The Tribune (Chandigarh), 8 January 2011
Editorial
Shiv Sena’s brazen act
Dictating team selection on parochial lines
It is a sad consequence of the abdication of authority by the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra that a group of political activists belonging to the youth wing of the Shiv Sena was able to dictate the selection of the Mumbai University hockey team for an All-India Inter-University Hockey Tournament and force the exclusion of some outstation players. Reports say around 50 Shiv Sainiks marched into the Khalsa College campus in Mumbai on Wednesday afternoon, where the Mumbai team for the fortnight-long tournament was to be announced, and told those in charge to give preference to locals if they didn’t want the matter to be taken up by “higher authorities” of the Sena or its youth wing, the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena. After spending a couple of hours on the campus, the activists left with the team they wanted. Out of the five outsiders who were from Haryana and Rajasthan but were studying in Mumbai, three had been dropped.
One can hardly hold it against the team selectors when the state government’s own record of protecting the people against political goons has been pathetic. Indeed, the Shiv Sena’s record in the past year speaks for itself. It thrashed non-Marathi auto and taxi drivers, attacked movie theatres that screened “My Name Is Khan”, threatened to sabotage Rahul Gandhi’s Mumbai tour, banned and burned a book written three decades ago and anointed Shiv Sena supreme Bal Thackeray’s son Aditya as the future of the party. As so often in the past, the government in Maharashtra timidly acquiesced in all the excesses of the Sena activists. It is this attitude that has turned the Shiv Sena into a Frankenstein monster whose one call for a bandh paralyses life in the entire business capital of the country.
Hitherto, the Shiv Sena’s connection to sporting matters was normally restricted to cricket and Pakistan. The latest action will embolden the Sena goons to extend their destructive influence to other sports too. It would be unfortunate indeed if such attitude as was displayed in the latest incident leads some other states to act in retaliation against Maharashtrian youth. It is time the state government called a halt to this brazen parochialism. If it does not, the consequences could be grave.
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