For the next 15 days, the Bharatiya Janata Party plans to woo Maharashtrian voters with the songs of folk artistes dressed in long white robes, with peacock-feathered hats and jingling cymbals in their hands.

To project itself as a party that’s as clued into Marathi culture as its former ally Shiv Sena, the state BJP has zeroed in on the "Vasudev" – a traditional Maharashtrian folk singer – to spearhead its campaign in the run up to the October 15 state election.

At its Mumbai head office on Monday, the BJP symbolically kick-started its campaign with a troupe of 15 college-going theatre artists dressed up as Vasudevs putting up a show for the media. Moving to the rhythm of their cymbals, the young men sang “Aala, aala, BhaJaPa cha Vasudev aala” (BJP’s Vasudev has come), with couplets about the Congress’ corruption and the glory that the BJP would bring to the state. Even union environment minister Prakash Javadekar showed up to pose amidst the singers for a few minutes.


The Vasudev usually dressed in a trademark conical, peacock-feathered hat and goes around the village at dawn, singing verses about Lord Krishna and the moral living.


Photo credit: bhojpurinama.com


“It’s an old folk art that symbolises Maharashtra, so we have made Vasudevs the symbol of our election campaign,” said BJP state spokesperson Madhav Bhandari. The party has employed around 200 artistes across the state to write and perform songs about the BJP in almost every constituency.

“It would be a subtle and easy way of communicating with the people at the street and village level,” said Bhandari.

The Vasudev campaign appears to be an obvious attempt to compete with the Shiv Sena for Marathi votes, now that the long-term saffron allies have split.

However, not everyone is convinced that this alone will give the BJP an edge. “I don’t think this will help them eat into the Sena’s votes,” said Surendra Jhondale, a political commentator based in Mumbai. “What it will do is give a stronger Hindutva dimension to the campaign – the traditional role of the Vasudev was to offer narratives of religion and culture, and this time it will be BJP propagandists.”

For Manish Gosavi, one of the young students who performed at the BJP head office on Monday, the only motivation for signing up to play a Vasudev was Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “We have an Nationalist Congress Party legislator in my constituency right now, but I want to support the BJP this time because of Modi,” said Gosavi, a 21-year-old engineering student from Ghatkopar in Mumbai.

The rest of the BJP campaign will be similar to the one before the Lok Sabha election in April, with a significant focus on social media. This time however, no single leader has been projected as a chief ministerial candidate. “We have only one supreme leader under whom we are fighting this election,” said Bhandari.

Here, meanwhile, is a performance by a non-political Vasudev.