scroll.in - June 19, 2015
BOOK EXCERPT
How Bombay’s businessmen and the Congress helped create the Shiv Sena
Shiv Sena was founded on 19 June 1966. In this extract from 'Hindu Hriday Samrat', the author describes how disparate groups got together to free Bombay from the grip of ‘the communists’.
by Sujata Anandan
Madhav Deshpande... an architect by profession...[was] in many ways, the real architect of the Shiv Sena – or, at least, of the concept of a regional force to oppose the then all-powerful Congress for its perceived neglect of the Marathi people, their culture and ethos...
The Shiv Sena was formed in 1966 but it took Thackeray another decade to register his organization as a political party. ‘It was the fear of the Emergency (in 1975) that prompted him to declare a party hierarchy,’ Deshpande had told me then. ‘And nowhere in the party document that they drummed up at the time does Bal Thackeray figure as any functionary. In fact, from president down to secretary and even treasurer, everyone is a non- entity. Thackeray was afraid of being arrested for political activity and so he thought up this brilliant move – to hold power without any responsibility – to escape the consequences.’...
'The communists'
‘All the powerful Congress leaders from the state like SK Patil – the city’s uncrowned king at the time – looked to Delhi to promote themselves and their careers and no one really cared for Maharashtra except to use it to gain a foothold at the Centre,’ says Deshpande. He and many others like him also discovered that the Maharashtrian people and their culture were being subsumed by the larger Indian one and that it did not really show up in the big picture. Bombay’s was just a business community and while the Congress looked towards it to fund its programmes, politically the city was in the grip of ‘the communists’, who, of course, cared neither for Bombay nor for Maharashtra, nor even for New Delhi. Rather, as goes the well- known accusation against them, ‘they unfurled their umbrellas when it rained in the Soviet Union and all their agenda was set by Moscow’.
However, while most Congressmen might indeed have been looking towards New Delhi, there were still a handful of influential ones who did care for the local ethos. In the typical fashion of Congressmen even today, they decided to do something about it – but without really making it official. So did Deshpande. So did Bal Thackeray. And so also did the businessmen of Bombay, who shared the Congress leaders’ paranoia about the communists-led trade unions in this industrial hub of India which had most workers in their grip. Each went about it in their own way but somewhere – and soon – these streams did meet.
'Rise and unite'
So, along with three other friends – Padmakar Adhikari, an architect like himself as also his business partner, Shyam Deshmukh, who worked with a large industrial house in the suburbs and so could be depended upon to muster the labour force together, and Vasant Pradhan, a railway employee who later trained to be a lawyer to help fight the cases of workers – he set up an organization called ‘Ooth ani Ekjut Ho’ or ‘Rise and Unite’. They would visit the community centres and gyms every evening and talk to the workers about their rights and the need to build a parallel regional force that would challenge and take on not just the Congress but also the communists....
Once Thackeray had decided to set up the Shiv Sena, he lost no time in making the announcement in an issue of the Marmik – it appeared as a small notice at the bottom of the centre-spread. The party’s formal launch went almost unnoticed at first (just a coconut cracked at the doorstep of the Thackerays’ home at Kadam Mansion, off Ranade Road in Dadar, marked it). Deshpande and his friends, who were leaving no stone unturned to raise awareness among Maharashtrians and unite them under one banner, did not miss the small print. ‘We realized here was another man like us, fired by the need to do justice to the aspirations of the locals, and we decided that we must not divide the efforts.’ They merged their ‘Ooth ani Ekjuth Ho’ into the Shiv Sena.
‘One man and one magazine'
Marmik’s circulation was then growing by leaps and bounds (around 50,000 at the time with a readership of nearly two lakh, if not more) and people were responding in good measure to Thackeray’s ideas. But when Deshpande met him after seeing the notice in the magazine to ask what the structure of his organization was like, Thackeray was surprised. ‘Structure? There’s no structure. There’s just me, some friends and that announcement so far,’ he said.
‘That will not do,’ said Deshpande. ‘One man and one magazine are just not enough.’ And the architect that he was, he drew up an elaborate ‘structure’ – a hierarchy of what is now called shakha pramukhs (branch heads) and vibhag pramukhs (division heads), drawing upon both the mandals and the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s own division of the city into wards. It is the cadre structure that has stood the Shiv Sena in good stead till today – and saved the party from near-certain decimation at the 2012 municipal elections in Mumbai.
Deshpande also made two discoveries: that Thackeray was rather ‘piddi’ (cowardly) and that he had a great way with words. ‘His turn of phrase was such that he could enthrall the crowds and hypnotize the audiences – provided we could persuade or drag him out of his comfort zone and get him to the dais.’ Since none of the four founders of the Shiv Sena’s precursor – the Rise and Unite movement – had had as much success at holding the attention of their listeners, they decided to push Thackeray to the forefront and declare him the face of their regional movement. Both the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI) had split by then and were speaking in two voices for each ideology.
‘That is why we merged our movement into the Shiv Sena and we decided we would have just one voice and that that voice would be Bal Thackeray’s. The Shiv Sena was never meant to be owned by Thackeray or his offspring. Sadly, that is what the movement has been reduced to today,’ rues Deshpande. But before its decline, there was the rise and rise of the Sena, and Bombay’s businessmen and the Congress party had as much to do with its creation and nurture as had Deshpande and his friends. Though ‘Mumbai’ is seen as a city owned by Shiv Sainiks today, it had belonged to the communist parties in the 1960s and the frequent strikes and demands by workers had tired Bombay’s entrepreneurs to the core. At the time, the left parties were the only political challenge to the Congress and both its leaders and the businessmen who funded the Congress wished to see the back of the communist trade unions whose domination even the Congress-sponsored trade unions had failed to break.
Congress bags of cash
By Deshpande’s own admission, Congress leaders then sent him bags of cash to take care of meetings that the Sena might hold or to put up candidates against those of the communist parties to cut into their vote bank by raising the regional sentiment against that of workers’ unity. That’s how they defeated former Union defence minister VK Krishna Menon who had contested from Bombay North with communist support after he was denied a ticket by the Congress on account of his role in India’s debacle in the 1962 war with China. The Sena was also encouraged to form its own workers’ union (the Kamgar Sena, as it is called today) to bring the Marathi and the workers’ sentiments together. The organization (it was not yet a political party) was also covertly protected by the then ruling party in the state, the Congress, then headed by Vasantrao Naik whose record as Maharashtra’s longest-serving chief minister for eleven years remains unbroken. The government clearly looked the other way when one Kamgar Sena leader (who later ended up as a minister in the only Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra so far) was accused of killing a legislator, Krishna Desai, belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPI(M). Four decades later, though sixteen of Thackeray’s ‘boys’ were convicted for the murder, the case against the mastermind and the Sena tiger who had then congratulated those ‘boys’ for killing Desai by stating that ‘we must not miss a single opportunity to massacre communists,’ is still meandering through the courts. No government has made any effort to bring them to justice. In the subsequent by-election in 1970, the Sena wrested that seat from the CPI(M) with covert Congress support, marking its maiden entry into the state legislature.
Stunning response
Thackeray had not expected a good response to his call to rally when he published a notice for one in the Marmik. He had wanted a small town hall or a school ground as the venue of the first Shiv Sena meeting, just to test the waters. But Deshpande says he overruled the objections of all others and persuaded Thackeray to go for Shivaji Park, Bombay’s best known and, perhaps, the largest open space, a rallying ground for all political parties. (An earlier meeting of the Sena had already been held in a closed hall.)
‘Thackeray was not so sure about the regional sentiment then but I had gauged the response at our meetings at the mandals and the vyayamshalas. Even the policemen who were on bundobast duty that day in 1966 when the first real public meeting was held had been sceptical and mocked me at the start of the meeting. But the response stunned everybody, including Thackeray. There had been no posters, no mobilization, only that notice in Marmik. And yet Shivaji Park was overflowing that day. I knew that we had arrived.’
The bulk of that crowd was drawn from the working classes, and from the ranks of the unemployed and even uneducated people with idle minds. Not surprisingly, the Shiv Sena gathered enough muscle power in no time at all. With the combination of moneybags and political patronage extended to the Shiv Sena by the Congress to do its dirty work, it is no wonder that the Sena became an irresistible force that met, on its own terms, the Communist Party of India (which too packed a few dirty tricks, like murder of opponents, up its sleeves), and eventually broke its back.
Little surprise then, says Deshpande, that they uncovered a conspiracy by the left (for which there is no police record) to assassinate Bal Thackeray. And even less of a surprise, therefore, that whoever Thackeray might have loved or hated (enemies today, friends tomorrow), he abhorred communists the most. Even more than the Congress, Muslims or even more than the south Indians and north Indians, all of whom he has hated at times and befriended at others, he hated the left: he had a constant paranoia of the left. They were his enemies and he would not be persuaded otherwise. That, in a sense, was truly his only ideology.
Congress backing
The Shiv Sena always had the backing of the Congress, which had an unbroken stint as the ruling party from Independence up until 1995... Through the years of the Shiv Sena’s growth though, the authorities always looked the other way: the Congress had set up Thackeray in business for its own purposes and had to allow the Sena chief some room to secure his own gains. So Shiv Sainiks could get away with much lawlessness with impunity. Moreover, even if successive Congress governments had cracked the whip, they were soon handicapped by the fact that many lower-rung policemen had become Sena sympathizers and closet supporters of Thackeray, a fact that emerged in the open and proved very detrimental to everybody’s interests during the 1992-93 riots in Bombay following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
***
WHEN THE SHIV SENA supported the candidature of Pratibha Patil of the Congress for presidency in 2007, Bal Thackeray could pass it off as a move in keeping with the Sena’s raison d’être, the Marathi manoos. The Shiv Sena was, after all, a nativist party and it had always fought for the rights of local Maharashtrians who many, including those in the Congress, thought were being treated as outsiders in their own homeland. The BJP, with whom the Sena has had an alliance now for nearly three decades, could do little to persuade Thackeray otherwise. But they could do even less when, inexplicably, Thackeray decided to once again support the candidature of a Congressman, Pranab Mukherjee, at the subsequent presidential election in 2012, even without any overt appeal from the Congress to his party to do so.
But Thackeray was only going back to his roots in facilitating a Congress victory in those elections. After all, it was this party which had not only helped establish the Shiv Sena in 1966 but had also, both covertly and overtly, flagged its agenda from time to time with some clever and well-thought-out moves of its own. In 1969, when the Shiv Sena decided to block the entry of Morarji Desai, a former chief minister of the undivided Bombay state, into the city, the then chief minister, Vasantrao Naik, decided to look the other way at first. By most accounts, the police were asked to ignore the troublemakers on the streets. Action was taken against the rioters and Bal Thackeray only when things went completely out of hand and it was well-nigh impossible to ignore the growing mayhem across the metropolis.
The Shiv Sena, at that point of time, was proving to be a handy tool in destroying the communist parties which, in some ways, ruled Bombay without quite being in power, much like the Shiv Sena did in later years. Thackeray had also helped the Congress defeat the Communist Party candidates in the legislative assembly and parliamentary elections in those early years. And with the then Maharashtra home minister Balasaheb Desai proving a powerful ally in his pursuit of the Marathi agenda, the Sena grew by leaps and bounds, even winning about forty of the 140 seats in the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1968 on the Marathi card, just two years after blazing into existence.
Seamless integration
Before Independence, which brought with it universal adult franchise to India without any of the struggles that European nations and even the US had to witness even as late as the twentieth century, only taxpayers could vote or stand for civic elections under the British regime. Not surprisingly then, most of these eligible people were Parsis, Bohra Muslims, Hindu Gujaratis and the British themselves. You could count local Maharashtrians among the voters on the fingers of just one hand. This skewed composition continued well into the years after Independence. The non-Maharashtrians dominated the municipal corporation, despite universal adult franchise, simply because of the headstart that some other groups had had in these matters in the preceding years.
So Thackeray’s ‘Bombay for Maharashtrians’ agenda found great resonance across the board, even among traditional Congress politicians. It is not surprising then that there was, and still continues to be, an almost seamless integration between Congress ideologues and the Marathi agenda of the Shiv Sena.
***
Excerpted with permission from Hindu Hriday Samrat by Sujata Anandan, published by HarperCollins India
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Showing posts with label Bal Thackeray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bal Thackeray. Show all posts
June 21, 2016
August 17, 2015
Complaint filed against Tehelka magazine after its cover story referred to Bal Thackeray as terrorist
Who Is The Biggest Terrorist Of Them All..?
Why does “collective conscience” take a holiday when it comes to the
victims of riots orchestrated to further the cause of majoritarian politics?
MATHEW SAMUEL
The protagonist of majoritarian politics Bal Thackeray Photo : AFP
The rage generated by the hanging of Yakub Memon for the 1993 Bombay
bombings will not die down anytime soon. While some continue with the chest
thumping, others decry the barbarity of capital punishment. But there is
also a significant minority that refuses to buy the State’s argument that
Yakub was killed to send a “powerful message” to the terrorist groups and
is anguished by how the Indian State targets the minorities in the name of
counter-terrorism even as it refuses to acknowledge that majoritarian
Hindutva politics is to blame just as much as Islamic militancy for
terrorising the people of India. A simple question that the State has
failed to address so far is how was the massacre of Muslims in Bombay in
the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition any less an act of organised terror
than the bombings that it provoked.
In other words, what is it about bombs that makes their use by underground
groups a crime more heinous in the eyes of the State than the use of
swords, petrol cans, LPG cylinders and other low-tech instruments of brutal
murder and mayhem by organised mobs of rioters who swear by Hindutva and
are egged on by leaders from the bully pulpit? Why are “terrorists” of the
first kind hounded by agencies of the State, caught, tortured and killed in
cold blood in extrajudicial encounters or by hanging, while the second kind
— the merchants of mayhem — end up in positions of authority and are
honoured with State funerals after they die?
One example of this anti-minority orientation of the Indian State are the
double standards applied to Yakub and the other accused in the Bombay
blasts case, on the one hand, and the late Bal Thackeray and his Shiv
Sainiks who were indicted by the Justice BN Srikrishna Commission for
orchestrating the anti-Muslim violence that preceded the bombings, on the
other. Yakub’s hanging juxtaposed with the State funeral by the erstwhile
Congress-led UPA government for the Shiv Sena supremo is a powerful emblem
of this discriminatory and prejudiced understanding that seriously
impairs India’s fight against terror. [. . .]
Full Text: http://www.tehelka.com/2015/
July 24, 2014
India: How Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena changed Mumbai forever
BOOK EXCERPT
How Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena changed Mumbai forever
In this moving extract from Samrat, the author describes the emotional toll that the nativist party's violence takes on both the perpetrators and their victims.
Sujata Anandan
http://scroll.in/article/671332/How-Bal-Thackeray-and-his-Shiv-Sena-changed-Mumbai-forever
I met Manoj Surve (name changed) in the mid-1990s soon after the Shiv Sena–BJP government came to power and he began to frequent the Mantralaya in search of rewards for having participated in the riots of 1992-93. He had been part of a lynch mob that murdered an elderly Muslim during the conflagration.
Surve hailed from Goregaon, a suburb close to Jogeshwari, where the worst kind of killings had taken place at the Radhabai chawl during the second spell of violence in January 1993. He belonged to a family that had grown up worshipping Bal Thackeray: the Sena chief’s every word was treated as gospel truth, his every wish a command.
Saamna was the staple read in the family though they never had the good fortune to meet Thackeray in person. When they read the paper each morning and digested Thackeray’s incendiary articles, they were convinced that Muslims in the city had grown too arrogant by far and deserved all that was coming to them.
In his younger days, Surve used to be sent by his mother to the baker’s stall down the street every morning for pau (bread) and eggs. Some evenings, when families in the building had substantial orders, the man Surve called ‘chacha’ would come around, riding his bicycle with his box of kharas (fluffy crackers), buns, biscuits and other goodies to deliver at their doorsteps.
Chacha, who was a permanent fixture in Surve’s life, felt so safe among his regular customers that he decided to deliver supplies to their homes even during the riots, knowing that shops were shut and his regular customers might have to go without bread or milk for days on end. It is a testimony to the level of indoctrination among children belonging to Maharashtrian families supporting the Shiv Sena at the time that Surve soon found himself in a gang of youngsters actively rioting on the streets.
When Chacha, whom they had all known since their childhood, came around to deliver eggs and pau to their homes, they knocked him off his bicycle and set him on fire. Surve was on the fringes of that crowd but he did little to save the harmless old man, who had done nothing but good to them over the years.
Five years later, Surve was still unable to get over the fact that he had never seen a human being burn before that incident. He had not been able to sleep ever since, he said. But when the Shiv Sena came to power in alliance with the BJP three years later in 1995, hope rose in Surve’s heart along with that of other boys. They believed it was they who had brought about the Sena’s ascension to power by frightening Muslims into not voting for the Congress and they were sure their party, now in power, would duly recognise their contribution to that victory.
