Mumbai:
A new role awaits Mumbai’s iconic Azad Maidan Thursday evening – a decades-old silent witness to the city’s turbulent political and socio-cultural history, dating back to protests against the British Raj – for, at 5.30 pm, Devendra Fadnavis will be sworn in as Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
This will be the first time the Azad Maidan hosts a Chief Minister’s oath-taking ceremony, its popularity and location lending additional heft to Mr Fadnavis’ return to the state’s top job.
The last time he held the reigns, he was sworn in at Raj Bhavan, the Governor’s residence. That was at the end of a tumultuous few hours, after Mr Fadnavis, defeated in the October 2019 election and forced to stand down as Chief Minister, twice in two months after November’s failed power grab.
This time he returns in style; a grand ceremony, made grander with the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on stage and 42,000 guests looking on, awaits Mr Fadnavis this evening.
Much of the attention, therefore, will understandably be on the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and, possibly Shiv Sena boss Eknath Shinde, if he, as is expected, accepts a deputy’s role.
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But some of the focus should also be on the Azad Maidan, which has, over the years, become a staging ground in Maharashtra politics, the most recent example of which was October’s Sena vs Sena face-off over Dussehra rallies, which are, in itself, a prized annual political messaging system.
Sena vs Sena At Azad Maidan
Back in October (and in 2023 too) the Mahayuti alliance (the BJP, Mr Shinde’s Sena, and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party) laid claim to the Azad Maidan for its rally.
The switch – Sena Dussehra rallies were, till two years ago – held at the Shivaji Park in Dadar – underlined Mr Shinde’s Sena’s distancing itself from the ‘originals’, the Uddhav Thackeray camp.
Party sources told NDTV then the switch was because Mr Shinde did not want an unnecessary (and additional) face-off with his former colleagues. “…we don’t want anything… our real wealth is the thoughts of Balasaheb (Thackeray, the Sena founder) …” he reportedly told party workers.
Anti-citizenship law protests at the Azad Maidan
In some sense, therefore, the Azad Maidan emphasised the Sena split; Shinde Sena is Shinde Sena and Thackeray Sena is Thackeray Sena, and never the twain shall meet (on Dussehra), it said.
This is also, perhaps, why there remains some confusion over Mr Shinde’s next step.
Would it be acceptable for his party’s morale to accept a ‘demotion’ at the same ground?
Asked about his plan for the day, Mr Shinde was coy, asking reporters to wait till this evening. The outgoing Chief Minister was in the race to retain his post immediately after the election, but the margin of the BJP’s victory – 132 seats to the Sena’s 57 – meant he had no real leverage.
Azad Maidan History
The Azad Maidan of today was once part of the larger Esplanade Maidan, a benevolent open space in the ‘Maximum City’ that served as a playground and recreational centre.
Over the years, however, demands of expansion and urbanisation consumed stretches; roads were built, shops opened, and, according to historians, the larger ground was divided into four, one of which was Azad Maidan.
Farmers protest at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan.
The ‘Azad’ honorific was a later nod to its staging of many protests against the British; indeed, in the final few decades of the independence movement, Mumbai’s Azad Maidan was a key protest venue for Congress leaders and freedom fighters, who were often lathi charged but never beaten.
Since then, the Azad Maidan has been at the forefront of political protests, including multiple agitations by Maratha farmers and the citizenship law protests, as well as housing the spill-over of the ‘Occupy Gateway’ movement against the violence in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
In its newest avatar, the maidan will host over 40,000 people, not including dignitaries and special guests, and has been transformed into a fortified zone, with thousands of police personnel, including specialised units like Quick Response Teams, and bomb disposal squads, deployed for the festivities.
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