Shiv Sena's planned or spontaneous fury - Indian Express Editorial

Indian Express, 1 January 2011

Editorial

Faking fury


The Shiv Sena was caught coldbloodedly planning violence at Pune’s Lal Mahal, after a statue of Dadoji Konddeo was removed by the municipal corporation. Telephone transcripts recorded by Pune police revealed Uddhav Thackeray’s personal assistant Milind Narvekar instructing the Sena’s legislator Neelam Gorhe to stone and torch buses, after informing television crews across town. In other words, what they would later pass off as the spontaneous fury of the people was carefully choreographed for maximal impact and echo, via television.Statues have long been powerful political statements — from the point they are erected in high pomp to their equally meaningful falls from grace. And Dadoji Konddeo, Shivaji’s Brahmin tutor and mentor, has been a divisive figure and a point of contention in the state’s caste politics — between Marathas (who largely vote for the NCP) and Brahmins. The removal of Konddeo’s statue by an NCP-dominated corporation was simply a bit of swagger and muscle-flexing, in the manner of the Sena’s usual icon-obsessed politics. But manipulating statues as pawns in a political chessboard is one thing, to respond to that with calculated violence, destroying public property and burning buses, is another. While Maharashtra has long been disfigured by its narrow, resentful politics, the Sena first patented the thuggish methods that have now seeped into the mainstream. Since it cannot manage rational objection, it threatens and executes violence, inflating small actions into questions of pride and identity. It has a history of meticulously orchestrating violence. In the 1993 riots, Sena activists combed Mumbai armed with electoral registers to identify and attack Muslims. Now, its methods and pathologies have been replicated by the MNS and other groups of hoodlums, like the Sambhaji Brigade. But the conversation taped by the Pune police reveals the extent to which these actions are planned by the party’s top leaders. Their mobilisation techniques have been perfected over the years, as they pick up on stray incidents and incite violence. Their vandalism is designed to look like mass anger, even when it’s a few party workers who carry it out, after making sure that the spectacle is being recorded on camera, its impact amplified as it reverberates across the media. The Shiv Sena’s sorry transcripts should finally destroy their credibility as those who speak for popular discontent, and reveal them as the bullies and phonies that they are.