Newsmaker: Narayan Rane on the winding path of self-respect

Rane has all the skills garnered during a career as a Shiv Sainik, the network of Konkan followers in Mumbai

None was particularly surprised when Narayan Rane walked out of the Congress party to form his own. Rane has formed a Swabhimani Paksha, though why he needed to form a political party to uphold his swabhiman (self-respect), only his friends and he can explain. He was a Shiv Sainik for close to three decades till 2005, when, after a long spell of skirmishing, that party split. Following differences between heir-apparent Uddhav and his cousin, Raj, the latter quit to float his own outfit. And, angered at consistent marginalisation, Rane left the Sena.
 
Rane is a Maratha and belongs to the Konkan region . He has all the skills garnered during a career as a Shiv Sainik, the network of Konkan followers in Mumbai. Konkan runs on a money-order economy. Anyone who is employable lives and works in Mumbai and, therefore, it is easy to get things done in Mumbai if a Konkani. If a Konkani Maratha, your sense of bonding is strengthened, as Marathas from Western Maharashtra and Marathwada don’t consider you a Maratha at all and look down on you. Hence, Rane’s repeated statements that he is a 96 kuli Maratha (i.e high born).

However, how to continue to be relevant outside the Shiv Sena? The legislative assembly election in November 2004 yielded a peculiarly hung house. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) emerged the single largest, with 71 MLAs out of 288 but yielded the office of chief minister to the Congress. Vilasrao Deshmukh, another Maratha, was NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s choice, mainly because though Deshmukh was a caste rival, he was Pawar’s ally in the Congress. The Congress thought with Rane, there would be a counterpoise to the Deshmukh-Pawar axis. More, as Rane had brought seven MLAs with him (and six of them got re-elected in by-elections), the Congress had managed to outnumber the NCP.

Rane expected he would be made CM at some point. That didn’t happen. And, the Rane-Congress merger was not as smooth as imagined. There were skirmishes aplenty, especially with Deshmukh’s successor, Prithviraj Chavan. Rane believed he was insulted when his portfolio was changed from revenue to industry, though Chavan said in doing so, he had only been following orders, adding: “Rane does not know how the Congress functions.”

Anyway, when the insults became harder and harder to bear, Rane decided to throw in his lot with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This did not go down well with the Shiv Sena, which continues to be a BJP ally, no matter how fractious. Rane is expecting to be invited to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and will look forward to a plum position, in return for delivering the Konkan region in the next elections. This could cause the BJP to permanently shrug off the oppressive burden the Sena represents. The question is how Devendra Fadnavis, the present CM from the BJP, and Amit Shah, the national head, handle the contradictions arising from Rane’s defection. There’s no denying that Maharashtra politics has become even more interesting.