But though Surve and his friends had been doing the rounds of Mantralaya for weeks, they did not get even a look-in at Chief Minister Manohar Joshi’s office. Every time they tried to approach the chief minister, he would pack them off to Matoshree for a letter from Bal Thackeray. "I will not act upon any request until I have sanction from my leader to do so," he would say.
Matoshree, however, was almost like a fortress and more out of reach than even Mantralaya. No one there recognised Surve or his friends; they were sent to the localshakha pramukh, or branch head, for a recommendation, but the local leader neither knew them nor had the time for any of the boys who thought they had made a major contribution to the Sena’s fortunes by acting on Thackeray’s directives.
Surve noticed that I was frequenting Matoshree those days for a series of interviews with the Sena leader and got into a conversation with me. After a little prodding and probing, he spilled out his story and then said: "Madam, you seem to have pretty easy access to Balasaheb. Next time you are at Matoshree, will you do me a favour?" I was startled.
"What can I possibly do?" I asked. "The mext time you see him, will you please give him my name and tell him that I asked if it was all worth it." "What do you mean?" I asked, even more flummoxed by now. "Will you please ask him if it was worth killing all those innocent people? What had the pauwala chacha done to me or my family except supply us with bread and eggs ever since I was a child? He was trying to make it easy for us even during the riots. Did he have to be killed only because he was a Muslim? I do not sleep easy at nights. Does Balasaheb?"
I could never have put that question to Bal Thackeray and said as much. "You come along with me the next time I have been given time for an interview. Ask him yourself." Surve was not amused. As far as I know, he never met Thackeray and stopped haunting the corridors of Mantralaya soon after that request. I lost touch with him over the years but before that, he did tell me that he had worked out his own means of assuaging his conscience and redeeming his soul.
Full of regret at not even having had the courage to testify against those he saw physically attacking the unfortunate baker and burning him alive, he launched a personal hunt for the man’s family who had vanished for a time from the vicinity. When they did return after the riots to salvage whatever they could from their home, which had been thoroughly looted and destroyed, Surve approached the local shakha pramukhfor help in starting a roadside grocery stall of his own.
He then set up the teenage son of the man he had seen killed by fellow Shiv Sainiks in that stall and planted a huge flagstaff beside the stall with a Sena standard flying from the top. A blackboard was put up just outside, listing the ‘swastha’ (fair or cheap) prices of goods available at the stall and the blackboard carried his own name as owner and proprietor.
"But this business is all yours. You can sell your bread and eggs, milk and biscuits from here. You do not need to pay me any rent. If anyone asks, tell him you are just an employee. But the shop and the profits from it belong to you. I do not want a single paisa from it." It was his way of making peace with God – and humanity.
Mansoor Ali Khan, though, was not as lucky as the family of Surve’s victim. Or perhaps he and his family were luckier, for they escaped with their lives even if they lost all their property to loot and arson indulged in by their own friends in the comparatively upmarket area of Tardeo, where they were living at the time of the riots.
Mansoor’s family ran a hardware store a few yards from their home and Mansoor was at the time a student at a prestigious college in Churchgate. He was also the captain of his cricket team – the only Muslim in the team – many of whom were ardent fans of Bal Thackeray. They played against other clubs – the Shiv Sena, in fact, had a large following among the youth of Bombay through its sponsorship of these clubs.
Before these boys began to miss cricket practice for the maha-aartis at nearby temples (the Sena had evolved this ritual between the two spells of riots as a means of countering the Friday namaz by Muslims), Mansoor, whose family had been living in a mixed society for years without any trouble, had no idea what a slender thread his friendships with the other boys hung from.
Not all the boys were wholly brainwashed by the maha-aartis and one member of his cricket team warned Mansoor that his family had been identified and would soon be targeted. "You must leave. Tonight. I’ll hold the attackers back for a few hours. But if you are still there tomorrow morning, I won’t be able to do anything. They will kill me if they ever suspect I was trying to save your lives," his saviour told Mansoor.
"We left past midnight, leaving most of our possessions behind," says Mansoor, sitting in his living room in his new home off Duncan Road, which is exclusively a Muslim residential area, where he and his family now feel safe and protected. His mother, Nanni Begum, though, still remembers all that they lost during the riots: "I had collected the trousseaus of my daughters stitch by stitch over the years. They were all stored in boxes which we could not carry without being noticed. Each one of my daughters was of marriageable age at the time. Only I know how I put those trousseaus back together again. They looted everything before burning down the house. I was never able to recover anything – not even a pillow. We have not been compensated for anything as yet."
Mansoor is still in a state of shock at the betrayal by his friends. "We had grown up together; we went to the same schools and college. We played cricket together. But when it came to 1993, all boiled down to religion. They were Hindus and I was Muslim. Friendship was of no consequence."
He has never seen those friends-turned-foes again and has not even dared seek a meeting with the sole friend who tipped him off about the planned attack, lest he be identified as a traitor. But Mansoor thanks him at least five times a day for saving his and his family’s lives with that timely warning.
Like many other victims of the riots, he, too, appeared before the Srikrishna Commission with his story, but the family has received little for what they lost during the riots. "I grew up almost overnight. I was just a regular college guy with the usual dreams in 1992, when they brought down the mosque in Ayodhya. I had to give up everything, including my education. I had wanted to be a pilot in the Indian Air Force. I am not even a graduate today. My sisters have been settled. My brothers went to the Gulf to find work. But life has never been the same for me again."
Mansoor’s friendships are now among only those of his kind. Trust will not be easy to regain but his home is warm and welcoming so long as people come bearing goodwill and friendship. The family both thanks their luck and curses their bad fortune every day.
(This is an excerpt from chapter 16, 'Reaping the Whirlwind', from Samrat, by Sujata Anandan, published by HarperCollins India and released earlier this month.)
November 25, 2013
Downing shutters on the fear factory - Dismantling Bal Thackeray’s legacy | Ruchir Joshi
Mail Today, 25 November 2012
Downing shutters on the fear factory
by Ruchir Joshi
Dismantling Bal Thackeray’s legacy of fear will require concerted effort
A LOT OF TV and print reportage and commentary were generated last week. Despite the risk of repeating some of what others have said it might be useful to make a precis of, say, the five chief things we learned last week.
1. It’s possible to make a life- long career out of creating fear. Fear is a kind of wealth you gather to yourself, the more you have, the more you make, both for yourself and for others.
As with making money, you start small and show a profit. Then you find investors. Then you dump most of your initial investors and find new ones with more money to invest in your business ( some of the earlier investors can maintain secret shares, however, and will never help anyone foreclose on your business). As you grow you, naturally, need to diversify and expand your operations, reinvent your brand while mantaining the initial ‘ logo recognition’.
Double- edged
You start by shouting to create fear and the anger that comes from fear.
If you shout loud enough, you can scare a lot of people and make them angry that they’re scared. They will then join you in scaring other people, in the hope the fear will leave your group and pass on to the others, a bit like the domino of loss in capitalism; as the Gujjus say, ‘ anhi topi anhey maathey, chello rahyo ughade maathey’ or ‘ his hat on that guy’s head, that guy’s hat on some other head, the last one end up bareheaded’. If you add a bit of muscle to the shouting, the odd killing and beating up, then you can really scare a lot of people. This will then give you more muscle to increase your power and more support from all sorts of quarters who think they can use you. You may be able to turn the tables and use these people instead, or get into a cat’s cradle of mutual usage and blackmail that lasts throughout your life.
The difference is, money can sometimes be used to make life better for yourself and others, through say education, health systems, infrastructures of various kinds etc. You can amass huge wealth for yourself and some of it may still fall off your table into the hands of others, even if you don’t intend that to happen.
But with the amassing, stocking and investment of fear the only power that will increase is the power to scare more people and to keep them scared longer. You will not cure any disease or eradicate illiteracy with fear. When you die, your only legacy will be fear. The only lesson your followers will have learnt from you is how to create, spread and maintain fear. And, once that fear dissipates, as it will, or once it moves on lock, stock and barrel to other locations, as it does, the only trace left of you will be the memory of the misery you brought to people’s lives.
2. It’s not always a bad thing when evil, powerful people die natural deaths. I remember writing a column when George W. Bush was in power where I said I hoped to god no one managed to assassinate him, because that would turn him into a martyr instead of the cruel and bigoted idiot he was. Thank god Bal Thackeray’s exit was natural and didn’t lead to the deaths of innocent others. Did Bal T get away with it, with setting up this huge industry of fear? Did he escape punishment for all his deeds? In some ways, yes, undeniably he did. But the dreadful beauty of the double- edged sword he forged is this: one can be pretty sure that at the end of his life, in his own megalomaniac view, he had failed to get what he wanted, and he was too intelligent not to realise that after him would probably begin the diminishing and dismantling of his Shiv Sena. The game was up for him a few years ago and his remaining time was spent in bluster, trying to shore up a failing concern.
3. We should not trust our media and certainly not our celebrities or top tycoons. As the praise poured in for this magnate of fear, you had to choke back the disgust. All sorts of high and mighty people had to be ‘ balanced’ about this man. ‘ Whatever, but he developed pride’. ( He didn’t, he spent four decades creating shame for Bombay and India).
‘ Neverthless, he was a worthy adversary’. ( Well, not for the people he maimed.) ‘ I don’t know about others, but he was personally kind to me’ ( while unkindly crippling a great cosmopolis and turning it into a dread- driven small town). ‘ He was witty.’ ( Not very funny, by the examples given).
A lot of this praise and sorrow were clearly driven by two or three kinds of fear. One: ‘ if I don’t praise him, his people can still create trouble’. Two: ‘ if I join in the chorus of sorrow maybe people won’t single me out from all of us who used him to destroy the city’s unions and the workers’ lives’. Three: ‘ his party still comands enough people that we can’t afford to lose on our TRPs’. As a result, too few people actually said what so many felt.
Boundaries
4. India is not a country where democracy and free speech flourish.
There are small pockets of democracy and some scrubs where free speech manage to survive in a vast desert of terrified silence. The more urban you are, the more connected to English and to the world outside, the better your chances of accessing and disseminating free speech. If you live in one of India’s constricted mini- worlds so heavily circumscribed by class and social geography, your chances of being able to speak out and survive unscathed are close to zero. Even if you’re Englishspeaking and live in an urban area, you are at risk unless you are wellconnected.
Thackeritis is as alive and well in south Calcutta as it is in the suburbs of Bombay: say something critical of the powers that be and they’ll get you; right after the police arrest you, the mobs will smash up your house.
Dare
5. To ensure free speech and other freedoms, we have to start prosecuting the low- level policemen who carry out the illegal instructions of low or high level politicians and business forces. We have to challenge them with civil suits, PILs and whatever other legal means at our disposal. There is no magic wand, it’s going to be a hard grind, but what this will eventually lead to is a ‘ push- up effect’ where the top cops, faced with the deep and widespread discomfort of their subordinates will be obliged to protect their own.
It’s only the self- interest of the police that will make them learn to resect the oath they take to the constitution and law and order when they pass out of the police academies.
‘ Sorry sir, you can transfer me, but it’s more than my job’s worth for me to ask the thana officer to carry out this illegal arrest. No can do, sorry.’ Yes, it’s a fantasy, but a good one. In the face of the thugdriven nightmare that’s still alive, let’s give bhay- samrat Bal Thackeray a proper send- off by daring to dream of and make true a reality that would have terrified him.
The writer authored The Last Jet- Engine Laugh
Downing shutters on the fear factory
by Ruchir Joshi
Dismantling Bal Thackeray’s legacy of fear will require concerted effort
A LOT OF TV and print reportage and commentary were generated last week. Despite the risk of repeating some of what others have said it might be useful to make a precis of, say, the five chief things we learned last week.
1. It’s possible to make a life- long career out of creating fear. Fear is a kind of wealth you gather to yourself, the more you have, the more you make, both for yourself and for others.
As with making money, you start small and show a profit. Then you find investors. Then you dump most of your initial investors and find new ones with more money to invest in your business ( some of the earlier investors can maintain secret shares, however, and will never help anyone foreclose on your business). As you grow you, naturally, need to diversify and expand your operations, reinvent your brand while mantaining the initial ‘ logo recognition’.
Double- edged
You start by shouting to create fear and the anger that comes from fear.
If you shout loud enough, you can scare a lot of people and make them angry that they’re scared. They will then join you in scaring other people, in the hope the fear will leave your group and pass on to the others, a bit like the domino of loss in capitalism; as the Gujjus say, ‘ anhi topi anhey maathey, chello rahyo ughade maathey’ or ‘ his hat on that guy’s head, that guy’s hat on some other head, the last one end up bareheaded’. If you add a bit of muscle to the shouting, the odd killing and beating up, then you can really scare a lot of people. This will then give you more muscle to increase your power and more support from all sorts of quarters who think they can use you. You may be able to turn the tables and use these people instead, or get into a cat’s cradle of mutual usage and blackmail that lasts throughout your life.
The difference is, money can sometimes be used to make life better for yourself and others, through say education, health systems, infrastructures of various kinds etc. You can amass huge wealth for yourself and some of it may still fall off your table into the hands of others, even if you don’t intend that to happen.
But with the amassing, stocking and investment of fear the only power that will increase is the power to scare more people and to keep them scared longer. You will not cure any disease or eradicate illiteracy with fear. When you die, your only legacy will be fear. The only lesson your followers will have learnt from you is how to create, spread and maintain fear. And, once that fear dissipates, as it will, or once it moves on lock, stock and barrel to other locations, as it does, the only trace left of you will be the memory of the misery you brought to people’s lives.
2. It’s not always a bad thing when evil, powerful people die natural deaths. I remember writing a column when George W. Bush was in power where I said I hoped to god no one managed to assassinate him, because that would turn him into a martyr instead of the cruel and bigoted idiot he was. Thank god Bal Thackeray’s exit was natural and didn’t lead to the deaths of innocent others. Did Bal T get away with it, with setting up this huge industry of fear? Did he escape punishment for all his deeds? In some ways, yes, undeniably he did. But the dreadful beauty of the double- edged sword he forged is this: one can be pretty sure that at the end of his life, in his own megalomaniac view, he had failed to get what he wanted, and he was too intelligent not to realise that after him would probably begin the diminishing and dismantling of his Shiv Sena. The game was up for him a few years ago and his remaining time was spent in bluster, trying to shore up a failing concern.
3. We should not trust our media and certainly not our celebrities or top tycoons. As the praise poured in for this magnate of fear, you had to choke back the disgust. All sorts of high and mighty people had to be ‘ balanced’ about this man. ‘ Whatever, but he developed pride’. ( He didn’t, he spent four decades creating shame for Bombay and India).
‘ Neverthless, he was a worthy adversary’. ( Well, not for the people he maimed.) ‘ I don’t know about others, but he was personally kind to me’ ( while unkindly crippling a great cosmopolis and turning it into a dread- driven small town). ‘ He was witty.’ ( Not very funny, by the examples given).
A lot of this praise and sorrow were clearly driven by two or three kinds of fear. One: ‘ if I don’t praise him, his people can still create trouble’. Two: ‘ if I join in the chorus of sorrow maybe people won’t single me out from all of us who used him to destroy the city’s unions and the workers’ lives’. Three: ‘ his party still comands enough people that we can’t afford to lose on our TRPs’. As a result, too few people actually said what so many felt.
Boundaries
4. India is not a country where democracy and free speech flourish.
There are small pockets of democracy and some scrubs where free speech manage to survive in a vast desert of terrified silence. The more urban you are, the more connected to English and to the world outside, the better your chances of accessing and disseminating free speech. If you live in one of India’s constricted mini- worlds so heavily circumscribed by class and social geography, your chances of being able to speak out and survive unscathed are close to zero. Even if you’re Englishspeaking and live in an urban area, you are at risk unless you are wellconnected.
Thackeritis is as alive and well in south Calcutta as it is in the suburbs of Bombay: say something critical of the powers that be and they’ll get you; right after the police arrest you, the mobs will smash up your house.
Dare
5. To ensure free speech and other freedoms, we have to start prosecuting the low- level policemen who carry out the illegal instructions of low or high level politicians and business forces. We have to challenge them with civil suits, PILs and whatever other legal means at our disposal. There is no magic wand, it’s going to be a hard grind, but what this will eventually lead to is a ‘ push- up effect’ where the top cops, faced with the deep and widespread discomfort of their subordinates will be obliged to protect their own.
It’s only the self- interest of the police that will make them learn to resect the oath they take to the constitution and law and order when they pass out of the police academies.
