Tuesday 17 November 2015

16th NOV 2015 BAL THACKERAY AND MAHARASHTRA

Bal Thackeray– A Politics of Violence

26NOV20129 Comments
by kracktivist in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law,Minority Rights, Prison Tags: , , , ,, , , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 Votes

Vol – XLVII No. 47-48, December 01, 2012 | Jyoti Punwani: EPW
Bal Thackeray, the son of an anti-caste reformist, came from a background rich in learning and culture. Yet, he chose to use his learning and wit to destroy rather than create. Under his direction, the Sena resorted to intimidation and terror, first against south Indians, then communists and Muslims.
Jyoti Punwani (jyoti.punwani@gmail.com) is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and human rights activist.
It was an ordinary Saturday afternoon on a sleepy road with people, desultorily going about their routine. Suddenly, the scene changed. Women pleaded with vegetable vendors who were hurriedly shutting shop; people ran after buses, autorickshaws fled. It reminded you of scenes shown in Hitler movies, of Jews out on a peaceful street when they suddenly hear the sound of a Nazi patrol approaching. It was as if a malevolent spirit had descended like an ominous cloud.
Bal Thackeray’s death had just been reported in his city.
Thackeray would have been proud that in death, as in life, he generated fear among ordinary citizens going about their normal lives. He would have praised his “boys” for vandalising a hospital because the owner’s niece commented on Facebook that the city need not have shut down for his funeral. As the girl in question realised, there was nothing anyone could do when faced with the wrath of a Shiv Sainik mob. For the leader of the Shiv Sena was also the “Saheb” of those paid to protect you from Sena bullies. So it was but natural for the police to haul her to the police station. The Mumbai police’s advice to citizens not to step out on the day of Thackeray’s funeral was not surprising. It was not their job to ensure that the city went about its work as normal. It was their job to facilitate the Sena supremo’s grand funeral.
This advice from the Mumbai police was in line with the advice some of them gave to Muslims during the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots of December 1992 – January 1993. “We made sure they left the area safely”, many of them proudly told the B N Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the riots. They did not think it their duty to protect Muslims from Shiv Sainiks. They just wanted them out of harm’s way so that they could sit back as Sainiks looted and burnt the Muslims’ homes at will. That was a deed to be proud of, indeed, considering the number of policemen found by the Commission to have actively encouraged the Shiv Sainiks to riot, or to have looked the other way as they killed defenceless Muslims.
1984 Riots Pave the Way
Early on, in 1984, just before Mumbai saw its first major post-Independence Hindu-Muslim riot, Bal Thackeray had told the city’s police force to take a leaf out of their Punjab counterparts. The latter, he had said in a speech at Chowpatty that acted as the trigger for the riots, supported “anti-national Khalistanis”. He went on to say, “Here you should at least not arrest your own people when they are fighting traitors”. In the fortnight of violence that engulfed the city and its outskirts soon after the speech, the police followed his advice. 1984 was when Mumbai’s Muslims, appealing to the police for help from Shiv Sainiks, heard for the first time, the phrase that would define the police’s relationship with Bal Thackeray: “We are Shiv Sainiks under our uniforms.” Official confirmation of this relationship came in the form of a circular issued by the city’s tough police commissioner, Julio Rebeiro, wherein he asked: “I want to know who is ruling this city – the administration or the Shiv Sena? When orders were given clearly to use force and beat the Shiv Sainiks who are going around ordering shops to close, the local police failed to do so’’ (Indian Express, 30 June 1984).
The 1984 riots were not one-sided. Apart from two Urdu newspapers which inflamed passions by deliberately mis­reporting Thackeray’s speech, there was the Congress-I Muslim MLA who garlanded Thackeray’s bust with slippers in Parbhani. On the ground too, Muslims in Bhiwandi and Govandi, to name just two areas, were the aggressors, and in areas such as Nagpada and Dongri, they did retaliate.
But the case of Thane during the 1984 riots was revealing of the way the Shiv Sena operates when it is in control. A local Bharatiya Janata Party leader told this reporter after the riots that of the 57 persons killed in Thane, 55 had been Muslims, and two others had been killed for sheltering Muslims. There was no retaliation by Muslims in Thane. As the former Sena mayor and later Member of Parliament put it: Thokaichey hotey, thokle (we decided to hammer them and we did). Even Muslim Shiv Sainiks, as well as those old-timers who were so integrated with their Marathi-speaking neighbours that you could not tell them apart, were not spared.
