This is the first article in the ‘Footsoldiers of Hindutva’ series.Jamner (Maharashtra): When Sambhaji Bhide, the 85-year-old leader of the Hindutva outfit Shiv Pratisthan Hindustan, insisted that his followers take out marches each August 15 to to push for the tricolour to be replaced by a saffron flag, Sojwal Teli hit the ground.When Bhide insisted that his followers mark in penance the period in which Sambhaji, the Maratha emperor, was captured by the Mughals, Teli complied and walked barefoot in the scorching March sun.Bhide praised Chhava, the controversial Hindi film depicting Sambhaji’s life. Teli organised a public screening in an open ground in his village.His three friends – Krushna Teli, Rishikesh Teli and Aditya Devre – would often join him in these ventures.Devre, locals in Jamner said, was in many ways their leader in the area.On their social media accounts, they all proudly flaunted their association with Bhide’s outfit, Shiv Pratisthan Hindustan, and their loyalty to Bhide.In 2023, Bhide asked his followers to chop down Muslim men who engage in love jihad, i.e. who fall in love with Hindu women.Last month, all of them demonstrated their loyalty to Bhide when they led a mob of young Hindu men who allegedly lynched 20-year-old Suleman Pathan in a village near Jamner town of Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district.The incident occurred on August 11, when Pathan was sitting in a café with a Hindu girl in Jamner town. Incensed, a mob of Hindu men dragged him out, assaulted him, kidnapped him and assaulted him at various spots en route to his village Betawad Khurd, where his family too was assaulted by the mob.Pathan died soon after.All four friends have been named in the First Information Report (FIR) filed by Pathan’s father, Rahim.Apart from these four, most of the other accused in Pathan’s lynching are also Shiv Pratisthan members, local members of the group confirmed to this reporter. All of them were in judicial custody, while the police investigation, through a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was ongoing, said Dr Maheshwar Reddy, Superintendent of police, Jalgaon. “We are collecting evidence and hoping to build a water-tight case against the accused,” he told this reporter in Jalgaon, but refused to reveal more.The lynching has cast a harsh spotlight on Bhide and his shadowy outfit, exposing how the outfit, once little-known outside Western Maharashtra, is now expanding a revival of sorts, thanks in large part to social media.This reporter traveled to Jamner and met members of the Pratisthan and interviewed locals, including police officials, to understand the group’s growth here. What emerged is a striking representation of the tactics involved in grassroots mobilisation – through constant activities, violence, allurement and hate, offline and online.A big part of this revival lies in the image of the chief of the organisation, Bhide, himself.Recent momentumFor years, Bhide has operated as a hardline Hindutva figure in Maharashtra, known more for his eccentricities than his follower base. Bhide, whose first name was Manohar before he changed it to Sambhaji as an ode to the Maratha emperor, used to be a physics professor at Pune’s Fergusson College before founding the Pratisthan in 1984, in Sangli. The stated aim of the organisation was to conserve Shivaji’s forts and his legacy, by mobilising young people. But for many, it wasn’t his agenda as much as his personality that turned out to be the lure.“Guruji is a brilliant scholar, and yet, he has led such an austere life,” said a finance executive from Jalgaon, who has been with the Pratisthan for over a decade now. “I have seen him multiple times and each time, his clothes have been torn. That’s how little he cares about appearance, because he’s so immersed in his work.”Slowly, some of his announcements started getting him media attention – for instance, his insistence on building a throne made entirely of gold, for Shivaji, to be installed at Raigad Fort, which was the erstwhile capital of Shivaji’s rule.But in 2014, he shot to prominence when then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi visited him in Raigad, Maharashtra and professed his own admiration for Bhide.“I have known him for many years,” Modi said, addressing him as “param-aadarniya” or the most revered. “When we were being inculcated the values of public service, we would be given the example of Bhide Guruji,” Modi had continued, sharing the dias with Bhide.For Bhide’s followers, Modi’s praise was a validation. “That was the peak point of his life. It drew nationwide attention to him,” said a former aide of Bhide’s, who quit the Pratisthan two years ago. “Since then, the outfit has picked up in strength and blossomed across Maharashtra, from being a western-Maharashtra centric outfit.”Bhide is known for his blunt speeches, often laced with abuses, which draw laughter and evoke passions in equal parts.The 85-year-old founder-leader of the Shiv Pratisthan Hindustan also has a penchant for spouting misinformation and making outrageous allegations.Bhide, in a television interview in 2018, told a Marathi TV anchor that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had praised Manu as the world’s first lawmaker, adding that even Japan “recognised” the Manusmriti, without offering any evidence for either of the claims. In 2023, Bhide said that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma, was a child from an illicit relationship his mother had with a Mulslim landlord.Such comments have been met with outrage, criticism and even police complaints, like after his comments on Gandhi, when he was booked by the Thane Police. But Bhide has never faced any action.Despite (or perhaps because of) such comments, Bhide has enjoyed political proximity – he is routinely seen sharing the stage with senior political leaders, ministers, legislators and parliamentarians, including deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde as well as chief minister Devendra Fadnavis who met him publicly in Sangli in 2024.But a former aide said that these meetings amounted to little. “The truth is, Bhide has been very unpredictable with his stances,” the aide said, pointing to how Bhide had invited Modi and backed him in 2014, only to criticise the prime minister in 2019 for hailing Gautam Buddha’s teachings at his United Nations General Assembly speech.In the world of his followers, though, this has only added to his allure.It is one reason why Dr Satish Chaudhari (name changed), a Jalgaon-based doctor, decided to join Bhide’s outfit earlier this year, after having spent a lifetime in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.