‘ Sorry sir, you can transfer me, but it’s more than my job’s worth for me to ask the thana officer to carry out this illegal arrest. No can do, sorry.’ Yes, it’s a fantasy, but a good one. In the face of the thugdriven nightmare that’s still alive, let’s give bhay- samrat Bal Thackeray a proper send- off by daring to dream of and make true a reality that would have terrified him.
The writer authored The Last Jet- Engine Laugh
March 07, 2013
India: tax payers money to fund a ten million rupees memorial to Bal Thackeray - a leader of far right
Indian Express
Rs 1-cr Bal Thackeray memorial plan draws flak
Sharvari Patwa : Thu Mar 07 2013, 11:42 hrs
A Rs 1-crore proposal to construct an international-level memorial for the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray using public funds has drawn criticism of corporators from other political parties.
BMC's Budget for 2013-14 presented on February 4 did not earmark funds for the memorial. Following fresh recommendations by the civic body's standing committee after the budget discussion, changes entailing an additional expenditure of Rs 215 crore were incorporated. One of the 13 items in the new proposal relates to the allocation of Rs 1 crore for the memorial.
The standing committee has 27 members and is chaired by Shiv Sena's Rahul Shewale. The changes were later approved by the Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte.
"This money can be put to better use. There is a lack of even basic civic amenities due to fund crunch. While the Shiv Sena-led BMC has approved such a fund allocation, even the Congress is patronising the issue a memorial for Bal Thackeray," said Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party corporator and standing committee member. "The proposal was in fine print along with other amendments announced by the committee chairman. Most members were not paying attention and did not get an opportunity to object," he added.
"BMC should concentrate on allocating funds for basic civic amenities. Instead, they are trying to win votes by constructing memorials. Ideally, a political party is free to construct memorial for its leaders, but it should not do so at the cost of the public exchequer," said Mohsin Haider, Congress corporator and Improvement Committee member.
A civic official said unlike other proposals that are tabled in the standing committee with details sent earlier to all members, the new additions to BMC Budget were not sent to anyone. "Typically, we get time to study and prepare arguments in case we do not agree to a proposal. In this case, we were not given prior notice," said Shaikh.
Fund allocations added almost a month after the main budget presentation may mean cutting back on other expenses, said a civic official. The road budget and Development Planning (DP) funds have been reduced by Rs 215 crore to make provision for the new allocations.
"As the budget has to be balanced, funds under some projects have been cut back to make space for the new additions. Although the standing committee has the power to amend the budget, it will ultimately have to be passed by corporators in the general body meeting," said Rajiv Jalota, Additional Municipal Commissioner.
Shewale said, "Much of the city's development has been taken up following the vision of Balasaheb Thackeray. He has given a lot to the city and its people and the memorial is an apt way to pay homage to him."
source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rs-1cr-bal-thackeray-memorial-plan-draws-flak/1084206/0
Rs 1-cr Bal Thackeray memorial plan draws flak
Sharvari Patwa : Thu Mar 07 2013, 11:42 hrs
A Rs 1-crore proposal to construct an international-level memorial for the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray using public funds has drawn criticism of corporators from other political parties.
BMC's Budget for 2013-14 presented on February 4 did not earmark funds for the memorial. Following fresh recommendations by the civic body's standing committee after the budget discussion, changes entailing an additional expenditure of Rs 215 crore were incorporated. One of the 13 items in the new proposal relates to the allocation of Rs 1 crore for the memorial.
The standing committee has 27 members and is chaired by Shiv Sena's Rahul Shewale. The changes were later approved by the Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte.
"This money can be put to better use. There is a lack of even basic civic amenities due to fund crunch. While the Shiv Sena-led BMC has approved such a fund allocation, even the Congress is patronising the issue a memorial for Bal Thackeray," said Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party corporator and standing committee member. "The proposal was in fine print along with other amendments announced by the committee chairman. Most members were not paying attention and did not get an opportunity to object," he added.
"BMC should concentrate on allocating funds for basic civic amenities. Instead, they are trying to win votes by constructing memorials. Ideally, a political party is free to construct memorial for its leaders, but it should not do so at the cost of the public exchequer," said Mohsin Haider, Congress corporator and Improvement Committee member.
A civic official said unlike other proposals that are tabled in the standing committee with details sent earlier to all members, the new additions to BMC Budget were not sent to anyone. "Typically, we get time to study and prepare arguments in case we do not agree to a proposal. In this case, we were not given prior notice," said Shaikh.
Fund allocations added almost a month after the main budget presentation may mean cutting back on other expenses, said a civic official. The road budget and Development Planning (DP) funds have been reduced by Rs 215 crore to make provision for the new allocations.
"As the budget has to be balanced, funds under some projects have been cut back to make space for the new additions. Although the standing committee has the power to amend the budget, it will ultimately have to be passed by corporators in the general body meeting," said Rajiv Jalota, Additional Municipal Commissioner.
Shewale said, "Much of the city's development has been taken up following the vision of Balasaheb Thackeray. He has given a lot to the city and its people and the memorial is an apt way to pay homage to him."
source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rs-1cr-bal-thackeray-memorial-plan-draws-flak/1084206/0
February 01, 2013
Jyoti Punwani: Indefensible, any which way
The Hindu - 31 January 2013
A new martyr has arisen on the horizon, going by the unlikely name of Owaisi. Intellectuals of all shades — except the Hindutva brand — are protesting the “victimization” of the Owaisi brothers as “Muslim leaders.” Their father, “Sultan” Salahuddin Owaisi, a veteran instigator of communal riots, must be chuckling in his grave, wherein he was interred with full State honours by the ruling Congress, just as another rabble-rouser was given a similar send-off recently.
The parallels between Bal Thackeray and the Owaisi brothers are many. Akbaruddin Owaisi’s speech has echoes of the Sena chief’s rants: the same denigration of the other community, the same call to arms cloaked in religious terminology, the same self-projection as the saviour of the community, even the same vulgarity. Charged Shiv Sainiks used to react in the same way as the all-male Muslim audience did at Nirmal.
But the differences are significant. Bal Thackeray insulted Muslims all the time; indeed, the word he used to refer to them was itself derogatory. But on record, Thackeray never insulted the Prophet. However, throughout his speech, Owaisi abuses Hindu deities and beliefs.
Second, while Thackeray targeted the ruling Congress in the State and Centre, Akbaruddin targets “Hindustan,” not once, but again and again. “Ai Hindustan,” he warns, don’t trifle with “us.” Does Akbaruddin Owaisi consider “us,” i.e., himself and his community, a part of Hindustan, you wonder. In keeping with this attitude is his threat that if driven away, he and his community would take with them all “their” treasures — the Taj Mahal and other Mughal monuments. What is all this if not spreading feelings of separateness from the country in a specific community? When Thackeray accused Muslims of disloyalty, we wanted him prosecuted under Sec 153 A — promoting enmity between communities. When Owaisi spreads feelings of hatred against the country among his community, what should he be charged with?
There is a third difference. Unlike Thackeray’s phoney cry of “Hindus in danger,” the litany of injustices against Muslims recited by Akbaruddin is all true. Which is why, had he berated the ruling party in the worst terms possible, it would have been perfectly understandable. But he wouldn’t have been an Owaisi had he done that. Listen to what his brother said opposing the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament in 2010. Were it passed, he threatened, “the Lok Sabha will turn into a Hindu Lok Sabha.” This outlook — of looking at all issues not only through the prism of a communal identity, but one which is distinct from the rest of India — permeates the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). Just a fortnight ago, addressing Muslim students, the party secretary termed the installation of Gandhiji’s statue in the Andhra Pradesh State Assembly as an attempt at “changing history” because the building was constructed by “Nizam Sarkar.”
Vendetta politics
Apart from the rich gains of communal politics, the Owaisis would rather target Hindus and Hindustan than the Congress because the mother of all secular parties has always patronised it, like it has the Shiv Sena. Its reluctance to prosecute the younger Owaisi for his speech was a reminder of its reluctance to prosecute any Thackeray. The arrest earlier this month of Asaduddin Owaisi, his elder brother, for an offence committed in 2005, was obviously a fallout of his withdrawal of support to the Congress in his State. When Maharashtra’s then Deputy Home Minister Chhagan Bhujbal arrested Bal Thackeray in 2001 for his writings during the 1992-93 riots, it was the Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alone that complained about an eight-year-old case being dug up. Some secular activists now crying foul over Asaduddin’s arrest had hailed Bhujbal then, even though Thackeray’s arrest was as much vendetta politics as this Owaisi arrest .
This 2005 case is not the only one in which the MIM MP has been charged under Sec 153 A. Between 2005 and 2008, four cases were registered against the MIM president not only for promoting enmity between Hindus and Muslims, but also for rioting with deadly weapons, deliberately insulting religious feelings, and defiling a place of worship with intent to insult a religion. In none of these did prosecution proceed, thanks to a benevolent Congress administration. This is the man the secular Congress allied with. This is the man a section of secular activists is out to defend.
Be it the Shiv Sena, Bhindranwale, or the Owaisis, the Congress has encouraged rabble-rousers of all communities, and acted against them only when forced to. The divisive poison spewed by all has been more or less of the same intensity, but Hindu demagogues have been protected oftener than their counterparts from other communities have. So, should the latter also be awarded the same impunity? The internet, that took Akbaruddin Owaisi’s utterances to the world, can be similarly used to book Raj Thackeray, Togadia and MP Adityanath. If police stations and courts are flooded with complaints, some action will have to be taken.
Let’s not forget that it was a magistrate relying on police records who convicted Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar, the first politician in Maharashtra to be convicted under Sec 153 A, 16 years after his offence.
(Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based journalist and writer).
A new martyr has arisen on the horizon, going by the unlikely name of Owaisi. Intellectuals of all shades — except the Hindutva brand — are protesting the “victimization” of the Owaisi brothers as “Muslim leaders.” Their father, “Sultan” Salahuddin Owaisi, a veteran instigator of communal riots, must be chuckling in his grave, wherein he was interred with full State honours by the ruling Congress, just as another rabble-rouser was given a similar send-off recently.
The parallels between Bal Thackeray and the Owaisi brothers are many. Akbaruddin Owaisi’s speech has echoes of the Sena chief’s rants: the same denigration of the other community, the same call to arms cloaked in religious terminology, the same self-projection as the saviour of the community, even the same vulgarity. Charged Shiv Sainiks used to react in the same way as the all-male Muslim audience did at Nirmal.
But the differences are significant. Bal Thackeray insulted Muslims all the time; indeed, the word he used to refer to them was itself derogatory. But on record, Thackeray never insulted the Prophet. However, throughout his speech, Owaisi abuses Hindu deities and beliefs.
Second, while Thackeray targeted the ruling Congress in the State and Centre, Akbaruddin targets “Hindustan,” not once, but again and again. “Ai Hindustan,” he warns, don’t trifle with “us.” Does Akbaruddin Owaisi consider “us,” i.e., himself and his community, a part of Hindustan, you wonder. In keeping with this attitude is his threat that if driven away, he and his community would take with them all “their” treasures — the Taj Mahal and other Mughal monuments. What is all this if not spreading feelings of separateness from the country in a specific community? When Thackeray accused Muslims of disloyalty, we wanted him prosecuted under Sec 153 A — promoting enmity between communities. When Owaisi spreads feelings of hatred against the country among his community, what should he be charged with?
There is a third difference. Unlike Thackeray’s phoney cry of “Hindus in danger,” the litany of injustices against Muslims recited by Akbaruddin is all true. Which is why, had he berated the ruling party in the worst terms possible, it would have been perfectly understandable. But he wouldn’t have been an Owaisi had he done that. Listen to what his brother said opposing the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament in 2010. Were it passed, he threatened, “the Lok Sabha will turn into a Hindu Lok Sabha.” This outlook — of looking at all issues not only through the prism of a communal identity, but one which is distinct from the rest of India — permeates the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). Just a fortnight ago, addressing Muslim students, the party secretary termed the installation of Gandhiji’s statue in the Andhra Pradesh State Assembly as an attempt at “changing history” because the building was constructed by “Nizam Sarkar.”
Vendetta politics
Apart from the rich gains of communal politics, the Owaisis would rather target Hindus and Hindustan than the Congress because the mother of all secular parties has always patronised it, like it has the Shiv Sena. Its reluctance to prosecute the younger Owaisi for his speech was a reminder of its reluctance to prosecute any Thackeray. The arrest earlier this month of Asaduddin Owaisi, his elder brother, for an offence committed in 2005, was obviously a fallout of his withdrawal of support to the Congress in his State. When Maharashtra’s then Deputy Home Minister Chhagan Bhujbal arrested Bal Thackeray in 2001 for his writings during the 1992-93 riots, it was the Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alone that complained about an eight-year-old case being dug up. Some secular activists now crying foul over Asaduddin’s arrest had hailed Bhujbal then, even though Thackeray’s arrest was as much vendetta politics as this Owaisi arrest .
This 2005 case is not the only one in which the MIM MP has been charged under Sec 153 A. Between 2005 and 2008, four cases were registered against the MIM president not only for promoting enmity between Hindus and Muslims, but also for rioting with deadly weapons, deliberately insulting religious feelings, and defiling a place of worship with intent to insult a religion. In none of these did prosecution proceed, thanks to a benevolent Congress administration. This is the man the secular Congress allied with. This is the man a section of secular activists is out to defend.
Be it the Shiv Sena, Bhindranwale, or the Owaisis, the Congress has encouraged rabble-rousers of all communities, and acted against them only when forced to. The divisive poison spewed by all has been more or less of the same intensity, but Hindu demagogues have been protected oftener than their counterparts from other communities have. So, should the latter also be awarded the same impunity? The internet, that took Akbaruddin Owaisi’s utterances to the world, can be similarly used to book Raj Thackeray, Togadia and MP Adityanath. If police stations and courts are flooded with complaints, some action will have to be taken.
Let’s not forget that it was a magistrate relying on police records who convicted Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar, the first politician in Maharashtra to be convicted under Sec 153 A, 16 years after his offence.
(Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based journalist and writer).
January 04, 2013
An antidote for pure poison - Editorial by The Hindu on Hate speech
The Hindu, January 4, 2013
An antidote for pure poison
Rival religious extremists survive by feeding off each other. In India, Hindutva and Islamist leaders and activists have often mobilised men and materials through inflammatory hate speeches. But by any yardstick, the recent rabble-rousing speech of Akbaruddin Owaisi, leader of the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, plumbs new depths. In substance, his speech was a clear attempt to promote enmity between Hindus and Muslims, and disrupt the fragile peace in tension-filled Hyderabad to the political benefit of himself and his party. Now that the courts have directed the police to register a criminal case, the judiciary will have the final word on the legality of his vicious remarks. One thing is certain, however. Civil society needs to make it clear that those who incite hatred and violence against people on the basis of their religion or any other identity ought to be punished one way or another. If the police or courts won’t prosecute, convict and send them to jail, such would-be ‘leaders’ must be boycotted socially and politically.
In his rant, Mr. Owaisi used a clever trick: he first attacked the Hindutva outfits and leaders for their actions, and then proceeded to equate all Hindus with these extremist elements. This was akin to the Hindutva extremist line of holding the whole Muslim community responsible for Islamist terror. The threat of physical violence implicit in his speech attracts Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code. To the discredit of the MIM, other leaders, most notably the party’s Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi, Akbaruddin’s elder brother, have not uttered a word of reproach against this hate speech. However, Mr. Owaisi is not the first person to thumb his nose at the laws of the land through hate-filled, incendiary utterances. VHP leader Praveen Togadia, the late Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, and BJP leader Varun Gandhi are prominent among the many in the Hindutva parivar to have made hate speeches. Of these, the case against Mr. Gandhi is proceeding slowly; otherwise, as in Hyderabad, where the police acted only after the courts received private complaints, the law enforcing authorities prefer not to touch these extremists citing, as an excuse, the threat that their organisations will unleash violence in the event of an arrest. In effect, the law in India is often reduced to a political tool that is applied selectively. Police inaction in previous cases is, however, no reason to be lenient in the present instance. Mr. Owaisi has crossed the line with the pure poison he served up. India, Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad cannot afford a spiral of incitements to violence. He must be made an example of.
An antidote for pure poison
Rival religious extremists survive by feeding off each other. In India, Hindutva and Islamist leaders and activists have often mobilised men and materials through inflammatory hate speeches. But by any yardstick, the recent rabble-rousing speech of Akbaruddin Owaisi, leader of the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, plumbs new depths. In substance, his speech was a clear attempt to promote enmity between Hindus and Muslims, and disrupt the fragile peace in tension-filled Hyderabad to the political benefit of himself and his party. Now that the courts have directed the police to register a criminal case, the judiciary will have the final word on the legality of his vicious remarks. One thing is certain, however. Civil society needs to make it clear that those who incite hatred and violence against people on the basis of their religion or any other identity ought to be punished one way or another. If the police or courts won’t prosecute, convict and send them to jail, such would-be ‘leaders’ must be boycotted socially and politically.