Thane had been the Sena’s early triumph – it emerged as the single largest party in the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) in 1967 itself, a year after the party was launched, and controlled the TMC from 1974 to 1981. The 1984 riots paved the way for the Sena’s triumphant entry into Mumbai’s Municipal Corporation the next year. In this it was helped generously by the then Congress chief minister (CM) Vasantdada Patil’s mischievous announcement that the centre (ruled by his own party) was planning to separate Mumbai from Maharashtra, a possibility he knew did not exist. After the 1984 riots that claimed 258 lives, Patil refused to prosecute Thackeray for his Chowpatty speech, saying that Thackeray had denied making any derogatory remarks against prophet Mohammed. He also rejected the demand for a judicial inquiry into the riots. He did, however, arrest shakha pramukh Madhukar Sarpotdar under the National Security Act, as well as underworld leaders Haji Mastan and Karim Lala. All three were freed after the Sena helped the Congress elect its nominee as the speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Council a few days after the riots.
Blatant Abuse of Muslims
The 1984 riots displayed all the characteristics that came to be associated with Bal Thackeray and his party – Muslim baiting, violence against Muslims, the Mumbai police’s Sena bias, and the Congress-Sena nexus. All this was seen on a much larger scale in the 1992-93 riots, for the January phase of which the Justice B N Srikrishna Commission indicted Thackeray with the words, “like a veteran general, (he) commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims”. These attacks were not just the conventional looting and burning of property or stabbing to death. In January 1993, Shiv Sainiks were charged with stripping, burning and mutilating Muslim women, stoning unarmed Muslim men to death, and then burning their bodies to chants of “Jai Sri Ram”. Eyewitnesses told the Srikrishna Commission that they did not spare even handicapped boys. After all this, they got the best Sena lawyers to defend them.
There was one more difference between 1984 and 1992 – Thackeray’s abuse against Muslims no longer needed confirmation or denial by him. It was all there in his newspaper Saamna, which he had launched in 1989. Editorial after editorial in Saamna castigated Muslims as fanatic traitors, residing in “mohallas in which flowed streams of treason and poison”. The community constituted one of Pakistan’s “seven atom bombs placed in Hindustan”. One editorial asked the corpses of Hindus to come alive to “tell us, from which mosque was a bomb thrown at you? Which fanatic traitor aimed his stengun at you?” The news pages of Saamna celebrated the burning of mosques by “patriotic youth in this dharmyuddh, mosques which have become store houses of unauthorised arms”. Saamna, Thackeray said later, provided the “spark that lit the fire of patriotism which kept the country, god and religion alive”.
Yet, the Congress government took no action except to send the editorials to the Press Council, a toothless body! On a petition filed by two citizens, two judges of the Bombay High Court ruled these editorials to be unobjectionable, since they criticised only anti-national Muslims, not the entire community. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal against this judgment without going into its merits.
To be fair, the judiciary was not always kind to Bal Thackeray. In 1997, he, then the remote control of the Sena-BJP ruling alliance in Maharashtra, was forced to appear in person before a magistrate and apply for bail as prime accused for instigating Shiv Sainiks to attack reporters in 1991. In 1999, he was barred from voting or standing for election by the Supreme Court, which upheld a Bombay High Court order finding him guilty of having canvassed for his candidate on the basis of religion in the 1987 assembly elections. It made little difference to him – he had never wanted to stand for election anyway, preferring to be the “remote control” of the party rather than be accountable by holding a public office.
Contempt for the Law
Thackeray’s attitude towards the judiciary was consistent with his attitude towards the law, democracy, and the Constitution – an attitude of open contempt. It is hardly surprising that most of his corporators and Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) had criminal cases registered against them, involving charges not just of rioting and assaulting public servants, but also of extortion, kidnapping, and murder. A tape recording of the 1988 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) mayor, Diwakar Raote, had him expressing displeasure at the meagre amount of Rs 5,000 each offered to him by Gujarati traders, and boasting that to save their lives, “I have slaughtered Muslims taking the sword in my hand… In one riot, we have slaughtered 300-350 Muslims”. No action was taken against Raote by the then CM Sharad Pawar, and Raote is now a Sena Member of the Legislative Council (MLC). The man he appointed as CM, Narayan Rane, according to police claims, started off life as a part of the “Narya-Varya’’ gang in Chembur, and had a murder case against him when he became CM. Rane is now the Congress’ industries minister in Maharashtra.
