Why
Bal Thackeray’s death should be a moment of sadness and reflection for
Muslims…
- - By
Jahanzeb Mashhadi*
I
am extremely sad as a Muslim to hear about Bal Thackrey’s death, or as
the media and the entire world likes to call him Bala Saheb Thackrey.
Rarely is the name of even a prime minister or head of state taken with
such reverence not just by his own party members and faithful but also
by the media. Even a prime minister or president simply tends to get a
respectful “Mr” or a “Mrs” as the case may be. But then fear is a
powerful weapon.
However coming back to my confession of being
sad about the demise of Thackrey. There are only three states of
reaction to any event; you can be sad about something, be happy or
remain indifferent to it. Like I said I am not happy because there is
nothing to be elated about. And indifferent you cannot afford to be to
Thackrey or the RSS, especially not as a Muslim, a community for which
he had a special hatred over & above Bihari migrants, Gujratis,
Tamils or any person or community that he simply chose not to like. If
you are a Bihari Muslim then you would of course be likely to be bashed
up twice by Bal Thackrey’s Sena; once for your faith and once for your
origins.
The only logical reaction then is sadness, which I hope
does not turn into horror & despair in the immediate future.
Consider the facts before you send out congratulatory messages. A man
who single handedly held a city to siege for 50 years, a man who openly
challenged the authorities, the law and order and constitution of India
for 5 decades and led perhaps the most vitriolic political institution
in India to new heights of infamy and arson, finally died a peaceful
death at the ripe old age of 86, in the peace and sanctity of his own
home, an old man, surrounded by his family and friends.
I just
want to focus on some of the immediate reactions to his death for to
try and comment on his entire life would simply take up too much time
and energy and take away from the point I want to make with the article.
There
have been many a comment on how the city has remained “largely
peaceful” in the wake of his death. The Mumbai police have quite
unashamedly put out a bulletin saying that residents “should only
venture out if there is an emergency”. Even in death the man continues
to hold the city to ransom as he did his entire life. And the police as
always instead of taking the bull by the horn and ensuring that the
common man and the citizen of India gets to lead a normal life which
he/she is entitled to responds by imposing a de-facto curfew. One has
to ask people praising the situation “why should the city not remain
peaceful if a glorified political goon dies a natural death essentially
due to old age peacefully at his home?” And why should we be thankful
to the Shiv Sena for not beating up everybody in sight just because
their beloved leader is dead? And why in heaven’s name should the
police instead of ensuring normalcy instead be asking citizens to stay
home. Should it not perhaps ask the Shiv Sena to stay home since it is
from them that the threat of violence is expected? But then the Mumbai
police have had a long history of taking the wrong side when it comes
to questions of law & order.
There
are messages pouring in lauding the man. He is being called a great
man, a visionary, a straight forward man, a man of the people, and
perhaps quite amazingly also a patriot and a “deshbhakt”. These
messages are to be expected from the BJP or the Shiv Sena as they
prescribe to his ideology, and to the Shiv Sainiks he was certainly a
great man since he gave political stance and recognition in mainstream
politics (albeit at a local or regional level only) to an essentially
fascist organization. Political rivals like the congress and political
figure heads are led by compulsions of their profession to express
grief and condolences to his family. But for anybody else even for
political etiquettes to praise the man and the life he led; I feel is a
travesty of monumental proportions. Congress being the chief architects
of the rise of the Sena of course shares a special bond with Thackrey,
which it is nowadays quick to deny in order to preserve the charade of
secularism and the compulsions of its adopted political ideology.
It is significant that the same
people made no comment when India-Pakistan matches were disrupted by
the Shiv Sainiks, or when M.F.Hussein’s gallery destroyed and a great
artist forced to live out his life in exile. Hussein if you remember
was never able to return to Mumbai or India and died in London a sad
and unhappy man. One could argue that Hussain had no business painting
nude pictures of goddesses but then the RSS had no business of telling
him to leave India and forcing him to live in exile or of burning down
an art gallery. This silence either means that the cultural diaspora
firmly believed in the righteousness of the man and his actions or was
and is too afraid to speak ill of the man even when one of their own is
targeted. The fear it seems prevails when the man himself is no more.
In either case the conclusion is more than troubling. 
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For a man who
preferred to call
himself a political cartoonist rather than a politician, he was
singularly bereft of humor in his response to critics and criticism. He
described Hitler as an artist, extolled dictatorship, and went on
record saying that he was against democracy, preferred dictatorship and
that he would clean up Kashmir in a day if he were the Prime Minister.
If this is straight from the heart
and candor, then I fear for an India where more people will adopt this
candor and make a mockery of the judicial system and democracy. He has
been indicted by the Sri Krishna commission in the Mumbai riots report
but has not spent a day in jail for any of the allegations leveled
against him. The numerous speeches available freely on You tube are
enough evidence of the man’s character , but let alone considering a
ban on the RSS not even a Gag order not allowing him to publicly
instigate violence was ever forced on him. This is remarkable feat for
a man who routinely advocated planting bombs in Muslim neighborhoods to
“protect the nation” and advocated the use of Hindu suicide bombers;
especially since he had the will, the resources and a perfectly willing
force of religious zealots capable of following through on such
ambitions.