In his rant, Mr. Owaisi used a clever trick: he first attacked the Hindutva outfits and leaders for their actions, and then proceeded to equate all Hindus with these extremist elements. This was akin to the Hindutva extremist line of holding the whole Muslim community responsible for Islamist terror. The threat of physical violence implicit in his speech attracts Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code. To the discredit of the MIM, other leaders, most notably the party’s Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi, Akbaruddin’s elder brother, have not uttered a word of reproach against this hate speech. However, Mr. Owaisi is not the first person to thumb his nose at the laws of the land through hate-filled, incendiary utterances. VHP leader Praveen Togadia, the late Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, and BJP leader Varun Gandhi are prominent among the many in the Hindutva parivar to have made hate speeches. Of these, the case against Mr. Gandhi is proceeding slowly; otherwise, as in Hyderabad, where the police acted only after the courts received private complaints, the law enforcing authorities prefer not to touch these extremists citing, as an excuse, the threat that their organisations will unleash violence in the event of an arrest. In effect, the law in India is often reduced to a political tool that is applied selectively. Police inaction in previous cases is, however, no reason to be lenient in the present instance. Mr. Owaisi has crossed the line with the pure poison he served up. India, Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad cannot afford a spiral of incitements to violence. He must be made an example of.
November 21, 2012
Ek Tha Tiger: Death and Bal Keshav Thackeray
From: Outlook, 20 November2012
by Shuddhabrata Sengupta
We have reasons to be grateful that Bal. K. Thackeray has died, a normal, natural death. Several of those whom he admired, didn’t. Adolf Hitler, the fellow ‘artist’ he often invoked, killed himself, his mistress and his dog. Indira Gandhi, and her son Sanjay, the mother and son firm of despots that Bal Thackeray endorsed, didn’t go gently into the night either. Sanjay Gandhi, the ‘bold young man’ whom Thackeray recognized as a fellow spirit, came spiralling down in his own airplane, demonstrating that the indifferent sky does occasionally listen to the prayers of the earth to alleviate its burden. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv both fell to the forces that their own ruling dispensation had nurtured, Khalistani zealots and the LTTE. Bal Thackeray was lucky to have lived as long as he did, sipping his lukewarm beer, spitting out his bile. Very lucky. As for us, we are fortunate that Thackeray did not get to go down as a Maratha martyr, just as a lapsed cartoonist, a would-be caudillo and a has-been demagogue.
Had it been otherwise, had Thackeray been stopped mid-stride by a bomb or a bullet in much the same way as he had personally authorized the culling of many other lives, the city once known as Bombay would not have been the way it is today—relieved to be back on its feet, and reasonably at peace with itself. And no one on television, especially on Times Now, would have had the marvellous opportunity to sing paeans on the day of the state funeral (for someone, who, had he have made his career across the western border, they would not have hesitated to condemn as a ‘non-state actor’ of the script of state sponsored terror) to how ‘nice’, and disciplined, the Sainiks had been, generally speaking.
Arnab Goswami’s enthusiastic eulogies to Bal Thackeray the day before (segueing so perfectly to the really dignified muzak on the soundtrack) unfortunately left him with a slightly sore throat yesterday evening when he had to (rightly) take on Rahul Nervekar of the Shiv Sena on the unfortunate party-pooping embarrassment of the matter of two young women (a ‘Facebook poster’ and her friend, ‘the liker’) who had to be arrested and then let out on bail by the police force of Palghar in Thane, Maharashtra, for daring to suggest that “just due to one politician died a natural death, everybody goes bonkers…today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect”.
How terrible it must be to eulogize the master at one moment, and then upbraid the disciple the next, for following faithfully in the precepts laid down by the master. It is the flawless straddling and negotiation of profound existential dilemmas such as these that makes Arnab Goswami and people like him in our midst such intellectual giants.
As we know by now, the clinic of an uncle of one of the young women was vandalized and patients had to be evacuated to make way for the sadness of Shiv Sainiks. The two women have posted bail for fifteen thousand rupees each and as of now, they still have to report each Wednesday to the police station so that the Maharashtra Police can ‘investigate’ their conduct.
Otherwise, this was such a lovely funeral. As family oriented as a Yash Chopra farewell, with film stars in attendance and Lataji and Amitji and Sushmaji and Jijajis and Salijis and Netajis of various descriptions doing what they do best, offering 'bhavpoorn shraddhanjalis' (‘heartfelt homage’) at regular intervals.
I say ‘otherwise’, because November funerals have a way of going wrong. Horribly wrong. Those of us who have lived through the consequences of the repeated airing of the 'khoon ka badla khoon se lenge' (‘blood for blood’ ) slogans on television when Indira Gandhi’s bullet riddled body lay in state in Teen Murti Bhavan in Delhi on the 1st of November (a day after she had been shot) 1984 know to what extent grieving Gandhian congressmen could go to mourn their dear leader. A great tree fell, the ground shook, and a few thousand Sikhs were dispensed with in Delhi. Nothing really happened to the loyal riotous mourners, and the ruling party got the sympathy vote. Except for the fact that H.K.L. Bhagat, mourner-in-chief, and pogrom architect, apparently went mad in his declining years, and would be spotted stark naked, followed by his security detail, ranting to himself. The curse of some Trilokpuri widow might have found its mark. The curse of Naroda Patiya and Best Bakery might yet some day catch up with the man who said he had only followed his ‘marg-darshak’ Thackeray’s inspiring footsteps to get to where he is today. I sincerely hope so. I hope it delivers an appropriately naked and pathetic form of dementia when its time comes.
Imagine what price Bombay might have had to pay for the grief of angry Shiv Sainiks, had the inevitability of the demise of the Hindu Hruday Samrat / ‘Emperor of Hindu Hearts’ (Mark 1) not been as predictable, banal and medicated as it turned out to be in the end. Those who live by the sword, have a tendency to die by the sword. Thackeray lived by the sword, but thankfully, died on the ventilator.
Death and Bal Keshav Thackeray go back a long way. I doubt if any other Indian politician has the record of publicly handing out as many death threats as Bal Thackeray did in the course of his career. He made death threats in his speeches, interviews and his editorials. He called for war, for murder, for suicide squads, for retaliatory terrorism, for hanging, day in and day out, not covertly, but overtly. And there has been not a single instance when any of his exhortations to violence (judicial or extra-judicial) has ever had any legal consequences for him.
The first political assassination in Bombay, an event that changed the course of the city, was the targeted killing of the popular and militant Communist trade union activist and sitting MLA, Krishna Desai in June 1970 by the Shiv Sena. It was this killing, and the previous incidence of arson (1967) in which the Shiv Sena burned the CPI led office of the Girni Kamgar Union that acted as symbolic markers of the Congress patronized rise of the Shiv Sena in Bombay politics. At that time, the Shiv Sena, acted as the private militia of the Maharashtra Congress chieftains Vasantrao Naik and Vasantdada Patil, who were eager to please their clients—the respectable industrialists of Bombay who were getting increasingly impatient with a restive and resistant working class. So much so that the Shiv Sena earned for itself the ill deserved sobriquet of ‘Vasant Sena’ (which brings dishonour not to the Shiv Sena, but to the memory of Vasantasena, the elegant and large-hearted courtesan of Sudraka’s Sanskrit play Mricchakatikam). The Shiv Sena did in Bombay then what the bouncers and goons of Congress ruled Gurgaon and Manesar do in Haryana now. They kept the industrial peace for greedy and rapacious managements through a reign of terror.
In a public meeting at the Robert Money High School in 1970, soon after the killing of Krishna Desai, Bal Thackeray congratulated ‘his’ boys for the deed, and said that the event should be a warning to all ‘Lal Bhais’ (Reds) for what was to follow if Bombay did not yield to the supremacy of the Shiv Sena. [For details of this incident see the section titled 'Killing for a Cause : Shiv Sena's Striking Power on page 91 in Dipankar Gupta's 'Between Ethnicity and Communalism: The Significance of the Nation-State' in Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia edited by Ravinder Kaur, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005]. He then went on to campaign in the by-election that occurred due to Desai’s death against his widow, the CPI candidate. And the first Shiv Sainik MLA, Vamanrao Mahadik entered the Maharashtra assembly, over the dead body of Krishna Desai, courtesy Bal K. Thackeray.
Emboldened by the impunity he enjoyed in the wake of Krishna Desai’s killing, Thackeray embarked on a long career of calling for murder and deportation and enjoying the death or humiliation of others, be they Communists, Trade Union activists, Dalits, Muslims, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Kashmiris, North Indians (his previous ire against what he called yandu-gundu South Indians seemed to have mellowed over time, though the first riot that the Shiv Sena organized, against Kannadigas, in February 1969, did leave 59 people dead in its wake). He openly advocated terrorism when he called for ‘suicide squads’ to redeem Hindu honour, and exulted in the orgy of blood letting that took place in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
To be treated to pious eulogies and calls for decorum while dealing with the memory of the departed Thackeray on television is to understand that for our elites, one should not speak ill of the dead even when the person in question never played by that same rule. The famous Marathi pride that Bal Thackeray, according to our television pundits, was able to foster (his one ‘great’ contribution), seems to be nothing other than the egregious arrogance of the schoolyard bully, whose only way of bolstering his own self-esteem is to enjoy abusing others. Like every schoolyard bully, Thackeray was basically a coward, cowing to the greater might of Sanjay Gandhi and Adolf Hitler whenever inspired to do so and behaving with reasonableness, courtesy and good humour towards captains of industry and finance, whenever necessary. Having broken the back of working class militancy the city, not even once in his long career did Thackeray ever call out the Shiv Sena’s famous muscle power on to the streets for the rights of Mumbai’s poor and marginalized. It was always, always against the poor, against marginalized communities, against immigrants, against workers (the Shiv Sena did not, for instance, intimidate mill owners into submission during the textile strike, though ostensibly, they lent the workers their inconsistent and token support). Or, it was for some self-declared notion of what the dignity of being Marathi and/or Hindu meant.
The idea that Thackeray and his goons ruled Bombay because of fear is somewhat misplaced. Yes, the terror that they exercised on the ground did have its chilling effect, but more importantly, they were allowed, even encouraged to exercise that power by Bombay’s political, industrial and financial elite. They had no reason to fear Thackeray, because ultimately, the Shiv Sena and Thackeray always acted in their interest. In the end, he became one of them, but it is always important to remember that he began as their reliable enforcer, the bouncer at the door to their party. No government, Congress, NCP or otherwise, ever took him on, (despite for instance the findings of the Shri Krishna Commission on his incendiary role in the Mumbai Riots of 1992) not because they were afraid of him or his capacity to rule the streets (governments in India have acted with promptness on the streets whenever they have felt the need to, and with great lethality and disproportionate force—they faced a march of more than a million people in Srinagar in 1989 with bullets, leaving hundreds dead in what has become famous as the Gawakadal Massacre, they have bombed a city like Aizawl in 1966 into submission using air power, they commandeered entire divisions of the Army to move into the Golden Temple in Amritsar when they felt the need to). The truth is, they did not take Thackeray and the Shiv Sena on, even when they were a direct threat to urban peace, not because they could not, but because they did not want to. He was way too useful, handing out threats and thugging it out in Mumbai so that they and their order prevailed.
In a widely reported bouquet of fulsome eulogies, captains of industry, finance, film and public relations, paid their respects to Thackeray. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries said ‘our country has lost a great leader’. Deepak Parekh, chairman, HDFC Bank spoke of how his eloquence (read foul language) and his charisma (read bullying) made him a legend, because he was after all, a ‘pro-industry’ visionary. Rahul Bajaj, Chairman of Bajaj Auto tellingly recalled how despite ideological differences, he had good relations with him, especially as he had ‘helped in sorting out a workers-related issue in his manufacturing facility’. Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra and Mahindra tweeted about how the citizens of this state will ‘miss their champion’. Niranjan Hiranandani and Rahul Bajaj both spoke fondly of his ‘sense of humour’. Suhel Seth said that ‘whatever his politics…his nationalism and zeal could never be questioned.’
Bollywood film stars, the ornaments of the ruling class, were not far behind their masters. Amitabh Bacchan, offered his eulogy to a man who basically ran his relationship with the film industry in the form of an elaborate protection racket. Lata Mangeshkar said he made Mumbai great. Shahrukh Khan regretted not resolving his differences with him. Riteish Deshmukh called him a hero. Tweet after nauseating tweet spoke of the cosiness between filmdom and fascism.
All this, apparently, because he was, as several television commentators said, ‘a straightforward man, a man who spoke what he thought, did what he believed’. Since when was straightforwardness a virtue when it comes to the projection of evil?
In a television interview given to Rajeev Shukla, 16 years ago (re-run recently), at the height of his powers, Thackeray assents to the description ‘I am the Hitler’ of Maharashtra, rubbishes democracy, extols the virtues of dictatorship and says that if he were prime minister he would ‘saaf karo Kashmir’ (‘clean up Kashmir’) and wipe out every Bangladeshi from India. He is not drunk, he is not mentally unsound. He is in full control of everything he is saying and thinking, and I for one am very glad that his ambition to be the ‘Hitler’ of India did not come to fruition. The schoolyard bully never got to leave his corner of the pitch.
I believe the correct term for this sensibility is not straightforwardness but arrogance, born of a sense of impunity that comes to a man who knows that those who really rule let him rule. Behind every schoolyard bully, there are way bigger bullies, watching his back. The only difference between them and their front man is a degree of fake civility. Their language is smoother.
Much has been said about the 2.5 million who came out to pay him homage. Bombay/Mumbai has a population of something close to 12.5 million, and if approximately one sixth of that population is persuaded by the Shiv Sena to shed tears, it does not indicate to me an overwhelming surge of grief. Perhaps a large number of the 10 million, or five-sixths of the city, who chose not to come out on to the street were relieved that they would not have to wake up on some random morning to hear the latest fatwa from Matoshree? Perhaps, when some people invoke the Ek tha Tiger (‘Once there was a Tiger’) motif in response to Thackeray’s passing, parsing both the Shiv Sena’s mascot and Salman Khan’s recent hit in one swift move, it is not unreasonable to read a careful stress on the 'tha’—the ‘has been’ in their utterance. The passing of a predator can bring relief to the prey.
The death of tyrants (when they die in harness) is usually followed by carefully stage managed and orchestrated scenes of public displays of grief. The deaths of Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini and more recently of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung in North Korea were all occasions of great public demonstrations of sorrow. Pyongyang has a population of three million and approximately one and a half million (half the city) reportedly turned up to weep at the ‘dear leader’s’ funeral. Does that mean that North Korea’s ‘dear leader’ is even more dear (by ten and one-eighth times) to the people of Pyongyang than the Hindu Hruday Samrat is to the people of Mumbai. Whatever be the arithmetic, the YouTube uploads of Pyongyang citizens breaking down about the departure of their ‘dear leader’ evoke the same emotions in me as the ones I have experienced at the lachrymose excesses reported from Mumbai on our television screens.
I am not denying that an element of spontaneity may animate such occasions, but is that enough reason to consider the deceased and their actions above board, or the grief, to use an understatement, somewhat overblown? Or is it instead reason to give serious thought as to why and under what conditions can millions of people give their actual consent to their own dehumanization in the name of the fiction of an identity or the tang of mythical greatness or manifest destiny? I am not asking us to dismiss the emotions that were so visible in the farewell to Thackeray. I am asking us all to think very seriously about the nature of the profound emptiness in the lives of people that makes it possible for them to identify, almost filially, with a man who in his outspoken disdain for democratic values (despite how ‘directly he did or did not make eye contact with the masses’) in reality held ordinary people in the greatest contempt. The ‘Marathi Manoos’ he invoked had nothing of the extraordinary liberality, openness and free thinking spirit that marked Marathi culture’s tryst with modernity. Instead, it squandered the rich inheritance and greatness of Agarkar, Ranade, Phule, Ramabai, Ambedkar, the two Kosambis, Dalwai, Vijay Tendulkar and Pu. La. Deshpande into a meaningless posture of empty macho defiance at anything remotely resembling the life of the mind in its own environment. In retrospect, Bal Thackeray, by urging Marathi men (and it was largely men) to elbow their way into being the prize fighters in Mumbai’s gladiatorial circus on the basis of muscle power alone made sure that they effectively subverted Marathi culture’s capacity to respond with intelligence to a changing world. No one has done more to harm what it means to be Marathi in recent times. Marathi pride cannot come from Marathi signboards, statues, protection rackets in employment and cosmetic nomenclatural changes. It can only come from a healthy culture of debate and open ended thinking—something that Maharasthra once led this country in, and now, like Bengal, has now lost almost entirely, due to the politics of populism.
