A Hindu Right Winger's Direct Appeal To Police Play Chauvinist

Insidious intent

by Kalpana Sharma
IndianExpress.com August 30, 2008

Raj Thackeray’s direct appeal to the Maharashtra police undermines the very spirit of law-enforcement


The immediate crisis over Marathi signboards for all shops in Mumbai might have subsided with the intervention of the Bombay High Court and the state government’s firmness, but several larger issues remain unresolved. The Bombay High Court, in response to a petition by the retail traders’ federation has insisted that the “rule of law must prevail” and that “no one can hold the state to ransom”. The court was referring to the manner in which activists of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, at the urging of their chief Raj Thackeray, had gone around the city threatening and attacking shops that did not display signboards in Marathi.

However, a far more serious issue remains unaddressed. Besides urging his cadre to virtually take the law into their own hands, Raj Thackeray also wrote an open letter to the Maharashtra police urging them not to “pick up lathis and serve externment notices” against members of the MNS who were terrorising local shopkeepers into displaying signboards in Marathi.

In a letter addressed to “all my police brothers and sisters”, Raj Thackeray has claimed that the agitations conducted by his party are “directly and indirectly for you all”. Maharashtra’s “entire police force (except some IPS officers) is Marathi,” he writes. “You have an idea of the way in which Maharashtra and the Marathi language is being strangled in Maharashtra by bhaiyyas and some baniyas”. He then appeals to their consciences before they move against MNS workers. “Will you and your families like it in case the Marathi language and Maharashtra die at the hands of these bhaiyyas and baniyas?” he asks.

The job of the police in any state is to enforce the law and the spirit of the Constitution. Is not such an appeal directly violative of this spirit? Try and imagine a situation in Mumbai if a Muslim leader appealed to Muslim policemen to follow their conscience and not arrest innocent Muslims each time there is a terror attack? Would he be allowed to get away with it?

Ever since he launched his party, Raj Thackeray has been treading on dangerous ground. Beginning with an attack on so-called “outsiders” seeking jobs in the state, he has continued to grow by targeting mainly North Indian migrants in the name of “Maharashtra Dharma”. Yet, each time he crosses a limit, nothing much happens. He gets away with it. Until he is ready to launch another agitation .

It is assumed that the police will be non-partisan when they act in the name of the law. Yet, past experience has shown us that this is not always the case. The most telling example of that was the 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai when their partisan role was noted by the Srikrishna Commission. One of the principal factors that reinforced existing biases before, during and after the riots was the kind of vituperative writing that the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna carried every day. The paper has a vast readership in the police force. Day after day, they were fed with a diet of bias and venom, principally against Muslims.

Today, Raj Thackeray does not need a newspaper. His utterances are reported in the media, the actions of his cadre are shown repeatedly on television and in a short period he has become larger than life. And just as the Maharashtra government hesitated to take any action against his uncle Bal Thackeray for fear that there would be a strong reaction leading to a law and order situation in Mumbai, the current Maharashtra government seems to be in a state of paralysis. The lessons of the past have clearly not been learned.

What Raj Thackeray has said and written might not fall strictly within a particular provision of the law — although according to a senior retired police official it does, under Section 3 of the Police (incitement to disaffection) Act 1922. But he has violated the spirit of the Constitution that guarantees equality before the law. The police are bound to act against anyone breaking the law. By appealing to the local police on the basis of their Marathi identity and by persuading them to be partial, Thackeray is directly undermining the basis of a non-partisan law-enforcing machinery. Inaction by the Government today will seriously erode its ability to maintain any kind of order and peace in the future in the face of the frightening growth of such xenophobic politics.

The writer is an independent journalist and columnist based in Mumbai