Thackeray’s contempt for the law and democracy has not arisen from any long and bitter fight through constitutional means against an unjust system. He had no patience with legal means from the word go. That was the reason for his instant popularity with the Marathi-speaking restless youth who found themselves on the sidelines of the wealth that was being generated in Mumbai in the 1960s. The new capital of the new state of Maharashtra was then the most industrialised city in India, attracting the most investment from around the country. But those who controlled it were mostly non-Marathi-speaking people, belonging to communities that had always been a part of the city. Thackeray directed the aspirations of Marathi-speaking youth against these other communities. He became their godfather, in every sense of the term. His fiery speeches and writings in his weekly Marmik drew them like a magnet to his ideology: hatred against others who have deprived you of what is yours, and snatching it from them by any means. At the same time as they put this into practice, the Shiv Sainiks through their shakhas across the city also solved problems such as water supply, and raided shops of hoarders when prices of foodgrains skyrocketed.
Terror Tactics
The Sena’s first rally was in 1966 in Shivaji Park. On their way out, the rallyists attacked an Udipi restaurant, marking the start of the Sena’s terror tactics. In 1967, alongside south Indians, communists became a target. Shiv Sainiks attacked the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) office in the working class area of Parel, and violently engineered splits in CPI unions. In 1970, they killed the CPI’s sitting MLA from Parel, Krishna Desai.
For Thackeray, leftists were anti-national. Four months later, backed by the Jan Sangh, the Swatantra Party, the Congress (O) and the Hindu Mahasabha, the Sena’s Wamanrao Mahadik won the by-election to become the party’s first MLA. Addressing the party’s victory rally, Thackeray said: “This is our dharmyudh. It is the Shiv Sena’s aim to destroy all those who are not loyal to the nation…Our victory is the victory of Hindutva’’ (Vaibhav Purandare, The Sena Story, Mumbai, 1999). Twenty-two years later, Thackeray exhorted Saamna readers with the same phrases during the Ayodhya campaign and the riots that followed the Babri Masjid demolition. This time, the dharmyudh was against a different set of anti-nationals.
But Muslims had always been anathema for Thackeray. As far back as 1970, the Sena was indicted by the Justice D P Madon Commission of Inquiry for its role in the Bhiwandi riots. It is just that unlike south Indians, Muslims remained his target till the very end. In 1972, Thackeray set up his Sthaniya Lok Adhikar Samitis (local people’s rights committees) in banks and government offices, and began ensuring jobs for Marathi-speaking youth. His formidable clout forced the Congress government to issue a directive to all employers in 1973 that 60% of managerial jobs and 90% of other lower category jobs in Mumbai be given to those domiciled in Maharashtra for 15 years. There was no need after that to target the yundugundus, as he described south Indians.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric – he called Muslims landyas and “green serpents” – and violence were intrinsic to the growth of the Sena. If the 1984 riots helped Thackeray capture the BMC, similar riots helped the party capture parts of Maharashtra through the latter half of the 1980s. Vaibhav Purandare’s The Sena Story details how every new city that was captured saw riots taking place: Nashik, Amravati, Nanded, Aurangabad (renamed Sambhaji Nagar when the Sena came to power in 1995). Finally, the 1992-93 riots helped the Sena capture the state in 1995.
But Thackeray’s hatred for Muslims as pro-Pakistani traitors did not come in the way of him embracing the party that still retained the name Muslim League. After the Bhiwandi riots in 1970, the Sena negotiated the presidentship of the Bhiwandi municipality with the township’s Muslim League. Both Sudhir Joshi and Manohar Joshi became mayors in the BMC with Muslim League help, the first immediately after Sena-League riots had claimed five lives in 1973. Sudhir Joshi’s victory procession was led by Thackeray and League president G M Banatwala. After the Sena took over the BMC in 1985, the Muslim League came to the Sena’s rescue whenever voting on crucial issues took place, in return for posts in important committees.
Thakri Bhasha
Alongside Muslims, Ambedkarite dalits, who rejected Hinduism and were only too conscious of their rights, made Thackeray see red. When the Dalit Panthers were formed in 1972, their first clashes were with Shiv Sainiks in Worli’s BDD chawls. In 1987, the Sena campaigned against the inclusion of the chapter “Riddles in Hinduism” in the state government’s compilation of Ambedkar’s writings and speeches. Sena leader Chhagan Bhujbal even bathed the Flora Fountain monument with gangajal after a huge dalit rally was held there on the issue.