Yesterday evening, like many other people on Facebook, I re-posted what was apparently posted by one of the two young women of Palghar, Thane, and called for others to do so as well, out of solidarity. The status update (which is not exactly what the young woman Shaheen Dhada had written—see here for her precise words), simply said, “People like Bal Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that”. It went viral within moments. While I endorse the sentiment that underlies this statement I have to make my disagreement with at least one of its presumptions clear. Yes, people like Bal Thackeray die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that. But no, people like Bal Thackeray, are thankfully, not born daily. (And Shaheen Dhada, we must remember, does not say so either.)
I hope that no one like Bal Thackeray, or his favourite artist, Adolf Hitler, is ever born again.
Ek tha Tiger (Once there Was A Tiger) is way preferable to Lo, Ek Aur Tiger (Lo, Once Again a Tiger.).
--
First published on kafila.org
by Shuddhabrata Sengupta
We have reasons to be grateful that Bal. K. Thackeray has died, a normal, natural death. Several of those whom he admired, didn’t. Adolf Hitler, the fellow ‘artist’ he often invoked, killed himself, his mistress and his dog. Indira Gandhi, and her son Sanjay, the mother and son firm of despots that Bal Thackeray endorsed, didn’t go gently into the night either. Sanjay Gandhi, the ‘bold young man’ whom Thackeray recognized as a fellow spirit, came spiralling down in his own airplane, demonstrating that the indifferent sky does occasionally listen to the prayers of the earth to alleviate its burden. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv both fell to the forces that their own ruling dispensation had nurtured, Khalistani zealots and the LTTE. Bal Thackeray was lucky to have lived as long as he did, sipping his lukewarm beer, spitting out his bile. Very lucky. As for us, we are fortunate that Thackeray did not get to go down as a Maratha martyr, just as a lapsed cartoonist, a would-be caudillo and a has-been demagogue.
Had it been otherwise, had Thackeray been stopped mid-stride by a bomb or a bullet in much the same way as he had personally authorized the culling of many other lives, the city once known as Bombay would not have been the way it is today—relieved to be back on its feet, and reasonably at peace with itself. And no one on television, especially on Times Now, would have had the marvellous opportunity to sing paeans on the day of the state funeral (for someone, who, had he have made his career across the western border, they would not have hesitated to condemn as a ‘non-state actor’ of the script of state sponsored terror) to how ‘nice’, and disciplined, the Sainiks had been, generally speaking.
Arnab Goswami’s enthusiastic eulogies to Bal Thackeray the day before (segueing so perfectly to the really dignified muzak on the soundtrack) unfortunately left him with a slightly sore throat yesterday evening when he had to (rightly) take on Rahul Nervekar of the Shiv Sena on the unfortunate party-pooping embarrassment of the matter of two young women (a ‘Facebook poster’ and her friend, ‘the liker’) who had to be arrested and then let out on bail by the police force of Palghar in Thane, Maharashtra, for daring to suggest that “just due to one politician died a natural death, everybody goes bonkers…today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect”.
How terrible it must be to eulogize the master at one moment, and then upbraid the disciple the next, for following faithfully in the precepts laid down by the master. It is the flawless straddling and negotiation of profound existential dilemmas such as these that makes Arnab Goswami and people like him in our midst such intellectual giants.
As we know by now, the clinic of an uncle of one of the young women was vandalized and patients had to be evacuated to make way for the sadness of Shiv Sainiks. The two women have posted bail for fifteen thousand rupees each and as of now, they still have to report each Wednesday to the police station so that the Maharashtra Police can ‘investigate’ their conduct.
Otherwise, this was such a lovely funeral. As family oriented as a Yash Chopra farewell, with film stars in attendance and Lataji and Amitji and Sushmaji and Jijajis and Salijis and Netajis of various descriptions doing what they do best, offering 'bhavpoorn shraddhanjalis' (‘heartfelt homage’) at regular intervals.
I say ‘otherwise’, because November funerals have a way of going wrong. Horribly wrong. Those of us who have lived through the consequences of the repeated airing of the 'khoon ka badla khoon se lenge' (‘blood for blood’ ) slogans on television when Indira Gandhi’s bullet riddled body lay in state in Teen Murti Bhavan in Delhi on the 1st of November (a day after she had been shot) 1984 know to what extent grieving Gandhian congressmen could go to mourn their dear leader. A great tree fell, the ground shook, and a few thousand Sikhs were dispensed with in Delhi. Nothing really happened to the loyal riotous mourners, and the ruling party got the sympathy vote. Except for the fact that H.K.L. Bhagat, mourner-in-chief, and pogrom architect, apparently went mad in his declining years, and would be spotted stark naked, followed by his security detail, ranting to himself. The curse of some Trilokpuri widow might have found its mark. The curse of Naroda Patiya and Best Bakery might yet some day catch up with the man who said he had only followed his ‘marg-darshak’ Thackeray’s inspiring footsteps to get to where he is today. I sincerely hope so. I hope it delivers an appropriately naked and pathetic form of dementia when its time comes.
Imagine what price Bombay might have had to pay for the grief of angry Shiv Sainiks, had the inevitability of the demise of the Hindu Hruday Samrat / ‘Emperor of Hindu Hearts’ (Mark 1) not been as predictable, banal and medicated as it turned out to be in the end. Those who live by the sword, have a tendency to die by the sword. Thackeray lived by the sword, but thankfully, died on the ventilator.
Death and Bal Keshav Thackeray go back a long way. I doubt if any other Indian politician has the record of publicly handing out as many death threats as Bal Thackeray did in the course of his career. He made death threats in his speeches, interviews and his editorials. He called for war, for murder, for suicide squads, for retaliatory terrorism, for hanging, day in and day out, not covertly, but overtly. And there has been not a single instance when any of his exhortations to violence (judicial or extra-judicial) has ever had any legal consequences for him.
The first political assassination in Bombay, an event that changed the course of the city, was the targeted killing of the popular and militant Communist trade union activist and sitting MLA, Krishna Desai in June 1970 by the Shiv Sena. It was this killing, and the previous incidence of arson (1967) in which the Shiv Sena burned the CPI led office of the Girni Kamgar Union that acted as symbolic markers of the Congress patronized rise of the Shiv Sena in Bombay politics. At that time, the Shiv Sena, acted as the private militia of the Maharashtra Congress chieftains Vasantrao Naik and Vasantdada Patil, who were eager to please their clients—the respectable industrialists of Bombay who were getting increasingly impatient with a restive and resistant working class. So much so that the Shiv Sena earned for itself the ill deserved sobriquet of ‘Vasant Sena’ (which brings dishonour not to the Shiv Sena, but to the memory of Vasantasena, the elegant and large-hearted courtesan of Sudraka’s Sanskrit play Mricchakatikam). The Shiv Sena did in Bombay then what the bouncers and goons of Congress ruled Gurgaon and Manesar do in Haryana now. They kept the industrial peace for greedy and rapacious managements through a reign of terror.
In a public meeting at the Robert Money High School in 1970, soon after the killing of Krishna Desai, Bal Thackeray congratulated ‘his’ boys for the deed, and said that the event should be a warning to all ‘Lal Bhais’ (Reds) for what was to follow if Bombay did not yield to the supremacy of the Shiv Sena. [For details of this incident see the section titled 'Killing for a Cause : Shiv Sena's Striking Power on page 91 in Dipankar Gupta's 'Between Ethnicity and Communalism: The Significance of the Nation-State' in Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia edited by Ravinder Kaur, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005]. He then went on to campaign in the by-election that occurred due to Desai’s death against his widow, the CPI candidate. And the first Shiv Sainik MLA, Vamanrao Mahadik entered the Maharashtra assembly, over the dead body of Krishna Desai, courtesy Bal K. Thackeray.
Emboldened by the impunity he enjoyed in the wake of Krishna Desai’s killing, Thackeray embarked on a long career of calling for murder and deportation and enjoying the death or humiliation of others, be they Communists, Trade Union activists, Dalits, Muslims, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Kashmiris, North Indians (his previous ire against what he called yandu-gundu South Indians seemed to have mellowed over time, though the first riot that the Shiv Sena organized, against Kannadigas, in February 1969, did leave 59 people dead in its wake). He openly advocated terrorism when he called for ‘suicide squads’ to redeem Hindu honour, and exulted in the orgy of blood letting that took place in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
To be treated to pious eulogies and calls for decorum while dealing with the memory of the departed Thackeray on television is to understand that for our elites, one should not speak ill of the dead even when the person in question never played by that same rule. The famous Marathi pride that Bal Thackeray, according to our television pundits, was able to foster (his one ‘great’ contribution), seems to be nothing other than the egregious arrogance of the schoolyard bully, whose only way of bolstering his own self-esteem is to enjoy abusing others. Like every schoolyard bully, Thackeray was basically a coward, cowing to the greater might of Sanjay Gandhi and Adolf Hitler whenever inspired to do so and behaving with reasonableness, courtesy and good humour towards captains of industry and finance, whenever necessary. Having broken the back of working class militancy the city, not even once in his long career did Thackeray ever call out the Shiv Sena’s famous muscle power on to the streets for the rights of Mumbai’s poor and marginalized. It was always, always against the poor, against marginalized communities, against immigrants, against workers (the Shiv Sena did not, for instance, intimidate mill owners into submission during the textile strike, though ostensibly, they lent the workers their inconsistent and token support). Or, it was for some self-declared notion of what the dignity of being Marathi and/or Hindu meant.
The idea that Thackeray and his goons ruled Bombay because of fear is somewhat misplaced. Yes, the terror that they exercised on the ground did have its chilling effect, but more importantly, they were allowed, even encouraged to exercise that power by Bombay’s political, industrial and financial elite. They had no reason to fear Thackeray, because ultimately, the Shiv Sena and Thackeray always acted in their interest. In the end, he became one of them, but it is always important to remember that he began as their reliable enforcer, the bouncer at the door to their party. No government, Congress, NCP or otherwise, ever took him on, (despite for instance the findings of the Shri Krishna Commission on his incendiary role in the Mumbai Riots of 1992) not because they were afraid of him or his capacity to rule the streets (governments in India have acted with promptness on the streets whenever they have felt the need to, and with great lethality and disproportionate force—they faced a march of more than a million people in Srinagar in 1989 with bullets, leaving hundreds dead in what has become famous as the Gawakadal Massacre, they have bombed a city like Aizawl in 1966 into submission using air power, they commandeered entire divisions of the Army to move into the Golden Temple in Amritsar when they felt the need to). The truth is, they did not take Thackeray and the Shiv Sena on, even when they were a direct threat to urban peace, not because they could not, but because they did not want to. He was way too useful, handing out threats and thugging it out in Mumbai so that they and their order prevailed.
In a widely reported bouquet of fulsome eulogies, captains of industry, finance, film and public relations, paid their respects to Thackeray. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries said ‘our country has lost a great leader’. Deepak Parekh, chairman, HDFC Bank spoke of how his eloquence (read foul language) and his charisma (read bullying) made him a legend, because he was after all, a ‘pro-industry’ visionary. Rahul Bajaj, Chairman of Bajaj Auto tellingly recalled how despite ideological differences, he had good relations with him, especially as he had ‘helped in sorting out a workers-related issue in his manufacturing facility’. Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra and Mahindra tweeted about how the citizens of this state will ‘miss their champion’. Niranjan Hiranandani and Rahul Bajaj both spoke fondly of his ‘sense of humour’. Suhel Seth said that ‘whatever his politics…his nationalism and zeal could never be questioned.’
Bollywood film stars, the ornaments of the ruling class, were not far behind their masters. Amitabh Bacchan, offered his eulogy to a man who basically ran his relationship with the film industry in the form of an elaborate protection racket. Lata Mangeshkar said he made Mumbai great. Shahrukh Khan regretted not resolving his differences with him. Riteish Deshmukh called him a hero. Tweet after nauseating tweet spoke of the cosiness between filmdom and fascism.
All this, apparently, because he was, as several television commentators said, ‘a straightforward man, a man who spoke what he thought, did what he believed’. Since when was straightforwardness a virtue when it comes to the projection of evil?
In a television interview given to Rajeev Shukla, 16 years ago (re-run recently), at the height of his powers, Thackeray assents to the description ‘I am the Hitler’ of Maharashtra, rubbishes democracy, extols the virtues of dictatorship and says that if he were prime minister he would ‘saaf karo Kashmir’ (‘clean up Kashmir’) and wipe out every Bangladeshi from India. He is not drunk, he is not mentally unsound. He is in full control of everything he is saying and thinking, and I for one am very glad that his ambition to be the ‘Hitler’ of India did not come to fruition. The schoolyard bully never got to leave his corner of the pitch.
I believe the correct term for this sensibility is not straightforwardness but arrogance, born of a sense of impunity that comes to a man who knows that those who really rule let him rule. Behind every schoolyard bully, there are way bigger bullies, watching his back. The only difference between them and their front man is a degree of fake civility. Their language is smoother.
Much has been said about the 2.5 million who came out to pay him homage. Bombay/Mumbai has a population of something close to 12.5 million, and if approximately one sixth of that population is persuaded by the Shiv Sena to shed tears, it does not indicate to me an overwhelming surge of grief. Perhaps a large number of the 10 million, or five-sixths of the city, who chose not to come out on to the street were relieved that they would not have to wake up on some random morning to hear the latest fatwa from Matoshree? Perhaps, when some people invoke the Ek tha Tiger (‘Once there was a Tiger’) motif in response to Thackeray’s passing, parsing both the Shiv Sena’s mascot and Salman Khan’s recent hit in one swift move, it is not unreasonable to read a careful stress on the 'tha’—the ‘has been’ in their utterance. The passing of a predator can bring relief to the prey.
The death of tyrants (when they die in harness) is usually followed by carefully stage managed and orchestrated scenes of public displays of grief. The deaths of Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini and more recently of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung in North Korea were all occasions of great public demonstrations of sorrow. Pyongyang has a population of three million and approximately one and a half million (half the city) reportedly turned up to weep at the ‘dear leader’s’ funeral. Does that mean that North Korea’s ‘dear leader’ is even more dear (by ten and one-eighth times) to the people of Pyongyang than the Hindu Hruday Samrat is to the people of Mumbai. Whatever be the arithmetic, the YouTube uploads of Pyongyang citizens breaking down about the departure of their ‘dear leader’ evoke the same emotions in me as the ones I have experienced at the lachrymose excesses reported from Mumbai on our television screens.
I am not denying that an element of spontaneity may animate such occasions, but is that enough reason to consider the deceased and their actions above board, or the grief, to use an understatement, somewhat overblown? Or is it instead reason to give serious thought as to why and under what conditions can millions of people give their actual consent to their own dehumanization in the name of the fiction of an identity or the tang of mythical greatness or manifest destiny? I am not asking us to dismiss the emotions that were so visible in the farewell to Thackeray. I am asking us all to think very seriously about the nature of the profound emptiness in the lives of people that makes it possible for them to identify, almost filially, with a man who in his outspoken disdain for democratic values (despite how ‘directly he did or did not make eye contact with the masses’) in reality held ordinary people in the greatest contempt. The ‘Marathi Manoos’ he invoked had nothing of the extraordinary liberality, openness and free thinking spirit that marked Marathi culture’s tryst with modernity. Instead, it squandered the rich inheritance and greatness of Agarkar, Ranade, Phule, Ramabai, Ambedkar, the two Kosambis, Dalwai, Vijay Tendulkar and Pu. La. Deshpande into a meaningless posture of empty macho defiance at anything remotely resembling the life of the mind in its own environment. In retrospect, Bal Thackeray, by urging Marathi men (and it was largely men) to elbow their way into being the prize fighters in Mumbai’s gladiatorial circus on the basis of muscle power alone made sure that they effectively subverted Marathi culture’s capacity to respond with intelligence to a changing world. No one has done more to harm what it means to be Marathi in recent times. Marathi pride cannot come from Marathi signboards, statues, protection rackets in employment and cosmetic nomenclatural changes. It can only come from a healthy culture of debate and open ended thinking—something that Maharasthra once led this country in, and now, like Bengal, has now lost almost entirely, due to the politics of populism.
Yesterday evening, like many other people on Facebook, I re-posted what was apparently posted by one of the two young women of Palghar, Thane, and called for others to do so as well, out of solidarity. The status update (which is not exactly what the young woman Shaheen Dhada had written—see here for her precise words), simply said, “People like Bal Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that”. It went viral within moments. While I endorse the sentiment that underlies this statement I have to make my disagreement with at least one of its presumptions clear. Yes, people like Bal Thackeray die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that. But no, people like Bal Thackeray, are thankfully, not born daily. (And Shaheen Dhada, we must remember, does not say so either.)
I hope that no one like Bal Thackeray, or his favourite artist, Adolf Hitler, is ever born again.
Ek tha Tiger (Once there Was A Tiger) is way preferable to Lo, Ek Aur Tiger (Lo, Once Again a Tiger.).