“In the Sangh, everything is done keeping in mind the end goal, which is political power. The Sangh is politics-heavy,” he said. “But with Guruji, you don’t have to care about political power, nor do you care about political leaders. You just devote yourself to the cause of Hindutva.”The ‘dedication’ to HindutvaIn Jamner, nowhere is the presence of the outfit more apparent than in the town’s most popular tourist attraction, a massive new development atop a hillock that overlooks the city, called Sonbardi. From a Shiv temple to a swimming pool, an artificial lake, a walking track and lots of green spaces, Sonbardi is a place that comes up in conversation with most locals.At the entrance of Sonbardi’s Shiv temple is a flag post, with a saffron flag flying atop. The flag was hoisted by Pratisthan members from Jamner, in honour of their outfit’s long-standing demand: to replace the Indian tricolour with the saffron flag.Locals said the outfit came into existence locally only about four years ago, with members crediting Devre, currently in prison for allegedly lynching Pathan, for its expansion.At Jamner’s most popular recreational spot, the Sonbardi temple complex which includes a swimming pool, well-manicured lawns, an artificial lake and a jogging track, a saffron flag has been hoisted by followers of Sambhaji Bhide as an ode to his dream: of swapping India’s tricolour with the saffron flag. Photo: Kunal PurohitFor Pratisthan’s local members, the last four years have been a frenzy.“There is a year-long programme that Guruji has set for all of us,” said Vishal Kasar, the Pratisthan’s Jalgaon head, and then rattles off the six marquee events: An annual trek that retraces Shivaji’s conquests of forts, culminating with Bhide’s address; a three-day residential course for nearly 10,000 youngsters on Hindutva and the ‘real’ version of historical events; a month-long period of penance and mourning to mark Maratha emperor Sambhaji’s captivity; participation in the Pandharpur Wari, an annual padyatra to press the demand for India’s national flag to be saffron; and a morning run for women on each of the nine Navratri days.Such a gruelling annual calendar ensures that the outfit’s cadre is perpetually occupied, mobilised and constantly in touch with Bhide’s teachings.But apart from these, the Jamner team led by Devre also doubled up as gau rakshaks and dharm rakshaks by busting inter-faith relationships. “Adi bhau almost single-handedly stopped all trade of cows, cow meat on the highways around Jamner,” said one acolyte, not wishing to be named for the fear of attracting police attention. “In fact, our team was so strict that we even stopped buffaloes from being transported,” the acolyte said, with more than a tinge of pride. Transportation and slaughter of buffaloes and buffalo meat is legal in Maharashtra.The Shiv Pratisthan Jamner unit also showed great alacrity in preventing relationships between Hindu women and Muslim men. “We must have stopped at least 100 odd such love jihad cases,” the acolyte said.When the group landed up at Jamner’s Brand Cafe on the morning of August 11, they thought it would be another ‘routine’ case of an interfaith relationship they would bust. Except, it ended with Pathan’s death.Social media boostAmidst this flurry of activities, social media platforms like Instagram have helped the outfit make rapid inroads, especially into Jamner’s youth population.Bhide’s persona and his outfit have always relied on old-style methods to mobilise his followers, said former aides. Always dressed in tattered whites – a kurta, a dhoti and a Gandhi cap – with a scruffy beard to go with a bushy, unruly moustache, Bhide is the antithesis of the modern, well-turned-out neta. Bhide walks barefoot, with a hunch, though brisk and sprightly, and lives in a spartan apartment.On social media, all these are qualities that his followers flaunt and glamourise.The Wire found a total of 53 different accounts in the name of Bhide’s Shiv Pratisthan Hindustan. Its growing popularity has meant that there are now separate accounts for the outfit’s local branches – small Maharashtra towns like Jamner, Baamni, Mulshi, Talegaon, Ratnagiri, Shirpur, Ghodoli, Karad, Kasarwadi and Bhiwapur have active Shiv Pratisthan Instagram pages, apart from pages representing bigger cities like Mumbai and Pune.These pages use content to stoke hate against Muslims, call for violence against them and push new campaigns around these themes.The outfit’s Jamner unit page has over 8,000 followers already, a sizeable number for a small outfit in a town which has just over 46,000 people residing, according to the 2011 Census.Its social media activity reveals how actively it has been pursuing the Hindutva cause. Soon after Pathan’s lynching, the outfit organised a silent morcha against love jihad, with many holding placards and banners decrying such inter-faith relationships. It has even put up posts abusing Pathan as a a balatkari (rapist) and jihadi and sought to defend his lynching. The Instagram page even has posts implicitly asking Hindus to enforce an economic boycott on Muslims, and has a graphic envisioning Bhide’s dream – a saffron flag flying atop Delhi’s Red Fort.The work goes onWhile the lynching and the arrests have shocked and scared the Jamner unit, within the unit, most Pratisthan members are clear that the incident won’t stop them.The Jamner unit has been holding meetings and has started preparing for their next show of strength: the annual Durga Mata Daud, where women lead early morning runs.One such meeting was held in Jamner’s Waki village, which local unit members call the gadh (the citadel) of the outfit.Waki is where at least three of the accused in Pathan’s lynching hail from, including Sojwal Teli.The intent was clear: to offer solidarity to the accused, while making a statement to locals that the Pratisthan was here to stay.Kunal Purohit is an independent journalist.