Thackeray was the only one to openly oppose the renaming of Marathwada University as Ambedkar University, and throughout the long namantar agitation, Shiv Sainiks attacked dalits in Marath­wada, burning their homes, desecrating Buddhist temples and Ambedkar statues. Many of the “minor” cases registered against them under the Prevention of Atrocities Act were withdrawn by Sharad Pawar after the university was renamed in January 1994. The next year, when the Sena came to power, CM Manohar Joshi withdrew more such cases.
It is this licence given by successive governments in Maharashtra that encouraged the “Tiger” to roar and maul as he pleased. In 1988, he called a press conference at which Sikh leaders of Mumbai were summoned and threatened with an economic boycott if they did not get their religious leaders in Punjab to issue a directive against Khalistanis. His “roars” have been delivered in what his admirers describe as Thakri bhasha. The most creative use of this bhasha has been against women. Veteran socialist Mrinal Gore, who refused to enter into an alliance with him till the bitter end of her political career was described as “Goregaon’s buffalo”, and Janata Dal president V P Singh’s paayachidasi (meaning slave/mistress). Professor Pushpa Bhave was called a “stale nankathai” and referred to as bhavini (devdasi or prostitute) when she exhorted the terrified residents of Vasai to stand up to the “two faces of fascism – (Bhai) Thakur [a well-known don] and Thackeray”. Writing about CPI(Marxist) leader Ahilya Rangnekar and trade unionist Pushpa Mehta, Thackeray wondered how they were so active despite their “menstrual rags having long dried up”. Feminist writer Vidya Bal was described as the “hijra” of the women’s liberation movement.
Such was the man now being described as having ruled over the hearts of three generations of Shiv Sainiks for 46 years. That is untrue. Like any party, the Shiv Sena had its highs and lows. After a spectacular start in 1966, with the city burning for four days after he was arrested in 1969 (over the border row with Karnataka), the decade 1974-84 saw a low, as Thackeray disillusioned his followers by supporting Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. His workers supported Datta Samant despite their supremo’s opposition to the textile strike led by Samant. The 1984 riots helped him bounce back, but he lost control over the BMC in 1992, only to return with the 1992-93 riots.
The next stage of disillusionment came ironically, when he was in charge of the state. When the BJP-Sena wrested power from Sharad Pawar’s Congress in early 1995, the reaction among most Marathi-speaking people, cutting across classes and castes, was “our people are in power now”. By the end of their rule in 1999, voters had realised that Shiv Shahi was no different from Congress rule. Since then, the Sena has been kept out, thanks to his nephew Raj Thackeray forming his own party.
Five-Year Rule
However, his five-year rule deserves attention. Coming as it did two years after the 1992-93 riots where he played a leading role, the Sena-BJP rule started off as hell for Muslims. His government scrapped the state minorities’ commission and the Urdu academy. After Saamna received a call threatening to kill Thackeray from someone claiming to be a Bangladeshi, the Sena chief threatened that the entire Muslim community would be wiped out. The Sena-BJP government passed an anti-bigamy bill and also a bill prohibiting the slaughter of cow progeny.
But Thackeray’s government also fulfilled many long-standing demands of Muslims which the Congress had never cared to, including increasing the floor space index (FSI) for mosques. The community found Sena MLAs, even those who had been in the forefront of the riots, more approachable than Congress MLAs had ever been. Also, the five-year reign of the Sena-BJP saw just one minor riot which was controlled within 48 hours. Today, a similar situation exists as did in 1995. Muslims are fed up with the Congress, especially because of the continuous targeting of its youth on terror charges. A section of them want to teach the Congress a lesson and give the Sena another chance.
However, the Sena-BJP regime established Thackeray as the ultimate censor. Even after he lost power, nervous directors would show him their films if they felt anything in their content could annoy him. Only those with a hotline to the centre could dare to have their films run despite his disapproval, as Shah Rukh Khan did with his My Name Is Khan in 2010.
Ugly and Impoverished
Bal Thackeray, like many other Marathi-speaking politicians, came from a background rich in learning and culture. In addition to being exposed to literature, music and drama, he had the advantage of being the son of an anti-caste reformist. Yet, he chose to use his learning and wit to destroy rather than create. He debased the Marathi language when he could have enriched it. As a sophisticated Marathi-speaking orator, he could have used his power over his followers to turn Mumbai, already a flourishing cosmopolitan city, into one of the world’s great metropolises. He chose to render it ugly and impoverished.
Related articles