--
First published on kafila.org
November 19, 2012
Kumar Ketkar on Bal Thackeray and possible decline of Shiv Sena after his passing
From: Tehelka, 17 November 2012
Bal Thackeray's hallmark was his spontaneity. He liked to make statements that shocked and made headlines
By Kumar Ketkar
[. . .]
The mid-sixties saw the rise of many local-regional leaders and political outfits. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK came to power, overthrowing the Congress for good. In Punjab, the Akali Dal entrenched itself. In West Bengal, the Communists began to have their sway. The Naxalite movement too came on the national scene in 1969-70. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Congress was routed in the 1967 elections and new opposition fronts were born.
Though the Shiv Sena could not become a regional party in the classical sense, its tiger roared just when this mood of rebellion and anarchy had begun to spread. Many a commentator saw in the rise of the Shiv Sena, a new militant Maharashtra.
Balasaheb's hallmark was spontaneity. He liked to make statements that shocked and made headlines. Though in private, he was a shy and even timid person, he quickly realised that it paid politically to remain in the news and controversies. His attacks on South Indian migrants — he called them "Madrasis" — led to attacks on Udupi restaurants and some middle-level clerks. Most stenographers then were Tamilians or Keralites. This narrow Marathi chauvinism instantly brought heavy criticism from the liberal and cosmopolitan classes and the English press. Balasaheb cunningly used that criticism as attacks on Marathi pride by the “Sethji” owned capitalist media.
Those brought up on leftist political slogans, during the movement for Maharashtra, could easily accept that line. Though the Shiv Sena was emerging as an anti-communist outfit and sending gangs of strike breakers to divide the trade union movement, its slogans tilted to the left. This was textbook fascism. Nazis were national socialists too. It is important to note that a majority of the followers of the Shiv Sena came from the ranks of the working class and also from traditional communist families.
Thackeray used to openly praise Hitler and publicly talk against Gandhi and non-violence. That used to encourage the lumpen and wayward youth to take to violence. Many so-called leaders of the Shiv Sena, including corporators, MLAs or even MPs have such criminal pasts and much of their wealth too has come from crime covered up by SS politics.
This was the backdrop of the murder of trade union leader and communist MLA Krishna Desai. That was the first political murder in Maharashtra. The gang that killed Desai was made of young Shiv Sainiks who were encouraged by the Sena supremo. He even sheltered and defended the murder. It was a warning to other leftist trade union leaders. Balasaheb kept changing targets, from "Madrasis" to communists, from Biharis to Muslims, from liberal writers to Dalit poets, from the plays of Vijay Tendulkar to films by Deepa Mehta, but the medium of attack was almost always violence and terror. The journalists who criticised the Sena (including this writer) were quite often targets of the Sena's wrath, egged on by Balasaheb himself.
Until Balasaheb cleared the alliance with the BJP, the Sena remained essentially a party of the lumpens. But there were also some social workers, inspired by cause of the Marathi pride, and some members of the educated middle class who were feeling marginalised in the new corporate-MBA culture. However, the organisation had the overall cover of the underworld under the political umbrella of Balasaheb. Most of the strikes and bandhs that the Sena gave a call for were not spontaneous, but motivated by the fear psychosis that could be generated by them. But the bandhs by and large remained Mumbai-centric events. In rural Maharashtra, most of the bandhs failed. This is because the Sena appeal, Balasaheb's charisma and the fear-psychosis network could not transcend the city limits. That is the reason why the Sena could never become a full fledged regional party. All political parties in the state (and some even at the Centre) were in awe of Balasaheb. Indeed, his halo had the ring of that fear and terror. The BJP used these attributes of the Sena and Balasaheb strategically. They acquired a militant arm for its "parliamentary Hindutva" and a maverick leader as the brand ambassador.
However, this brand ambassador was an unpredictable character. He did not really care for the alliance. His whims were sometimes spontaneous and sometimes calculated. In fact, he had learnt a technique of faking a whim to get something he desired politically. The Sena was born and grew on street. So it lacked a certain middle class respectability. Its alliance with the BJP provided that respectability to the Sena and a political status to Balasaheb.
After Balasaheb, it will be difficult for Uddhav Thackeray to retain that unpredictable aspect of charisma and that mercurial nature, which confounded the media and made him controversial. Also, Uddhav does not have the communication skills and the straightforwardness of his father. The long years made Balasaheb Thackeray into a legend. It is not easy to hold on to this metaphysical reality. The reality of the Sena will soon degenerate into virtual reality. The virtual reality of the Shiv Sena will then disappear in cyberspace.
Kumar Ketkar is Editor, Dainik Divya Marathi
Bal Thackeray's hallmark was his spontaneity. He liked to make statements that shocked and made headlines
By Kumar Ketkar
[. . .]
The mid-sixties saw the rise of many local-regional leaders and political outfits. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK came to power, overthrowing the Congress for good. In Punjab, the Akali Dal entrenched itself. In West Bengal, the Communists began to have their sway. The Naxalite movement too came on the national scene in 1969-70. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Congress was routed in the 1967 elections and new opposition fronts were born.
Though the Shiv Sena could not become a regional party in the classical sense, its tiger roared just when this mood of rebellion and anarchy had begun to spread. Many a commentator saw in the rise of the Shiv Sena, a new militant Maharashtra.
Balasaheb's hallmark was spontaneity. He liked to make statements that shocked and made headlines. Though in private, he was a shy and even timid person, he quickly realised that it paid politically to remain in the news and controversies. His attacks on South Indian migrants — he called them "Madrasis" — led to attacks on Udupi restaurants and some middle-level clerks. Most stenographers then were Tamilians or Keralites. This narrow Marathi chauvinism instantly brought heavy criticism from the liberal and cosmopolitan classes and the English press. Balasaheb cunningly used that criticism as attacks on Marathi pride by the “Sethji” owned capitalist media.
Those brought up on leftist political slogans, during the movement for Maharashtra, could easily accept that line. Though the Shiv Sena was emerging as an anti-communist outfit and sending gangs of strike breakers to divide the trade union movement, its slogans tilted to the left. This was textbook fascism. Nazis were national socialists too. It is important to note that a majority of the followers of the Shiv Sena came from the ranks of the working class and also from traditional communist families.
Thackeray used to openly praise Hitler and publicly talk against Gandhi and non-violence. That used to encourage the lumpen and wayward youth to take to violence. Many so-called leaders of the Shiv Sena, including corporators, MLAs or even MPs have such criminal pasts and much of their wealth too has come from crime covered up by SS politics.
This was the backdrop of the murder of trade union leader and communist MLA Krishna Desai. That was the first political murder in Maharashtra. The gang that killed Desai was made of young Shiv Sainiks who were encouraged by the Sena supremo. He even sheltered and defended the murder. It was a warning to other leftist trade union leaders. Balasaheb kept changing targets, from "Madrasis" to communists, from Biharis to Muslims, from liberal writers to Dalit poets, from the plays of Vijay Tendulkar to films by Deepa Mehta, but the medium of attack was almost always violence and terror. The journalists who criticised the Sena (including this writer) were quite often targets of the Sena's wrath, egged on by Balasaheb himself.
Until Balasaheb cleared the alliance with the BJP, the Sena remained essentially a party of the lumpens. But there were also some social workers, inspired by cause of the Marathi pride, and some members of the educated middle class who were feeling marginalised in the new corporate-MBA culture. However, the organisation had the overall cover of the underworld under the political umbrella of Balasaheb. Most of the strikes and bandhs that the Sena gave a call for were not spontaneous, but motivated by the fear psychosis that could be generated by them. But the bandhs by and large remained Mumbai-centric events. In rural Maharashtra, most of the bandhs failed. This is because the Sena appeal, Balasaheb's charisma and the fear-psychosis network could not transcend the city limits. That is the reason why the Sena could never become a full fledged regional party. All political parties in the state (and some even at the Centre) were in awe of Balasaheb. Indeed, his halo had the ring of that fear and terror. The BJP used these attributes of the Sena and Balasaheb strategically. They acquired a militant arm for its "parliamentary Hindutva" and a maverick leader as the brand ambassador.
However, this brand ambassador was an unpredictable character. He did not really care for the alliance. His whims were sometimes spontaneous and sometimes calculated. In fact, he had learnt a technique of faking a whim to get something he desired politically. The Sena was born and grew on street. So it lacked a certain middle class respectability. Its alliance with the BJP provided that respectability to the Sena and a political status to Balasaheb.
After Balasaheb, it will be difficult for Uddhav Thackeray to retain that unpredictable aspect of charisma and that mercurial nature, which confounded the media and made him controversial. Also, Uddhav does not have the communication skills and the straightforwardness of his father. The long years made Balasaheb Thackeray into a legend. It is not easy to hold on to this metaphysical reality. The reality of the Sena will soon degenerate into virtual reality. The virtual reality of the Shiv Sena will then disappear in cyberspace.
Kumar Ketkar is Editor, Dainik Divya Marathi
Rohit Chopra on Bal Thackeray’s Poisonous Legacies
The Indian elite’s reaction to Bal Thackeray’s death raises profoundly disturbing question
FULL TEXT AT: http://www.sacw.net/article3324.html
FULL TEXT AT: http://www.sacw.net/article3324.html
India: Suggesting that a city shouldnt shut for a funeral amounts to hurting religious sentiments ?
21-year-old girl held for Facebook post questioning Mumbai's 'Bal Thackeray shutdown'
Mumbai Mirror | Nov 19, 2012, 11.42 AM IST
MUMBAI: Police on Sunday arrested a 21-year-old girl for questioning the total shutdown in the city for Bal Thackeray's funeral on her Facebook account.
Another girl who 'liked' the comment was also arrested.
The duo were booked under Section 295 (a) of the IPC (for hurting religious sentiments ) and Section 64 (a) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Though the girl withdrew her comment and apologized, a mob of some 2,000 Shiv Sena workers attacked and ransacked her uncle's orthopaedic clinic at Palghar, north of Mumbai.
Both the girls have been released on bail within hours, according to media reports.
The 21-year-old arrested for her Facebook post was among many who aired opinions on social networking sites.
"Her comment said people like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a 'bandh' (city shutdown) for that," Police Inspector Uttam Sonawane told the Mumbai Mirror.
Despite widespread concerns, there were no reports of unrest in Mumbai itself on the day of Bal Thackeray's crematon.
In recent months, the country has shown sensitivity to criticism of its politicians, sparking criticism in turn from freedom of speech campaigners.
In September, campaigners were outraged by the arrest in Mumbai on charges of sedition of a cartoonist for his anti-corruption drawings. The charges were later dropped.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl-held-for-Facebook-post-questioning-Mumbais-Bal-Thackeray-shutdown/articleshow/17276979.cms
Mumbai Mirror | Nov 19, 2012, 11.42 AM IST
MUMBAI: Police on Sunday arrested a 21-year-old girl for questioning the total shutdown in the city for Bal Thackeray's funeral on her Facebook account.
Another girl who 'liked' the comment was also arrested.
The duo were booked under Section 295 (a) of the IPC (for hurting religious sentiments ) and Section 64 (a) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Though the girl withdrew her comment and apologized, a mob of some 2,000 Shiv Sena workers attacked and ransacked her uncle's orthopaedic clinic at Palghar, north of Mumbai.
Both the girls have been released on bail within hours, according to media reports.
The 21-year-old arrested for her Facebook post was among many who aired opinions on social networking sites.
"Her comment said people like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a 'bandh' (city shutdown) for that," Police Inspector Uttam Sonawane told the Mumbai Mirror.
Despite widespread concerns, there were no reports of unrest in Mumbai itself on the day of Bal Thackeray's crematon.
In recent months, the country has shown sensitivity to criticism of its politicians, sparking criticism in turn from freedom of speech campaigners.
In September, campaigners were outraged by the arrest in Mumbai on charges of sedition of a cartoonist for his anti-corruption drawings. The charges were later dropped.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl-held-for-Facebook-post-questioning-Mumbais-Bal-Thackeray-shutdown/articleshow/17276979.cms
The troubling legacy of Bal Thackeray (Edit, The Hindu)
Editorial, The Hindu, November 19, 2012
A troubling legacy
Like all those who mobilise on the basis of ethnicity and religion, Bal Thackeray fashioned the Shiv Sena’s formidable clout out of political building blocks that were base and primordial. The language of hate and, when needed, violence were deployed to generate fear and insecurity, pride and solidarity. The founder-leader of the Shiv Sena first invoked Maratha pride against the State’s linguistic minorities and then the divisive agenda of Hindutva against religious minorities. Mumbai’s jobless were not offered land or employment, but they were taught whom to blame for all their miseries: the south Indians, the Gujaratis, and the Muslims. As a strategy of political mobilisation, this worked wonderfully well. The Sena’s brand of collective identity and the use of lumpens in direct action displaced trade unionism as the organising principle in political bargaining. Thackeray’s legion of followers raised him to the status of a demigod who could force an entire State to shut down with the mere threat of violence. Of course, the Sena leader did not gather strength overnight. From his days as a caricaturist, he perfected the art of lampooning political rivals, and drew crowds with his acerbic oratorical skills. Like Hitler, whom he admired, Thackeray knew how to command loyalty and inflame passions. Every failing of his opponents added to his muscle power. Although the Sena took time to grow into a political force, and come to power with the help of the Bharatiya Janata Party, in another sense, it was a rapid political success, inspiring organisational fear in opponent parties, and proving to be of political use to the powerful and the moneyed classes.
But the Shiv Sena’s success came at a great price for not only Mumbai and Maharashtra, but India as well. Mumbai’s communal fault lines were thoroughly exploited by Thackeray and his Sainiks, especially in the weeks after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. As the Srikrishna Commission documents, Muslims were systematically killed in riots engineered by Sena leaders. The brazen anti-minorityism of the Sena fed the BJP’s agenda in other parts of India too. Other States in India have seen the rise of regional parties, which too have invoked regional and linguistic pride in their political mobilisation. But none of these parties displays the unreconstructed chauvinism of the Sena. Ironically the one outfit to rival its methods and approach is the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which broke away from Bal Thackeray in 2006. Even as people in Mumbai and Maharashtra mourn the passing of the patriarch, they ought to reflect on the manner in which his sectarian politics diminished the great city and State and demand of his legatees a change of course.
A troubling legacy
Like all those who mobilise on the basis of ethnicity and religion, Bal Thackeray fashioned the Shiv Sena’s formidable clout out of political building blocks that were base and primordial. The language of hate and, when needed, violence were deployed to generate fear and insecurity, pride and solidarity. The founder-leader of the Shiv Sena first invoked Maratha pride against the State’s linguistic minorities and then the divisive agenda of Hindutva against religious minorities. Mumbai’s jobless were not offered land or employment, but they were taught whom to blame for all their miseries: the south Indians, the Gujaratis, and the Muslims. As a strategy of political mobilisation, this worked wonderfully well. The Sena’s brand of collective identity and the use of lumpens in direct action displaced trade unionism as the organising principle in political bargaining. Thackeray’s legion of followers raised him to the status of a demigod who could force an entire State to shut down with the mere threat of violence. Of course, the Sena leader did not gather strength overnight. From his days as a caricaturist, he perfected the art of lampooning political rivals, and drew crowds with his acerbic oratorical skills. Like Hitler, whom he admired, Thackeray knew how to command loyalty and inflame passions. Every failing of his opponents added to his muscle power. Although the Sena took time to grow into a political force, and come to power with the help of the Bharatiya Janata Party, in another sense, it was a rapid political success, inspiring organisational fear in opponent parties, and proving to be of political use to the powerful and the moneyed classes.
But the Shiv Sena’s success came at a great price for not only Mumbai and Maharashtra, but India as well. Mumbai’s communal fault lines were thoroughly exploited by Thackeray and his Sainiks, especially in the weeks after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. As the Srikrishna Commission documents, Muslims were systematically killed in riots engineered by Sena leaders. The brazen anti-minorityism of the Sena fed the BJP’s agenda in other parts of India too. Other States in India have seen the rise of regional parties, which too have invoked regional and linguistic pride in their political mobilisation. But none of these parties displays the unreconstructed chauvinism of the Sena. Ironically the one outfit to rival its methods and approach is the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which broke away from Bal Thackeray in 2006. Even as people in Mumbai and Maharashtra mourn the passing of the patriarch, they ought to reflect on the manner in which his sectarian politics diminished the great city and State and demand of his legatees a change of course.
November 18, 2012
Bombay's fascist leader cremated with full state honours using tax payers money
The public cremation of Thackeray is a first for Mumbai and he was cremated with full state honours, including a 21-gun salute.
read more at: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_saffron-tiger-cremated-with-state-honours_1766213
read more at: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_saffron-tiger-cremated-with-state-honours_1766213
Bal Thackeray - Leader who brought ethnic politics to Mumbai melting pot
The Hindu, 18 November 2012
by Meena Menon
Bal Thackeray, the man who could bring Mumbai and the entire State of Maharashtra to a standstill by a single command and whose ethnic and communal rhetoric added a strain of perpetual menace to an already fraught metropolis, died on Saturday, November 17. He was 86.
