The poll campaign in Maharashtra drew to a glitzy close with a touch of glamour and stardust as Pawan Kalyan, actor and the deputy chief minister of Andhra Pradesh drew huge crowds as he campaigned in Pune, Nanded and Latur for the BJP
Mumbai: What’s politics without a sprinkling of stardust? And when the stardust is powered by political heft, it makes it even more exciting. On Sunday, actor-politician Pawan Kalyan was clearly the flavour of the poll season in parts of Marathwada and even Pune as thousands turned up to see him, hear him and cheer for him. The candidates he was there for, were probably relegated to the background amid the clamour for a closer look at the movie star.
A BJP candidate even declared, in Shakespearean style, that Kalyan “came, saw and he conquered”. The actor-politician’s charm was evident in the crowds that turned up in Pune’s usually uptight Camp area. His opening greeting in Marathi of ‘majhya ladkya bahinino ani bhavano, prempurvak namaskar’ has charmed the audiences who gather. A movie star and influential politician from the south of India who speaks Marathi and claims a special connection with Pune and Maharashtra cannot be ignored.
In Latur, Kalyan clearly overshadowed the celebrity presence brought in by Ritesh Deshmukh whose brothers Amit and Dheeraj are contesting the elections. For years, the Deshmukh brothers have harnessed Ritesh’s movie and social media celebrityhood to garner crowds for rallies. But Kalyan’s reach prompted more and more BJP candidates to demand his presence as a crowd-puller.
The secret to Kalyan’s popularity and pull is in the demographics. Solapur, Nanded and Latur have a sizable number of Telugu speakers given that these districts share a common border with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Some reports estimate the population of Telugu speakers to be almost 40,000 in Nanded. In Solapur, the language, culture and cuisine reflects a confluence of Kannada, Telugu and Marathi with people effortlessly following all three languages. Food habits and culture often overlap too.
A walk through Shirdi or Trimbakeshwar will throw up boards of restaurants in Telugu just as devotees from Maharashtra make a beeline for a darshan at the Tirupati temple or the Gangapur Dattatrey Temple which falls in Karnataka. Trains from Kolhapur to cities of Karnataka bring devotees in hordes to the temple of Mahalakshmi. Major cities of Maharashtra such as Mumbai, Pune and Solapur have a sizable number of Telugu and Kannada speakers, a reflection of the shared culture and language before boundaries were drawn on the basis of linguistic representation. Cinema halls in these cities screen movies in Telugu, bringing actors like Pawan Kalyan closer to the people.
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