Mr Bal Thackeray, The Capitalists And The Working Poor

26NOV20126 Comments
by kracktivist in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law,Minority Rights Tags: , , , ,, , , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rate This


By Vidyadhar Date
23 November,2012
Countercurrents.org
Mr Bal Thackeray was essentially a man the capitalists liked and they were very comfortable with him. That is why he was always boosted by much of the media as a larger than life figure and after his death there is more gushing praise of the man.
`The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with the bones,’ said Mark Antony in his famous funeral speech in Shakespeare’s play Julius Ceasar. Mr Thackeray has no such problems and this is not to suggest that he did evil. In his case there is no shortage of people going out of the way to write in support of him. Mr Thackeray’s father Prabodhankar Thackeray was an avid Shakespeare fan, he spent so much from his scarce resources on books that this alarmed his mother and he devoted a lot of time researching in libraries. Mr Thackeray was so unlike his father in many many ways. Prabodhankar was a rationalist, activist, supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Ambedkar and social reformer Jotirao Phule, he wrote several books. But how many remember him today ? Mr Bal Thackeray had little use for serious books.
Liberals have often criticized Mr Thackeray for his communalism, hate speech and chauvinism and rightly too. But during his time and after there is little recognition of the fact that he was very friendly with capitalists. The system everywhere has always needed an army of people to deal with others, especially dissenters. TheShiv Sena was seen as a solid ally.
There is justifiable and widespread anger over the arrest of two girls for their post on Facebook in the wake of Mr Thackeray’s death. But then killing someone with whom one does not agree is far more heinous. That is exactly what the Shiv Sena did and that is how it launched its foray into politics.The politics of terrorism of the Shiv Sena began in 1970 with the stabbing to death of Mr Krishna Desai, the Communist MLA, in 1970. That was the defining act of the Shiv Sena. It showed where it stood. It was a measured and well thought out attack on the Left movement which was fairly strong then. The murder aroused few protests from outside the Communist fold then .Even today few remember it today though it should serve as a warning for all times to come. Many of the political analysts writing on the Shiv Sena have often beaten about the bush, showered praises on Mr Thackeray for his ready wit and friendliness with them but most have overlooked the class affiliation of the Sena.
When it comes to confronting the fascists and hoodlums and the wealthy and imperialists, there is noticeable timidity and inactivity on the part of intellectuals. The German activist clergy man Martin Niemoller warned against this inactivity when drawing attention to the Nazi threat in Germany through his famous lines which state that if you do not act when others are attacked, there will be no one to protect you if you are attacked. . There is conspicuous omission in the gushing obituaries of Mr Thackeray of the Shiv Sena’s role in attacking the working people’s movements . As a young journalist then I still remember veteran Bhalchandra Marathe of Free Press Journal recalling what one of the assassins of Krishna Desai talked about. He said he thrust the knife and then turned the handle because that is what really ruptures the inner parts of the body. A murder most foul. If Mr Thackeray deserves a memorial, Mr Krishna Desai deserves it even more.
Mr Thackeray’s role also has to be seen in the context of the way the cities are being reshaped the world over to serve the interests of the rich and to exclude the poor. David Harvey, one of the most eminent thinkers of urban life , economics and politics , is our best guide to understand the issues. He asserts that the ordinary people should get a right to the city, access its services, shape its development. . It should be seen as a fundamental right.In a recent book Rebel Cities he shows how cities can be a harbinger of protest and change as in the case of the Occupy Movement in the U.S.
Unfortunately, Mr Thackeray intervened little on behalf of the poor though the poor Marathi Manoos was his main plank. Talk was seldom matched in practice when it came to the crux. But then how does one explain the phenomenal response to the funeral procession ? This question is aptly asked on Facebook by Mr John Game, a Britisher , who has done field work in Mumbai . A staunch leftist himself, he says we should realize that the Shiv Sena also did some service to citizens.