Never one to mince his words, he once famously described himself as the “remote control” of the first Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharashtra in 1995. Two months ago, as the illness to which he eventually succumbed spread, he told Saamna somewhat mirthfully that he didn’t have the remote control for age in his hands.
Ever since Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena, or ‘Army of Shivaji,’ in June 19, 1966, it has set the tone for politics in the State. With his brand of rather vicious humour and fondness for mimicry, he forged a bond with his followers, speaking to people in a language they could understand. Exhorted by his father Prabodhankar Thackeray, young Bal formed the Sena as a social organisation. Its aim: to take care of the Marathi manoos, who were ostensibly slighted in their own State by the steady stream of migrants who flocked to the prosperous region.
Sons of the soil
The secret of his early rise lay in the Sena’s trade unions, which befriended employers and destroyed a once-strong labour movement in Mumbai. So successful was the Thackeray package that the Sena’s aggressive brand of regional politics has been adopted by the fledgling Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in toto. Many progressive stalwarts from the State including Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Phule and Savitri Phule and Shahu Maharaj had led pioneering struggles for social equality and justice. The Shiv Sena reduced all that to simple demands for regional prominence and a preference given to sons of the soil.
It is a politics that has sustained itself over the years in Mumbai, nourished by issues of increasing migration, poor civic amenities and lack of jobs for local people. With its avowed distance from class and caste politics, despite most of its leaders belonging to the upper castes, the Sena drew its strength from Marathi migrants from the Konkan, who formed the party’s base.
The pipe-smoking, beer-loving self-styled Hindu hriday samrat (‘emperor of Hindu hearts’) was born on January 23, 1926 in Pune into a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) family. Later, young Thackeray’s keen interest and skill in drawing got him a job briefly at the Free Press Journal , where he worked with the likes of R.K. Laxman. In 1960, he quit and started a weekly, Marmik , even before the Sena was formed. This he did with his brother, Srikant, father of Raj Thackeray. Marmik is still published. His column, ‘Vacha ani Thand Basa’ (read and keep quiet), became a hit, and he later changed the title to Vacha ani Utha (read and rise).
The Maharashtra State was carved out of the Bombay Presidency, and after a bitter struggle Bombay city was included in it. That was the first major battle which reflected the asmita, or pride, of Marathi-speaking people. Prabodhankar played a major role and his writings in the fortnightly Prabodhan, which earned him his nickname, were widely read. It was he who suggested the name Shiv Sena for his son’s new organisation.
The elder Thackeray, who was a socialist and opposed the caste system, was anti-Communist. He passed on the trait to his son. The Sena’s launch was not ostentatious. Bal Thackeray broke a coconut and spoke on the occasion, before a few people. It was a simple start to what would become a dreaded outfit in later years. The stated rationale of the party was to ensure justice to the Marathi people, who were feeling sidelined by the large Gujarati and South Indian population in the city. While Raj Thackeray today vents his ire against North Indians, it was the migrants from the South that annoyed the Shiv Sena. South Indian and Udupi hotels became the first targets of hatred, and the new Shiv Sainiks, were a ready force to tackle the next enemy.
Use of violence
Thackeray was known more as a cartoonist and writer than as a politician in the initial stages. He was an admirer of Adolf Hitler, whom he referred to in one interview as an artist. After the formation of the party, its first violent initiation led to the Army being called out in 1969 during prolonged riots over the Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute. From then on, there was no looking back. The border dispute continues to fester, and the Sena has vigorously backed the right of the Marathi-speaking areas in Karnataka to be merged with Maharashtra. Though Thackeray hated politics and famously referred to it as a “ringworm infection,” the Sena had willy-nilly become a political party. Studies at that time showed how Marathi-speaking people were not getting jobs due to migrants, and there was a genuine grouse which the Sena readily took up. But jobs for locals also meant the Sena targeting labour unions from the Left, and breaking them. The murder of Krishna Desai, a Communist Party leader in Parel, sent a chill of terror through the city and the party succeeded in setting up Sena unions everywhere, often supported by employers who were only too glad to have someone on their side.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Ashok Dhawale, in an article in the April-June 2002 issue of The Marxist , wrote: “In December 1967, the CPI headquarters of Mumbai at Dalvi Building in Parel, which is situated in the very midst of the textile area, was savagely attacked by SS hoodlums and almost destroyed. Organised attempts were made to break up Communist public meetings and several leaders and activists of both the CPI and the CPI(M) were physically assaulted. The climax was reached on June 6, 1970, when armed goondas of the SS murdered the sitting MLA of the CPI, Krishna Desai. Krishna Desai was a popular and militant mass leader in the textile belt and had been elected municipal corporator four times before he was elected to the state assembly in 1967. This was the first major political assassination in Mumbai since Independence, and it sent shock waves through the city and State. The leadership of the entire opposition along with thousands of incensed workers, marched in Krishna Desai’s funeral procession. Opposition leaders directly accused the Shiv Sena and the Congress State government in general, and Bal Thackeray and Vasantrao Naik in particular, of being hand in glove in the perpetration of this heinous crime.”
Cultural policing
Apart from taking up the cause of Marathi-speaking youth, the Sena constituted itself as a self-appointed culture police later in its history and targeted Valentine’s Day celebrations, Pakistani artists and writers, among others. However, in a much-publicised event, pop icon Michael Jackson did a concert to raise funds for the Shiv Udyog Sena in 1996 and visited the Thackeray residence. He even used the toilet there — much to the family’s delight.
Given the Sena’s political clout and muscle, Bal Thackeray found that Bollywood was not exempt from his charms or uses. He afforded protection, friendship and support to individuals and groups when needed and there was hardly any film personality, big or small, who did not pay obeisance to him at his residence at crucial moments in their career. One exception was the Communist actor A.K. Hangal. In 1999, Thackeray’s bonhomie with Dilip Kumar ended when he asked the legendary actor to return Pakistan’s highest civilian award, the Nishan e Imtiaz, following the Kargil war, and Kumar refused. Congress MP Sunil Dutt had to approach Thackeray to get Sainiks to back off from disrupting the screenings of his son Sanjay’s film Khalnayak . Thackeray softened his stand and Sanjay, then accused under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) in relation to the March 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, managed to get bail in the Supreme Court after 16 months in jail.
A few years ago, the Sena chief praised the secular values of Salman Khan’s father Salim for defying mullahs and celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi every year by bringing home an idol. Salman’s mother Sushila Charak (Salma) is a Hindu. Thackeray reportedly previewed director Ram Gopal Verma’s celluloid hagiography Sarkar, loosely based on his life, and before that in 1995 created a controversy over Mani Ratnam’s Bombay , based on the communal riots in Mumbai. Fear was the key the Sena had with its abilities to disrupt film screenings and cause huge and instant losses.
Tacit Congress help
The growth of the Sena could not have been possible without the tacit support of the Congress, its ally for some years. Chief Ministers Vasantrao Naik and Vasantdada Patil allowed the Sena to run amok to derive political advantage. Both had good relations with the Sena and used it as a tool to scotch the growth of the trade union movement in the city. The Sena’s Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti was formed in 1972 to generate jobs. The trade union wing, the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, was a rival to the unions in public sector undertakings and banks, and in the service industry. Its main plank was to fight for jobs for the local people. The Sena established a network of shakhas in the city on the lines of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Later, Thackeray supported the Emergency and Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay in a bid to ensure that he would not be jailed. His support for the Congress continued at various times, with the party breaking ranks with the National Democratic Alliance and backing Pratibha Patil for President. In 2012, Pranab Mukherjee visited Thackeray to seek his support — which was given with alacrity.
Married with three sons, Thackeray mourned his eldest, Bindumadhav, in a car crash in 1996. His wife Meenatai passed away in 1995. His son Jaidev remained estranged from him.
Thackeray’s stand against the Mandal Commission report led to one of his closest lieutenants, Chhagan Bhujbal, parting ways in 1991. This was only a precursor. Thackeray’s preference for his son Uddhav to lead the party led to others like Narayan Rane and later his nephew Raj Thackeray breaking away. The MNS, formed by Raj in 2006, decisively cut into the Marathi vote and helped the Congress in the 2009 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the State.
Thackeray endeared himself to his millions of supporters. They looked up to him as a messiah. Here was a man who articulated their deepest frustrations, who protected them against “outsiders,” and whose army was willing to take to the streets for them. There was an emotional bonding between him and the crowds, who loudly appreciated his broadsides full of innuendo, and his mimicking of popular politicians. People looked forward to his annual Dussehra rallies at Shivaji Park. When in 2008, ill-health prevented him from holding forth in his usual style, the large crowd held its breath as Thackeray rambled on his favourite topics, prompted occasionally by his son Uddhav and Manohar Joshi.
Communal politics
Thackeray’s Hindutva politics began at the Durgadi temple/mosque dispute in the late 1960s. It was manifested in the communal riots of Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in 1970. The Justice Madan Commission blamed the Sena and other saffron outfits for the riots. The victory of Ramesh Prabhoo in the Vile Parle byelection in 1987 on a Hindutva plank, was a first for the party. It was a political line that would lead to Thackeray being debarred from voting for six years, but he continued to defend it saying it was in his blood.
Hindutva would take the Sena to victory in the 1995 Assembly polls for the first time, a feat it has not managed to repeat. Flush with its triumph after the post-Babri Masjid demolition communal riots, Bal Thackeray and his party even rejected the grave findings of the Justice Srikrishna Commission inquiry report into the communal carnage in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993. Using Saamna , a daily it launched in 1990, the Sena unleashed mayhem in the city for two months and nearly a thousand people lost their lives. Thackeray said in a TV interview that he was not a riot master, and added that he had only defended Hindus. But Justice Srikrishna minced no words when he spoke of the second phase of the riots: “From 8 January 1993, at least there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of the shakha pramukh to the Shiv Sena pramukh Bal Thackeray who like [a] veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims.”
Though acquitted in one matter, the eight or nine cases against Thackeray and his newspaper for inflammatory writings were not pursued. Not by the Sena-BJP regime which he controlled by remote control. Nor indeed by the Congress-NCP government which followed.
Uncertain legacy
In a party which never had internal elections and in which only one man’s word was law, things were bound to deteriorate. Thackeray now leaves behind a crisis-ridden outfit that will find it difficult to replace his larger-than-life persona. His reticent son Uddhav, the heir, is cast in a very different mould. He is not authoritarian though he cleverly led the Sena to victory in the Mumbai civic polls for the fourth time in 2012.
The worst blow to Thackeray perhaps was the departure of his nephew Raj in 2006, and his success in dividing the Marathi vote in the 15th Lok Sabha elections in Mumbai and Thane, helping the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party win. Before the 2012 polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Thackeray in a TV interview wished for his son and nephew to be re-united. On July 16, 2012, Uddhav, who went for a test to Lilavati Hospital, had an unexpected visitor in Raj, who was summoned by his uncle. In a further show of camaraderie, Raj drove his cousin back home and visited him again after an angioplasty was performed a few days later.
There was much debate, fed by the media, on the possible re-unification of the two Senas. Just before his death, Thackeray orchestrated a reunion in the family, even if it was not a political one. And that must have given him some solace. He leaves behind a time-tested formula for electoral gains in Mumbai and the State, but one his nephew Raj and the MNS may profit from even more than his own party.
by Meena Menon
Bal Thackeray, the man who could bring Mumbai and the entire State of Maharashtra to a standstill by a single command and whose ethnic and communal rhetoric added a strain of perpetual menace to an already fraught metropolis, died on Saturday, November 17. He was 86.
Never one to mince his words, he once famously described himself as the “remote control” of the first Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharashtra in 1995. Two months ago, as the illness to which he eventually succumbed spread, he told Saamna somewhat mirthfully that he didn’t have the remote control for age in his hands.
Ever since Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena, or ‘Army of Shivaji,’ in June 19, 1966, it has set the tone for politics in the State. With his brand of rather vicious humour and fondness for mimicry, he forged a bond with his followers, speaking to people in a language they could understand. Exhorted by his father Prabodhankar Thackeray, young Bal formed the Sena as a social organisation. Its aim: to take care of the Marathi manoos, who were ostensibly slighted in their own State by the steady stream of migrants who flocked to the prosperous region.
Sons of the soil
The secret of his early rise lay in the Sena’s trade unions, which befriended employers and destroyed a once-strong labour movement in Mumbai. So successful was the Thackeray package that the Sena’s aggressive brand of regional politics has been adopted by the fledgling Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in toto. Many progressive stalwarts from the State including Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Phule and Savitri Phule and Shahu Maharaj had led pioneering struggles for social equality and justice. The Shiv Sena reduced all that to simple demands for regional prominence and a preference given to sons of the soil.
It is a politics that has sustained itself over the years in Mumbai, nourished by issues of increasing migration, poor civic amenities and lack of jobs for local people. With its avowed distance from class and caste politics, despite most of its leaders belonging to the upper castes, the Sena drew its strength from Marathi migrants from the Konkan, who formed the party’s base.
The pipe-smoking, beer-loving self-styled Hindu hriday samrat (‘emperor of Hindu hearts’) was born on January 23, 1926 in Pune into a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) family. Later, young Thackeray’s keen interest and skill in drawing got him a job briefly at the Free Press Journal , where he worked with the likes of R.K. Laxman. In 1960, he quit and started a weekly, Marmik , even before the Sena was formed. This he did with his brother, Srikant, father of Raj Thackeray. Marmik is still published. His column, ‘Vacha ani Thand Basa’ (read and keep quiet), became a hit, and he later changed the title to Vacha ani Utha (read and rise).
The Maharashtra State was carved out of the Bombay Presidency, and after a bitter struggle Bombay city was included in it. That was the first major battle which reflected the asmita, or pride, of Marathi-speaking people. Prabodhankar played a major role and his writings in the fortnightly Prabodhan, which earned him his nickname, were widely read. It was he who suggested the name Shiv Sena for his son’s new organisation.
The elder Thackeray, who was a socialist and opposed the caste system, was anti-Communist. He passed on the trait to his son. The Sena’s launch was not ostentatious. Bal Thackeray broke a coconut and spoke on the occasion, before a few people. It was a simple start to what would become a dreaded outfit in later years. The stated rationale of the party was to ensure justice to the Marathi people, who were feeling sidelined by the large Gujarati and South Indian population in the city. While Raj Thackeray today vents his ire against North Indians, it was the migrants from the South that annoyed the Shiv Sena. South Indian and Udupi hotels became the first targets of hatred, and the new Shiv Sainiks, were a ready force to tackle the next enemy.
Use of violence
Thackeray was known more as a cartoonist and writer than as a politician in the initial stages. He was an admirer of Adolf Hitler, whom he referred to in one interview as an artist. After the formation of the party, its first violent initiation led to the Army being called out in 1969 during prolonged riots over the Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute. From then on, there was no looking back. The border dispute continues to fester, and the Sena has vigorously backed the right of the Marathi-speaking areas in Karnataka to be merged with Maharashtra. Though Thackeray hated politics and famously referred to it as a “ringworm infection,” the Sena had willy-nilly become a political party. Studies at that time showed how Marathi-speaking people were not getting jobs due to migrants, and there was a genuine grouse which the Sena readily took up. But jobs for locals also meant the Sena targeting labour unions from the Left, and breaking them. The murder of Krishna Desai, a Communist Party leader in Parel, sent a chill of terror through the city and the party succeeded in setting up Sena unions everywhere, often supported by employers who were only too glad to have someone on their side.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Ashok Dhawale, in an article in the April-June 2002 issue of The Marxist , wrote: “In December 1967, the CPI headquarters of Mumbai at Dalvi Building in Parel, which is situated in the very midst of the textile area, was savagely attacked by SS hoodlums and almost destroyed. Organised attempts were made to break up Communist public meetings and several leaders and activists of both the CPI and the CPI(M) were physically assaulted. The climax was reached on June 6, 1970, when armed goondas of the SS murdered the sitting MLA of the CPI, Krishna Desai. Krishna Desai was a popular and militant mass leader in the textile belt and had been elected municipal corporator four times before he was elected to the state assembly in 1967. This was the first major political assassination in Mumbai since Independence, and it sent shock waves through the city and State. The leadership of the entire opposition along with thousands of incensed workers, marched in Krishna Desai’s funeral procession. Opposition leaders directly accused the Shiv Sena and the Congress State government in general, and Bal Thackeray and Vasantrao Naik in particular, of being hand in glove in the perpetration of this heinous crime.”
