular Peshwa (Chief Minister) Raghunathrao in 1774. He forged tactical alliances to fend off the British, even with the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Arcot.

Where Devendra Fadnavis comes closest to his namesake is his ability to cut his rivals in the BJP to size. Nana Phadnavis checkmated enemies through his legendary network of spies, Fadnavis not only has his spies but the entire government machinery working overtime for him. His friends in the media helped him slander party rivals; Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde, Pankaja Munde, all of who were embroiled in controversies. The first two did not even get party tickets in the 2019 polls.

Unlike his namesake, Devendra Fadnavis has to contend with the burden of history. Though unrelated to his namesake, he too is a Brahmin and the community accounts for just two per cent of Maharashtra’s population. The Maratha community comprises 28% (according to the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission report of Feb 2024). The Marathas have ruled Maharashtra for most of the time since its formation and they resent a Brahmin CM. The reason is that the Peshwas, who were Brahmins, began as ministers but eventually took over the reins by disempowering Shivaji’s successors.

Given the Peshwa history, Fadnavis knows that Maratha chieftains cannot digest a Brahmin CM. In 2016, he rubbed it in by getting Sambhaji Raje, the 13th direct descendant of Shivaji, nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Sharad Pawar retorted by harking back to the times when the Maratha Chhatrapati would appoint a Peshwa (chief minister), who in turn, would choose a Fadnavis; “I hadn’t witnessed a Fadnavis appointing a Chhatrapati until now.”

Fadnavis may have marginalised Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray but his deputies are both Marathas. Not very long ago, he had threatened to imprison Ajit Pawar over the irrigation scam. And before Eknath Shinde broke the Shiv Sena, the BJP had cornered him over corruption in his stronghold, Thane. Surely the scores will be settled when the time comes.

The Maratha reservation issue is a ticking time bomb. Soon disillusionment will set in as several beneficiaries of the Ladki Bahin scheme will be weeded out. Besides, communal polarisation, the BJP’s trump card, pays only limited dividends in Maharashtra. Not to forget that the wily Maratha, Sharad Pawar, is licking his wounds and will be back in the fray.

Any comparison with Nana Phadnavis fades when Devendra Fadnavis makes outrageous statements such as calling the Congress a party of urban Naxals.

When he was ousted, he targeted Sushant Singh Rajput’s girlfriend, banked on Kangana Ranaut and lapdog channels such as Republic TV and stooped to the level of using the pandemic to score points. These are certainly not from Nana Phadnavis’ copybook.

Yet, if Devendra Fadnavis can revert, even partially, to what he was before he was made the CM in 2014, there is hope for him. As opposition leader before becoming CM, he charmed the media, cornering the Congress government in TV debates as well as in the Maharashtra Assembly. He spoke softly and spoke sense. Today, he yells at the top of his voice, replacing debate with demagoguery. As opposition leader, he went after the Adarsh and the irrigation scams but as CM, he virtually used them as bargaining chips.

Fadnavis reminds one of the central characters in the 1985 Marathi musical Padgham by Arun Sadhu, a perceptive journalist. It’s the story of a student leader (just as Fadnavis once was) who goes from clenched fist to folded hands as he metamorphoses into a politician, making compromise after compromise to head the very system he had rebelled against.

Only time will tell how well Devendra Fadnavis emulates his historical namesake.

*The writer is an independent journalist based in Mumbai and the author of The Fault With Reality, (Notion Press), which is about contemporary India. The views expressed are personal.