From petty thief to cop to Maharashtra’s first Dalit CM
As a child, he co-founded a gang of petty thieves. In his youth, he got uneasily close to getting thrashed by caste bigots for bathing at a public well. Sushilkumar Shinde, who overcame a slew of life’s unkindest cuts to become Maharashtra’s first Dalit chief minister, offers an up, close and very personal account of his roller-coaster life in a forthcoming autobiography.
Shinde belongs to the Scheduled Caste Dhor, traditionally engaged in curing skins of dead cattle. His path-breaking grandfather set up a profitable business in leather goods. His father, who continued the business of making and supplying bags, even received a letter of commendation from Mahatma Gandhi for promoting the concept of Swadeshi. But his untimely death sent Shinde’s family fortunes into a tailspin.
Shinde belongs to the Scheduled Caste Dhor
He fell into bad company. “Along with a few likeminded friends, I formed a gang that specialised in lifting wares from pavement vendors,” he reveals in his autobiography, “Five Decades In Politics,” that’s recounted to journalist Rasheed Kidwai.
Once Shinde stole trinkets from a woman peddler. When his no-nonsense mother came to know about the incident, she slapped him and led him to the pawnbroker. “She paid him the two rupees he had given me, reclaimed the trinkets and took me to the vendor to return the items in full public view. My humiliation was complete, but my mother had taught me the most valuable lesson in life,” he says.
The senior Congress politician, who turned 83 this week, grew up in Solapur — a town in south-west Maharashtra famous for its chaddars (bed sheets).
As a kid, he sold incense sticks, toiled in a toffee factory, even worked as a ‘boy peon’ at the local court. But social discrimination dogged him. In his autobiography, Shinde recalls how, on coming to know of his caste, a man offering him water tilted the container in a way to ensure his lips wouldn’t touch it.
Caste prejudice had many shades. Shinde mentions a Brahmin friend who would invite him to his home where they would “play, study and eat together”. And yet, their devghar (puja room) was forbidden to him. “This could be one reason that turned me away forever from idol worship, apart from, of course, shaping my total rejection of the caste structure,” recounts Shinde.
At birth, he was named Dnyaneshwar
He had an extremely bitter brush with caste bigotry when he visited a cousin in Dhotri, an extremely conservative village located 10 miles from Solapur. Shinde recounts, “Having walked all the way under a scorching sun, I had taken a dip…A little while later, when I was resting in my cousin’s house, I heard a commotion outside. The villagers were angry that a Dhor had defiled the well by bathing in it. When I said, I didn’t believe in casteism, the mob got even more furious; violence appeared inevitable. Finally, wiser counsel prevailed and it was decided to call a priest to purify the well. I emerged physically unscathed, but the experience left a permanent scar on my psyche about the obnoxious caste system.”
However, he admits that as he moved ahead in life, the discrimination became less obvious. “In college, for example, I never felt discriminated among friends,” says Shinde, who has dedicated the autobiography to his daughter, Praniti, the 43-year-old Congress MP from the Solapur constituency.
The bitter experiences willed him to work harder and carve out his own space in the world. It has been a long journey for Shinde. He went on to become a court clerk and then a constable, before being promoted as a sub-inspector and, later, a successful state and national politician. He was India’s home minister from 2012-14.
Shinde made a name for himself in more than one way. At birth, he was named Dnyaneshwar after the revered medieval poet-saint of Maharashtra. But the name, he recalls, was difficult to pronounce and everyone called him, Genba. When he became popular in college due to his acting skills, his friends wanted him to opt for a new name. “It was not that I was ashamed of my name, but my friends insisted that I change it,” he says. He opted for Sushilkumar.
Not many know that his new choice was dictated by a fascination for Hindi cinema. Shinde remembers, “It was a time when I used to dream of landing lead roles as an actor, and making it big in Pune and Mumbai; so I too wanted an attractive name. Film stars like Dilip Kumar, Rajendra Kumar and Raj Kumar, who either chose their stage names or dropped their last names, had all preferred Kumar, and hence the name was in circulation.”
“I had even tried my luck in Bollywood, egged on by my friends who would often tell me that with my fair complexion, light-coloured eyes and moustache, I resembled Raj Kapoor. The illusion had ended early after a strapping guard at Mehboob Studio refused to even let me in,” he confesses. Sushilkumar may have dropped the idea of being an actor, but lovers of vintage Bollywood might recall a hero by the same name in the 1964 blockbuster, Dosti. Filmdom had taken the name after all.
Later, when he became Maharashtra’s culture and art minister, Shinde would often give the clap for muhurat shots for films. He remembers, “One day, I shared with Dilip Kumar my experience with the guard. We both had a good laugh and he later publicised it, saying ‘Kabhi darbaan ne inhe roka tha, ab ye hamein rokte hai (Once a guard stopped him, now he stops us)’.”
Courtesy : TOI
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