Cultural policing
Apart from taking up the cause of Marathi-speaking youth, the Sena constituted itself as a self-appointed culture police later in its history and targeted Valentine’s Day celebrations, Pakistani artists and writers, among others. However, in a much-publicised event, pop icon Michael Jackson did a concert to raise funds for the Shiv Udyog Sena in 1996 and visited the Thackeray residence. He even used the toilet there — much to the family’s delight.
Given the Sena’s political clout and muscle, Bal Thackeray found that Bollywood was not exempt from his charms or uses. He afforded protection, friendship and support to individuals and groups when needed and there was hardly any film personality, big or small, who did not pay obeisance to him at his residence at crucial moments in their career. One exception was the Communist actor A.K. Hangal. In 1999, Thackeray’s bonhomie with Dilip Kumar ended when he asked the legendary actor to return Pakistan’s highest civilian award, the Nishan e Imtiaz, following the Kargil war, and Kumar refused. Congress MP Sunil Dutt had to approach Thackeray to get Sainiks to back off from disrupting the screenings of his son Sanjay’s film Khalnayak . Thackeray softened his stand and Sanjay, then accused under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) in relation to the March 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, managed to get bail in the Supreme Court after 16 months in jail.
A few years ago, the Sena chief praised the secular values of Salman Khan’s father Salim for defying mullahs and celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi every year by bringing home an idol. Salman’s mother Sushila Charak (Salma) is a Hindu. Thackeray reportedly previewed director Ram Gopal Verma’s celluloid hagiography Sarkar, loosely based on his life, and before that in 1995 created a controversy over Mani Ratnam’s Bombay , based on the communal riots in Mumbai. Fear was the key the Sena had with its abilities to disrupt film screenings and cause huge and instant losses.
Tacit Congress help
The growth of the Sena could not have been possible without the tacit support of the Congress, its ally for some years. Chief Ministers Vasantrao Naik and Vasantdada Patil allowed the Sena to run amok to derive political advantage. Both had good relations with the Sena and used it as a tool to scotch the growth of the trade union movement in the city. The Sena’s Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti was formed in 1972 to generate jobs. The trade union wing, the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, was a rival to the unions in public sector undertakings and banks, and in the service industry. Its main plank was to fight for jobs for the local people. The Sena established a network of shakhas in the city on the lines of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Later, Thackeray supported the Emergency and Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay in a bid to ensure that he would not be jailed. His support for the Congress continued at various times, with the party breaking ranks with the National Democratic Alliance and backing Pratibha Patil for President. In 2012, Pranab Mukherjee visited Thackeray to seek his support — which was given with alacrity.
Married with three sons, Thackeray mourned his eldest, Bindumadhav, in a car crash in 1996. His wife Meenatai passed away in 1995. His son Jaidev remained estranged from him.
Thackeray’s stand against the Mandal Commission report led to one of his closest lieutenants, Chhagan Bhujbal, parting ways in 1991. This was only a precursor. Thackeray’s preference for his son Uddhav to lead the party led to others like Narayan Rane and later his nephew Raj Thackeray breaking away. The MNS, formed by Raj in 2006, decisively cut into the Marathi vote and helped the Congress in the 2009 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the State.
Thackeray endeared himself to his millions of supporters. They looked up to him as a messiah. Here was a man who articulated their deepest frustrations, who protected them against “outsiders,” and whose army was willing to take to the streets for them. There was an emotional bonding between him and the crowds, who loudly appreciated his broadsides full of innuendo, and his mimicking of popular politicians. People looked forward to his annual Dussehra rallies at Shivaji Park. When in 2008, ill-health prevented him from holding forth in his usual style, the large crowd held its breath as Thackeray rambled on his favourite topics, prompted occasionally by his son Uddhav and Manohar Joshi.
Communal politics
Thackeray’s Hindutva politics began at the Durgadi temple/mosque dispute in the late 1960s. It was manifested in the communal riots of Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in 1970. The Justice Madan Commission blamed the Sena and other saffron outfits for the riots. The victory of Ramesh Prabhoo in the Vile Parle byelection in 1987 on a Hindutva plank, was a first for the party. It was a political line that would lead to Thackeray being debarred from voting for six years, but he continued to defend it saying it was in his blood.
Hindutva would take the Sena to victory in the 1995 Assembly polls for the first time, a feat it has not managed to repeat. Flush with its triumph after the post-Babri Masjid demolition communal riots, Bal Thackeray and his party even rejected the grave findings of the Justice Srikrishna Commission inquiry report into the communal carnage in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993. Using Saamna , a daily it launched in 1990, the Sena unleashed mayhem in the city for two months and nearly a thousand people lost their lives. Thackeray said in a TV interview that he was not a riot master, and added that he had only defended Hindus. But Justice Srikrishna minced no words when he spoke of the second phase of the riots: “From 8 January 1993, at least there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of the shakha pramukh to the Shiv Sena pramukh Bal Thackeray who like [a] veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims.”
Though acquitted in one matter, the eight or nine cases against Thackeray and his newspaper for inflammatory writings were not pursued. Not by the Sena-BJP regime which he controlled by remote control. Nor indeed by the Congress-NCP government which followed.
Uncertain legacy
In a party which never had internal elections and in which only one man’s word was law, things were bound to deteriorate. Thackeray now leaves behind a crisis-ridden outfit that will find it difficult to replace his larger-than-life persona. His reticent son Uddhav, the heir, is cast in a very different mould. He is not authoritarian though he cleverly led the Sena to victory in the Mumbai civic polls for the fourth time in 2012.
The worst blow to Thackeray perhaps was the departure of his nephew Raj in 2006, and his success in dividing the Marathi vote in the 15th Lok Sabha elections in Mumbai and Thane, helping the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party win. Before the 2012 polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Thackeray in a TV interview wished for his son and nephew to be re-united. On July 16, 2012, Uddhav, who went for a test to Lilavati Hospital, had an unexpected visitor in Raj, who was summoned by his uncle. In a further show of camaraderie, Raj drove his cousin back home and visited him again after an angioplasty was performed a few days later.
There was much debate, fed by the media, on the possible re-unification of the two Senas. Just before his death, Thackeray orchestrated a reunion in the family, even if it was not a political one. And that must have given him some solace. He leaves behind a time-tested formula for electoral gains in Mumbai and the State, but one his nephew Raj and the MNS may profit from even more than his own party.
November 17, 2012
Bombay's spineless capitalists who propped up the fascist shiv sena sad at the death of its leader Bal Thackeray
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/india-inc-saddened-by-thackerays-death/article4106061.ece
India Inc saddened by Thackeray’s death
PTI
Mumbai, Nov 17:
Remembering Bal Thackeray as a great friend of the industry, captains of India Inc today said they have been saddened by the death of the Shiv Sena patriarch.
“He was a legend and commanded respect from people irrespective of their ideologies due to his eloquence and charisma,” HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh told PTI, reacting to the death of the 86-year-old this afternoon.
Stating that Maharashtra has lost a patriarch, Parekh reminisced about the multiple evenings he had spent with the Shiv Sena founder and said the late leader was a “visionary” and pro—industry.
Bajaj Auto chairman Rahul Bajaj recalled how Thackeray helped in sorting out a workers-related issue at his manufacturing facility saying he had great relations with the Shiv Sena supremo even though he had ideological differences with him.
“We had different political views. But I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from the multiple dinners and a few lunches I have had with him,” Bajaj, who also visited the Sena chief’s residence during his illness a couple of days back, said.
Auto major Mahindra and Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra tweeted, “Thackeray was both revered and feared.
Maharashtra was his pride and passion. Citizens of this state will miss their champion“.
Hiranandani Constructions MD Niranjan Hiranandani said, “He (Thackeray) never aspired to be either the chief minister or any other position of power in terms of government or authority. He was proactive about business and wanted Maharashtra to progress“.
Hiranandani said there was never an occasion when the Sena chief did not show his lighter side and interspersed conversation with his sense of humour.
“There was never an occasion when I met and he did not have a joke to share,” he said.
Bajaj also echoed similar sentiments, reminiscing how Thackeray used to talk disdainfully of his strictly vegetarian eating habits but also appreciated that the industrialist consumed alcohol.
India Inc saddened by Thackeray’s death
PTI
Mumbai, Nov 17:
Remembering Bal Thackeray as a great friend of the industry, captains of India Inc today said they have been saddened by the death of the Shiv Sena patriarch.
“He was a legend and commanded respect from people irrespective of their ideologies due to his eloquence and charisma,” HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh told PTI, reacting to the death of the 86-year-old this afternoon.
Stating that Maharashtra has lost a patriarch, Parekh reminisced about the multiple evenings he had spent with the Shiv Sena founder and said the late leader was a “visionary” and pro—industry.
Bajaj Auto chairman Rahul Bajaj recalled how Thackeray helped in sorting out a workers-related issue at his manufacturing facility saying he had great relations with the Shiv Sena supremo even though he had ideological differences with him.
“We had different political views. But I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from the multiple dinners and a few lunches I have had with him,” Bajaj, who also visited the Sena chief’s residence during his illness a couple of days back, said.
Auto major Mahindra and Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra tweeted, “Thackeray was both revered and feared.
Maharashtra was his pride and passion. Citizens of this state will miss their champion“.
Hiranandani Constructions MD Niranjan Hiranandani said, “He (Thackeray) never aspired to be either the chief minister or any other position of power in terms of government or authority. He was proactive about business and wanted Maharashtra to progress“.
Hiranandani said there was never an occasion when the Sena chief did not show his lighter side and interspersed conversation with his sense of humour.
“There was never an occasion when I met and he did not have a joke to share,” he said.
Bajaj also echoed similar sentiments, reminiscing how Thackeray used to talk disdainfully of his strictly vegetarian eating habits but also appreciated that the industrialist consumed alcohol.
India: Bal Thackeray, the Leader of Hindu extremist Shiv Sena is dead
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-11-17/hindu-extremist-leader-bal-thackeray-dies-in-india
AP News
Hindu extremist leader Bal Thackeray dies in India
By Rajesh Shah on November 17, 2012
MUMBAI, India (AP) — Bal Thackeray, a Hindu extremist leader linked to waves of mob violence against Muslims and migrant workers in India, died Saturday after an illness of several weeks. He was 86.
Jalil Parkar, a doctor who treated him, said the politician had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest "which we tried to revive (him from), but we were unable to revive."
Thackeray, a one-time cartoonist, formed the Shiv Sena — which means Shiva's Army — in 1966 in Maharashtra. The political party's main aim has been to keep people who are not from Maharashtra out of the state and stem the spread of Islam and western values.
Thackeray's Sena is among the most xenophobic of India's Hindu right-wing political parties and held power in Mumbai from 1995 to 2000. His supporters often called him Hindu Hriday Samrat or emperor of Hindu hearts.
As news of his death was announced outside his residence in Mumbai, India's financial capital, many of his supporters sobbed and burst into tears.
Thousands of his followers from across his power base in the western state of Maharashtra began gathering outside his home in the state capital as the news of his ill health spread earlier this week. Mumbai police were on high alert because of the violent history of the group.
In 1992, members of Hindu right-wing groups, including the Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party, were instrumental in destroying a 16th century mosque in north India that they said was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, and Thackeray was blamed for the violence and rioting that followed. In Mumbai alone, nearly 1,000 people were killed.
Sanjay Raut, a spokesman for Thackeray's party, appealed to his supporters to maintain peace.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to Thackeray's son Udhav and offered his condolences. He appealed for "calm and sobriety during this period of loss and mourning."
Lal Krishna Advani, a top leader of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said Thackeray was uncompromising in his patriotism. "He possessed remarkable qualities of leadership."
Throughout his political career Thackeray was a powerful, rabble-rousing orator who routinely sanctioned the use of violence to propagate his political views. He was arrested at least twice for his for inflammatory speeches and writing.
His extreme regional and religious parochialism led him to advocate Hindu suicide bombers and planting bombs in Muslim neighborhoods to "protect the nation and all Hindus."
His followers often attacked and rampaged through the offices of media houses that he claimed were anti-Maharashtrian and anti-Hindu and threatened to dig up cricket pitches ahead of matches between largely Hindu India and its Muslim-majority neighbor Pakistan.
Even though the Shiv Sena's political grip over Mumbai — its longtime power base — has been waning over the last decade, it still commands tens of thousands of violent followers.
The slight, bespectacled leader often appeared in front of his supporters seated on a silver throne-like chair, a gift from party workers.
In the early 1990s he led a successful campaign to drop what he called the colonially tainted name Bombay — a Portuguese derivation of "beautiful bay" — and replace it with Mumbai, after the local Marathi language name for a Hindu goddess. The city is the capital of Maharashtra state.
His supporters continued to sporadically threaten violence against places and institutions that held on to the old name like the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Bombay High Court, the elite Bombay Scottish School and countless restaurants, shops and offices.
More recently his followers campaigned against the celebration of Valentine's Day in several Indian cities. They attacked shops and restaurants that allowed young couples to mark the day.
Through the early 2000s, Thackeray had appeared to be grooming his nephew Raj Thackeray as his political successor ahead of his own son Uddhav but in 2006 the infighting between the cousins led to Raj breaking away from the Sena. He formed the Maharashtra Reconstruction Party, which held onto the Sena's political planks of regional and religious chauvinism interspersed with occasional violence.
Thackeray is survived by two sons. His body will be kept in a park on Sunday to allow people to pay their last respects before his cremation.
AP News
Hindu extremist leader Bal Thackeray dies in India
By Rajesh Shah on November 17, 2012
MUMBAI, India (AP) — Bal Thackeray, a Hindu extremist leader linked to waves of mob violence against Muslims and migrant workers in India, died Saturday after an illness of several weeks. He was 86.
Jalil Parkar, a doctor who treated him, said the politician had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest "which we tried to revive (him from), but we were unable to revive."
Thackeray, a one-time cartoonist, formed the Shiv Sena — which means Shiva's Army — in 1966 in Maharashtra. The political party's main aim has been to keep people who are not from Maharashtra out of the state and stem the spread of Islam and western values.
Thackeray's Sena is among the most xenophobic of India's Hindu right-wing political parties and held power in Mumbai from 1995 to 2000. His supporters often called him Hindu Hriday Samrat or emperor of Hindu hearts.
As news of his death was announced outside his residence in Mumbai, India's financial capital, many of his supporters sobbed and burst into tears.
Thousands of his followers from across his power base in the western state of Maharashtra began gathering outside his home in the state capital as the news of his ill health spread earlier this week. Mumbai police were on high alert because of the violent history of the group.
In 1992, members of Hindu right-wing groups, including the Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party, were instrumental in destroying a 16th century mosque in north India that they said was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, and Thackeray was blamed for the violence and rioting that followed. In Mumbai alone, nearly 1,000 people were killed.
Sanjay Raut, a spokesman for Thackeray's party, appealed to his supporters to maintain peace.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to Thackeray's son Udhav and offered his condolences. He appealed for "calm and sobriety during this period of loss and mourning."
Lal Krishna Advani, a top leader of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said Thackeray was uncompromising in his patriotism. "He possessed remarkable qualities of leadership."
Throughout his political career Thackeray was a powerful, rabble-rousing orator who routinely sanctioned the use of violence to propagate his political views. He was arrested at least twice for his for inflammatory speeches and writing.
His extreme regional and religious parochialism led him to advocate Hindu suicide bombers and planting bombs in Muslim neighborhoods to "protect the nation and all Hindus."
His followers often attacked and rampaged through the offices of media houses that he claimed were anti-Maharashtrian and anti-Hindu and threatened to dig up cricket pitches ahead of matches between largely Hindu India and its Muslim-majority neighbor Pakistan.
Even though the Shiv Sena's political grip over Mumbai — its longtime power base — has been waning over the last decade, it still commands tens of thousands of violent followers.
The slight, bespectacled leader often appeared in front of his supporters seated on a silver throne-like chair, a gift from party workers.
In the early 1990s he led a successful campaign to drop what he called the colonially tainted name Bombay — a Portuguese derivation of "beautiful bay" — and replace it with Mumbai, after the local Marathi language name for a Hindu goddess. The city is the capital of Maharashtra state.
His supporters continued to sporadically threaten violence against places and institutions that held on to the old name like the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Bombay High Court, the elite Bombay Scottish School and countless restaurants, shops and offices.
More recently his followers campaigned against the celebration of Valentine's Day in several Indian cities. They attacked shops and restaurants that allowed young couples to mark the day.
Through the early 2000s, Thackeray had appeared to be grooming his nephew Raj Thackeray as his political successor ahead of his own son Uddhav but in 2006 the infighting between the cousins led to Raj breaking away from the Sena. He formed the Maharashtra Reconstruction Party, which held onto the Sena's political planks of regional and religious chauvinism interspersed with occasional violence.
Thackeray is survived by two sons. His body will be kept in a park on Sunday to allow people to pay their last respects before his cremation.
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