The attack on taxi
drivers and pushcart vendors from north India by the Maharashtrian
Navnirman Sena (MNS) is not a replay of what Bal Thackeray's Shiv Sena
did 40 years ago. It is easy to mistake one for the other, or even
merge the two as blood relations, but the social factors behind their
emergence are very different.
I first met Bal Thackeray in 1971 when he was already founder senapati
of Shiv Sena for over five years. And yet what struck me most about him
was his inability to handle success. He never imagined that his first
public rally in 1966 would appeal to such a wide cross-section of
Marathis in Mumbai. Shiv Sena was originally designed as a kind of
hyper-cultural organisation that would make Mumbai more Marathi. Its
instant success was so heady that Thackeray succumbed almost
imme-diately to a life of violence and loot. It is obviously quite easy
to get used to a steady diet of that sort. Even so, it was impossible
to ignore the fact that Shiv Sena was a movement waiting to happen
given the demographic imbalance in, and the cultural character of,
Mumbai. Maharashtrians in Mumbai, from the dirty white collar class
upwards, not only experienced job insecurities, but they also felt
slighted that the capital of their province did not culturally belong
to them. There were few Marathis in the best jobs, in the best schools
and in the best residential areas. Shiv Sena appealed to Mumbai
Maharashtrians on both the economic and cultural front. Mumbai now
wears a distinct Marathi visage, and this is almost entirely due to the
Shiv Sena.
Low though the ideological fount of the Shiv Sena may be, it must be
admitted that it had a broad support base. Its successes did not depend
on its diatribe against south Indians as it did from its ability to
respond to some of the deepest anxieties among Marathis in Mumbai. In
fact, within a year of its formation the Shiv Sena publicly abandoned
its anti-south Indian stance. From 1967 onwards, it relied instead on
attacking Muslims and communists but nobody from within the ranks
complained against this shift. Thackeray had already established his
pre-eminence as a cultural hero of Maharashtrians in Mumbai.
But Raj Thackeray's political career started very differently. Whereas
Bal Thackeray took to violence because he could not handle success, his
nephew Raj has taken to it because he cannot handle failure. Neither
has he learnt from his uncle's experience that attacking migrants in
Mumbai is not good politics. His uncle survived his first misstep
because he had a cultural agenda packaged in his anti-south Indian
programme. This is something that Raj Thackeray almost completely lacks.
By the time Raj Thackeray appeared on the scene Mumbai had changed
tremendously. It had become a proper Marathi city from Ghatkopar and
beyond right down to Churchgate and Ballard Pier. A confident Marathi
white-collar class had emerged in the meanwhile. The alienation of
being an outsider at home no longer tortured the imagination of
Mumbai-based Marathis.
Undoubtedly, these social factors, and not mindless migrant baiting,
helped Shiv Sena embark upon a life of violence with some degree of
legitimacy. But the MNS is shorn of these supports and therefore comes
through much more readily as a party of vandals. The choice of target
also reveals the crass motivations of MNS activists, Raj Thackeray
included. Properties of taxi drivers and pushcart vendors from UP were
attacked for no good reason other than trying to pull a page out of his
uncle's book without reading the ending.
These migrants from UP do not threaten Marathi culture, nor are they
taking away jobs that Maharashtrians in general aspire to.
They live on the fringes of Mumbai and can hardly pose a cultural or
economic threat to Mumbaikars. When Bal Thackeray pointed to skilled
south Indians and rich Gujaratis/Marwaris/north Indians for
economically and culturally humiliating Maharashtrians in Mumbai it was
possible to argue out his case. It would still be intellectually low
but one could at least explain, if not excuse, the rise of the Shiv
Sena. But where is the justification for MNS?
Perhaps Raj Thackeray is a slow learner. It is also possible that he
only has the long-term memory of when his uncle was a tiger in Mumbai
till the mid-1970s. But since then Bal Thackeray has moved on: he is
now a toothless tiger and was also a paper tiger in between. In fact,
in spite of the background conditions that favoured the rise of the
Shiv Sena, it could still have been contained had not successive
governments encouraged it. Y B Chavan once said in public that Shiv
Sena was valiantly upholding the proud tradition of Shivaji.
Consequently, Bal Thackeray never faced a prison sentence in spite of
the numerous times he and his followers have flagrantly broken the law.
Raj Thackeray may be a political dyslexic, but Shiv Sena's career has a
lesson for all of us. Communal violence can survive only when its
perpetrators get away unharmed as Bal Thackeray did for years. Will the
state government repeat history by dallying over sentencing MNS
activists? Or will it learn from history and not allow time to reveal
Raj Thackeray for the paper tiger he really is?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Headed_The_Wrong_Way/articleshow/2759761.cms
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