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. 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.