( As for the huge turn out at the funeral, let us remember that only some eleven people attended the funeral of Marx. ) True, Mr Thackeray took up the cause of ordinary people, channelized people’s frustration and economic hardships but he did it in a very negative way, reinforcing prejudices and encouraging violence, threats. Often, the poor were the victims, as in the case of those who were seen as outsiders. The rich had little to fear from him. It is opportunistic to criticize Mr Thackeray from a narrow perspective and not take cognizance of a system that is built on exploitation and then creates organizations that can divert the attention of the people from real issues.
He was expected to halt the gentrification of Mumbai and the eviction of the poor through physical and financial coercion. He has been called a tiger, an emperor and king of Mumbai and what not. Why was the king then so powerless to help the poor ?
The brutal gentrification of Mumbai, the extinguishing of its character as a working class city took place in the prime of Mr Thackeray’s political career. The most blatant and glaring example of the Shiv Sena’s role is evident right there in front of Shiv Sena Bhavan in the heart of Dadar You just cannot miss it. A monstrous, high rise, glass box , environment-unfriendly structure is coming up there distorting the character of the relatively environment-friendly area. It was from this building under construction that hundreds of people hung out to watch the funeral procession as seen in media photographs.
The land belonged to the Kohinoor textile mill of the National Textile Corporationand anyone would expect a party speaking in the name of Marathi Manoos to demand that it be used as a space for public use in this city which desperately needs public spaces. Strangely, it was bought for hundreds of crores and the buyers were Mr Raj Thackeray and Mr Unmesh Joshi, son of former Shiv Sena chief minister Manohar Joshi. Both have close ties to real estate. Mr Thackery is said to have made a huge profit by selling his stake, as reported by Economic Times of 15 November, 2009.
The mill once belonged to Laxmanrao Apte, the father former Test cricketerMadhav Apte, very much a Marathi Manoos. The Aptes were so affluent they owned a big bungalow on Peddar Road now converted into a high rise Woodlands apartments.
Had the big plot of Kohinoor mill remained vacant, the government would not have had to hunt for space for the memorial to Mr Thackeray now being vociferously demanded by the Sena. But then it is so much easier to prey on public resources. So there is a demand that the memorial be constructed on Shivaji Park, one of the few big open spaces in the city. One can only hope that the memorial is environment friendly and not some hideous and gigantic structure of cement and concrete .
There is clearly a sense of lack of proportion in the building of monuments. I was in Nagpur last week where life was as usual on the day of the funeral and death. Thee was no bandh anywhere. On the outskirts of the city is a cultural centre Pasayadaan with an anachronistically large statue of saint Dnyaneshwar.
Mr Thackeray comprehensively reversed the long liberal tradition of Maharashtra (my article on this subject in the Times of India 4 July, 1995). Mahatma Gandhi’s guru was Gopal Krishna Gokhale and favourite disciple was Vionoba Bhave. Mr Thackeray bore the title of Senapati, a military general, and acted ruthlessly. So different from another Senapati in Maharashtra, Senapati Pandurang Mahadev Bapat, a highly respected Gandhian who took the path of peaceful struggle after studying in college in England and learning bomb making.
He led the world’s first anti-dam struggle in what is known as the Mulshi satyagraha against the take over of the land of poor peasants, Mavlas, whose hardy forefathers were the backbone of Shivaji’s guerilla army. The same situation as in Singur, the government forcibly taking over fertile land for the Tatas. This was in 1921. The pillage of the land of the poor is now revived. The land of the Mavlas is now being overrun, vandalized by the rich and being turned into fancy townships but the Shiv Sena has not uttered a word against this though it speaks all the time in the name of Shivaji because this is politically convenient and easy to exploit. And the Shiv Sena does nothing to stop the complete removal of working class history and heritage.
Much of the political analysis and academic work overlooks the cosy relationship between the Sena and capitalists. But here is a surprise and it comes from unexpected quarters. One can read between the lines in an article by Mr Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj group, and an articulate spokesman of corporate interests, on the front page eulogizing Mr Thackeray in Economic Times of November 19. Says Mr Bajaj `My late uncle Ramkrishna Bajaj was a good friend of Balasaheb. When Parliamentary elections were taking place both Balasaheb and my uncle were anti-Communist. Though the ideology of the Congress and Shiv Sena was not common, they maintained a good rapport.’ . It was a time when anti-Left organizations were floated in different parts of the country in the wake of the debacle of the Congress in the elections . The reversal of the Congress and the rise of the Left had alarmed capitalists. As for the role of the Americans, any sincere police officer or political observer of the time will throw light on it.
