This year, Adani Group signed an exclusive sponsorship deal with Chintamani at Chinchpokli, the 107-year-old Ganpati festival in Mumbai. mandal. As per the agreement, Adani Group will sponsor the festival for all 11 days. Sponsorship will cover everything mandala expenses during the festival. In return, the Adani Group will receive all advertising rights, including banners, posters and digital screens.
“This is 11 days this year. At this time, I will not comment on the further development of the relationship between us and the Adani Group. All these years, we have accepted sponsorship from many corporate groups. There is nothing new in this. Only this year, Adani Group will be the only sponsor instead of many,” said Devendra Desai, vice-president of Chintamani Ganesh Mandal.
The Adani group has previously sponsored several Ganeshas. mandalas in Mumbai. However, this is the first time that the Group has taken full sponsorship of a prominent city figure. mandalas.
Last year, Mukesh Ambani’s younger son Anant Ambani became a committee member of the Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganesh Mandal (King Lalbaug Ganesh’s social mandal). The Ambani family has been regularly attending the Ganesh festival in Lalbaug for many years. The family also sponsors the city’s most famous Ganesh. mandal through its CSR funds.
mandal operates several community initiatives, including financial assistance for patients in need, ambulance services, school tuition assistance, and breakfast services. Reliance Group has been funding many of these activities for many years. Anant Ambani’s entry into mandal came against this background.
Before big corporate houses started entering into exclusive sponsorship deals with mandalasFundraising for the festival was largely local and dispersed. Mandal workers sought support from local politicians, store owners, residents and corporations. Usually there are several sponsors, not just one. This funding allowed mandalas to celebrate the festival and hold their annual events for the local community.
Legacy of the liberation movement
The Ganesh festival in Mumbai and Maharashtra has a long and important place in the history of India’s freedom struggle. The first public Ganesh festival is usually associated with Pune in 1892, when Bhausaheb Rangari (Bhausaheb Laxman Jawale), a doctor and social worker from Pune, organized a celebration at his home. vada (mansion). Lokmanya Tilak, then a prominent leader of the freedom movement, recognized the festival’s potential for mass mobilization and urged more people to celebrate it publicly.
In 1893, a public Ganesha festival was organized in Girgaon Mumbai at Keshavji Naik Chaul. Tilak’s supporters installed a two-foot idol of Ganesha and celebrated the festival for 11 days. Since then the number mandalas grew and the festival spread across Mumbai and Pune. Areas like Girgaon, Byculla, Lalbaug, Chinchpokli, Parel, Worli and Dadar became the main hubs of the festival. This mass mobilization later became an important part of the city’s social and political life.
However, when Tilak started promoting the festival on a larger scale, some rationalists and social reformers of the time opposed the idea. Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, a contemporary of Tilak, a colleague in the Indian National Congress and a prominent social reformer in Maharashtra, warned him of the possible negative consequences. “Don’t take Ganpati outside,” Ranade is said to have told Tilak.
The original political purpose of the public Ganesh festival ended with India’s independence in 1947. However, by that time the festival had become a deeply established tradition and an effective tool for mass mobilization. Political parties, mainly the Shiv Sena after its formation in 1966, and later the BJP and the Congress, used festivals to build political networks and mobilize supporters.
New festival economy
Around the turn of the century, as the effects of economic liberalization became visible in the country’s cities and Mumbai began to transform from a city of cotton mills to a city of shopping malls and skyscrapers, the festival mandalas started receiving large amounts of funding from real estate developers, corporate houses and other businesses.
Over the past two decades, a new local economy has emerged around the festival. mandalas it worked out. Live telecasts of Lalbaugchi Raja’s counting of donations after the festival also brought public attention to the scale of donations. Money is increasingly central to the organization and presentation of a festival. The latest development is the move towards exclusive sponsorship by large corporate groups.
So far, corporate sponsorship doesn’t seem to have hampered Ganesh’s efforts. mandalas or the decrease in people’s devotion to Lord Ganesha. However, the trend has raised concerns in some parts of Maharashtra, where it is being interpreted as a sign of growing corporate influence over the state’s cultural life.
In a recent public interview in Kolhapur, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut warned Maharashtra against this trend. “Now Ganesha of Mumbai mandalas are bought for five or ten crores of rupees. This is an attempt to capture Mumbai culturally. First they took control of the entire business of Mumbai and now they are taking control of Marathi culture,” Raut said. He was referring to what he called the growing influence of Gujarati business families in Mumbai; The Ambani and Adani families have roots in Gujarat.
Maharashtra Navnirmana Sena leader Sandeep Deshpande also slammed corporate funding mandalas. “Why are you handing over the Marathi festival to Gujarat?” Deshpande asked mandal activists. “How much money do you need for the celebration? You are getting crores of rupees from the donations of common devotees. Isn’t that enough? We will see garba in a few years.” [Gujarati popular dance] at Ganpati pandals,” he said.
Marathi language activist and head of the Center for Marathi Studies Deepak Pawar reacted sharply to X after news of Adani Group’s sponsorship of Chintamani emerged. “Earlier, factory workers used to pawn their gold to the Marwaris. Now the Marathas have started pawning their God,” he wrote.
This reaction points to a wider concern among some Maratha activists and political figures that corporate sponsorship, especially from business groups with ties to Gujarat, could give outside corporate interests greater influence over cultural institutions in Maharashtra.
In Hindu theology, Ganesha is associated with intellect and learning, and is described as the presiding deity of the 64 arts. Historically Ganesha mandalas organized intellectual lectures, cultural programs and other social events along with religious festivals. Critics argue that many of these traditions have now fallen by the wayside, with VIP visits to pandals becoming the focus of media coverage and mandal culture.
Against this backdrop, exclusive sponsorship deals with large corporate groups have created concern among sections of Marathi society. To critics, the growing presence of corporate money appears to be a departure from the socially conscious nature that has shaped the Ganesh festival.
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