The following reflections are offered more from the point of view of the place he occupies in political life and the forces and trends that he represents, both in the life of Maharashtra and of the country, than his personal attributes.
It is a matter of historical fact that the Bilingual State of Bombay survived for three years and eventually yielded place peacefully and uneventfully to the two separate linguistic States of Maharashtra and Gujarat principally owing to the personality of Shri Yeshwantrao Chavan as its Chief Minister. If the High Command had not been able to discover in Shri Yeshwantrao Chavan a Maharashtrian leader capable of discharging the onerous and unpopular duties of the Chief Minister of that State, despite a slender Congress majority in the Legislature derived principally from Gujarat, the Congress authorities at the Centre would have been greatly embarrassed. The Bilingual State would have proved unworkable and might have had to be replaced, as indeed it was eventually done, not so smoothly and uneventfully but rather like a wrong being righted, an old mistake being corrected. The smooth and uneventful manner in which the unilingual Stateof Maharashtra was ushered in, almost as if it was the next historical step in evolution after the bilingual State of Bombay, was made possible by a combination of some rare attributes in Yeshwantraoji. He was able to create confidence in his sincerity and earnestness simultaneously both amongst his opponents and his followers ; he was able to demonstrate that the Administrative machinery of Government, whether of Bombay or a separate Maharashtra State, would be safe in the hands of Maharashtrian leadership; he was able to convince the High Command, while retaining on the one hand the confidence of Maharashtrian public opinion, that Maharashtra would view the welfare of the Marathi-speaking regions constantly within the context of the welfare of the whole country. In short, he demonstrated that the creation of the State of Maharashtra was ‘safe’ for the Indian Union.
The issue of Bombay City which had been such a ceaseless centre of controversy in the Reorganisation of States was settled smoothly, and as it were automatically, mainly as a result of Shri Chavan's successful steering of the Bilingual Bombay for three years. There was hardly a whimper on the inclusion of Bombay City in the State of Maharashtra last year when that State ultimately came to be formed. Such inclusion was indeed taken for granted on all sides. This was more than half the battle in the creation of Samyukta Maharashtra. Notwithstanding this however, Shri Yeshwantrao had had to do much political ‘horsetrading’ to bring about the smooth advent of the unilingual States of Gujarat and Maharashtra out of the Bilingual Bombay; compromises had to be made on issues like the Dangs, Umbergaon and the financial settlement with Gujarat. His outstanding merit in this respect lay in that he could distinguish the trees from the forest and could see each issue in its correct perspective.