Many people are in awe of the power wielded by Mr Thackeray. I found that even the highly respected cartoonist R.K. Laxman, my senior colleague in the Times of India , had this feeling . Both began as political cartoonists in the Free Press Journal in the 1940s. See how far ahead Mr Thackeray has gone, and here I am, he said to me one day in a sad tone. This was one time I could not agree with Mr Laxman.
Now, there is some consolation that there is more public awareness about the attacks on the freedom of expression. There was little of this in the past. A glaring victim of prejudice was Prof Pandharinath Vishnu Ranade, a Marxist professor of history. He was also an art lover , a poet and the author of a book on the art of Ajanta..This was in 1974, the year of the terecentenary of Shivaji’s coronation of 1674. It was celebrated in Maharashtra with much fanfare. Prof Ranade offered a dissenting note in an article in the weekly Ranangan. He was quite respectful towards Shivaji and only argued that hero worshipping him was inconsistent with democratic principles given the nature of the feudal era in which Shivaji lived. This created a storm. Mr Ranade lost his job in Marathwada university and he was reinstated only after protests by some leading progressive historians in the Indian History Congress. One day he was surrounded by Shiv Sainiks and threatened on Dadar railway bridge when he was returning after delivering a lecture. When I intervened I was assaulted and my spectacles were broken. Instead of condemning the attack on the freedom of expression, Mahaashtra Times, the leading Marathi daily, editorially criticized Mr Ranade. That is the tragedy . The public perception of many people is entirely at odds with reality. I have met any number of `well educated people` who firmly believe that it was because of Mr Thackeray that Hindus were saved from the onslaught of Muslims in the riots in 1992-93 !
It is easy to dismiss the masses who supported Mr Thackeray as riff raff. I believe they did this in desperation because our system is basically so unjust and unfair. If `well educated` people are so drawn towards fascists, one cannot really blame the common folk for supporting them.
Look at a comment made by Harsh Goenka, industrialist and art collector to the Times of India after Mr Thackeray’s death. He called him a revolutionary. That is contrary to the very term. If anything, Mr Thackeray could be called a counter revolutionary.
As for Lata Mangeshkar’s fanatical support for him, the roots go back to her father, the reputed singer actor Master Dinanath who was an ardent admirer of the founding ideologue of Hindu nationalism V.D. Savarkar. Her brother Hridaynath, music director, has frequently glorified Savarkar during television programmes, often going out of the way to do so.
Among the responses from political parties, Ideologially the most forthright comment I noticed was from Dr Ashok Dhawale, general secretary of the Maharashtra CPM. He has analysed Mr Thackeray in class terms.
I have covered several of the political rallies addressed by Mr Thackeray when I worked for the Times of India. Many of these were really impressive and one must grant him his sense of humour. Sometimes, he was pleased with my coverage and I heard this from his wife’s brother who worked in the administrative section of the paper. But when it comes to analysis of the Shiv Sena, the perspective has to be objective.
The negatives in the Sena were also too strong. At one meeting in Khar in Mumbai during the time the Shiv Sena was in power in the state, Mr Thackeray used such obscene words that I won’t be able to use them even in private conversation. Sadly, he pushed the political debate to extremely low levels. The most chauvinistic leaders in other states did not use such language of terror and hate as the Sainiks did.
Mr Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of climate change. Walking, cycling, public transport need priority.

6 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. Trackback: Bal Thackeray ruled Mumbai like no other, he also divided the city like no other « kracktivist
  2. Trackback: Not a Thackeray of hope Manohar Joshi will give up his Koh-i-noor « kracktivist
  3. Trackback: Roaring back at Shiv Sena in Tiger’s absence « kracktivist
  4. Trackback: #Mumbairiots 1992-93 were so brutal, it seemed Mumbai would never recover « kracktivist
  5. Trackback: Goodbye Mr Thackeray, you taught me how to love « kracktivist
  6. Trackback: Police drop activist from programme after Sena threat « kracktivist
  7. About 423 results (0.52 seconds) 
      Stay up to date on results for balasaheb thackeray brothel keeper.
      Create alert

    About 42,400 results (0.60 seconds) 
    Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra - From your Internet address - Use precise location
     - Learn more   
    Help Send feedback Privacy Terms




    Posted by at

    No comments:

    Post a Comment

    Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)