“haanth
kya mera to pair bhi hai,
main kehta hun, jo karna hai kar lo” (I even have a hand and a foot in
it, I am openly admitting, do what you can do!).
The
RSS prints and freely circulates a daily newspaper
“Saamna” which is openly inflammatory if not downright anti-national
given much teeth by Bal Thackrey’s frequent rhetoric and yet the
magazine has not faced any threats of shutdown or even attempts at
moderation. The RSS has a rich history of participating in communal
riots, arson, public beatings and has always taken the law into their
own hands at the slightest pretext of a provocation, but never has the
organization ever faced even the threat of any kind of ban be it
political or financial.
As Dilip Patgaonkar so aptly put it in a
debate on NDTV late last night, “Yes certainly Bal Thackrey was a
candid man but you should also ask people who were at the receiving end
of his candor, people like the Biharis, and minorities like the Muslims
what they felt about his candor and straight forwardness and whether
thy would languish the same praise on him that the BJP so freely would.
He was a man who knew he could be candid because he was protected by a
horde of Shiv Sena men who would take to the streets at the slightest
provocation, and he could not be paid back in kind or replied to in his
own language. There is enough testimony that he did not appreciate the
same candor or even a sense of righteousness in others. As the man
himself said it many a time “If you touch me/lay one finger on me,
Mumbai will burn”. This is not candor or straight forwardness or
speaking from the heart, this is essentially the language of a
glorified goon with a vast horde of henchmen uttering whatever he
wishes to, and crossing lines with every statement, simply because he
knows he can afford to.
He frequently replied to questions that
journalist put to him over the past years where they would ask him
about “living life on his own terms” with the answer “so what is wrong
with that? If I want to live the way I want to”. His living life the
way he wanted to; meant quite often that a vast majority of Non
Marathi, Non Mumbaikar or NON Marathi Manush as the Shiv Sena calls
them, was not allowed to live the life they wanted to. The sheer
arrogance of the man was testament of his complete isolation form any
persecution whatsoever. This is a fact that is conveniently being
ignored by the BJP & its allies in their praise.
If the man was
such a menace, you could perhaps ask at this point of time that is
there not then reason to rejoice in the fact that the rhetoric might
now be toned down and the RSS momentarily stricken. Well yes and No!
Yes the RSS will be momentarily at a loss but the loss is only
temporary.
Bear
in mind that the Shiv Sena has not really been doing
all that well in polls in the recent past and that some had even
(albeit at the risk of their lives) started calling Thackrey a
toothless tiger. His death then far from proving detrimental
to
the
Shiv Sena might just provide the shot in the arm so desperately needed.
It might even result in the coming together of son Udhav and estranged
nephew Raj, thereby ending the in-fighting and lending back strength to
the RSS. The BJP - RSS combination when aligned with Raj Thackrey’s
party MNS together have a 51.4% majority and Thackrey’ death might just
be the catalyst which brings them together. Then there is also the
inevitable sympathy wave though it might not be enough on its own to
swing things in their favor as the supporters of Thackrey brand of
politics have always been avid vote casters and the numbers are not
likely to swell by his demise. It might just give the party the plank
and positioning it needs though to re-invent itself, something which
many critics felt the RSS needed to do. The record as they say was
sounding a little broken of late.
There is thus the chance of a
strengthened resurgent Sena emerging from his death rather than
crumbling to pieces, which would again be more cause for worry rather
than joy.
The RSS whatever its ideological flaws is a very efficient
organization one which works at the grass root level, one which spreads
venom at the root. It believes in cadres, in catching them young and
instilling in them loyalty when the mind is impressionable. Bal
Thackrey might have been the Mumbai Poster boy and a powerful crowd
puller, but the work of the RSS and the Sangh is done at a much more
basic level, quite surreptitiously with infinitely more discretion.
This work in India’s villages and towns has been going on forever and
will continue to go on. As the poor CONGRESS MP Dewas Sajjan Singh
Verma (when he praises the RSS workers for their dedication , a day
after the congress ession in Surajkund, and compared it to the
reluctance of Congress leaders to step out of their AC chambers and
cars) found out it’s a truth nobody wants to acknowledge, but
nevertheless is true.
The politics of RSS is a politics of hate, and
hate is an emotion which does not always need tangible logic. Hate is
built up on presumptions and biases and if you have the right resources
and muscle to run a propaganda machine in a society with biases galore
and also a rich history of subjugation, then chances are you are more
likely to succeed than to fail. It is this success which the RSS has
tasted and although Bal Thackrey was the man who popularized it, he was
far from the man who defined or invented the Shiv Sena ideology. The
man might be dead, but the Sena ideology lives on and as long as there
is a free hand granted to the Shiv Sainiks as in the past, it will find
ample takers, with or without Bal Thackrey.
________________________________
*
Jahanzeb Mashhadi is marketing professional; has inherent qualities of
a natural author being the son of writer parents.
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