| |
India: The politics of
passion
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Although a legal case has been
registered against Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb (Bal)
Thackeray for his inflammatory speech calling on Hindus
to form suicide squads against Muslims, it is unlikely
that he will be prosecuted. Fear of his capacity for
unleashing violence and the color of his brand of
terrorism will in all likelihood protect the man from
being jailed.
In a speech delivered on the Hindu
festival Dussehra two weeks ago, Thackeray called on
Hindus to form suicide squads "to take the Muslims head
on". "Trouble-making Muslims should be wiped out from
the country ... kick out the four crore [40 million]
Bangladeshi Muslims and then the country will be
secure," the Shiv Sena leader said. Urging Hindus to
start calling India "Hindu rashtra" (Hindu nation), he
maintained that only "our religion [Hinduism] is to be
honored here" and then "we will look after other
religions".
The speech prompted the Maharashtra
government to lodge a case against Thackeray for
"promoting communal disharmony". Under Section 153 (A)
of the Indian penal code, it is a non-bailable offence.
If convicted, the Sena leader could be sentenced to
three years in prison.
Thackeray founded the
Shiv Sena in 1966 as a "sons of the soil" movement to
fight for the rights of native Maharashtrians who, he
maintained, were under threat from other ethnic
migrants. The first targets of his hate campaigns and
violence were south Indians, who had migrated to Mumbai
for employment. Then Gujaratis were targeted. Muslims
now are in the line of the Sena’s fire.
The Shiv
Sena, named after the army of the 17th century Maratha
king Sivaji who fought the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, is
a Hindu chauvinistic-militant organization. It sees
itself as a guardian of Indian culture, which it equates
with Hindu culture. Shiv Sainiks, as Sena activists are
called, function as moral police and attack what is seen
as a dilution or an aberration of "Indianness", as they
define it.
Some years ago, Shiv Sena activists
protested against the screening of the movie
Fire, which had a lesbian theme, and attacked
movie theaters that screened it. They are opposed to the
celebration of the "Christian" Valentine's Day and
attack shops selling cards and gifts for the occasion.
The Sena is opposed to any interaction with Pakistan.
They have vandalized cricket pitches to protest against
tours by the Pakistan cricket team. Some years back,
they targeted the legendary Bollywood star Dilip Kumar
for accepting an award conferred by Pakistan.
In
the name of "patriotism" and defense of Hindu culture,
the Sena uses intimidation and violence. The truth is
that the Sena’s pretensions to patriotism and the resort
to vandalism and terror to justify it is really a
strategy to fill its coffers. It is believed that under
cover of the riots that it engineered in Mumbai in
1992-93, the Sena engaged in massive land grabbing and
extortion.
The Sena has proved more than a match
for Mumbai’s underworld dons in extorting money from
film stars and business houses. During its five years in
office (1995-2000) in Maharashtra, the Sena "almost
succeeded in putting the traditional mafia organizations
out of business", wrote Praveen Swamy in the news
magazine Frontline.
In fact, the Sena is far
more powerful than underworld gangs and mafia
organizations for, despite its illegal activities, it
has gained legitimacy by participating in elections. It
has led the state government in Maharashtra and is in
control of civic bodies. The Sena is part of the
National Democratic Alliance government in New Delhi.
Sena members of parliament are ministers in the Atal
Bihari Vajpayee government. The Speaker of the House is
a Sena MP.
It is among the Mumbai working class
and the slums that Thackeray has his fiercest
supporters. Some of that support has been secured by
playing on the alienation of the workers, the economic
and cultural insecurities of Maharashtrians of being
swamped by "outsiders". Sena activists play the local
"big brother" in Mumbai’s slums. They step in to settle
disputes and solve water and electricity problems.
Increasingly, the Sena’s claim that it is championing
the "Hindutva" (a militant Hindu dominance ideology)
cause and fighting the "Muslim-dominated underworld" has
struck a chord.
The Sena has been seeking to
broaden its appeal beyond the original Maharashtrian
cause to include the "Hindutva" cause. But its support
is still largely confined to Maharashtra. Thackeray has
ambitions of expanding his power base throughout India -
the Sena has spread its tentacles into the border areas
of neighboring states, such as Gujarat and Karnataka,
where Maharashtians live. Yet the Sena winning electoral
power outside Maharashtra seems unlikely in the near
future, for it will have to compete elsewhere with its
ideological allies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
the leading party in the country's coalition government,
and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). Nonetheless, the
Sena has witnessed a dramatic expansion of its influence
in India, as evidenced in its role in the central
government in New Delhi.
Thackeray, called Tiger
by Sena members, exercises complete control over the
organization and Shiv Sainiks are fanatical in their
devotion to him. The organization is a tightly
controlled network of cells, which can be activated at
his command. Thackeray has to only issue an order and
his goon squads have in the past paralyzed Mumbai -
India’s financial and commercial capital - by unleashing
violence.
Thackeray is notorious for his crude
and often incendiary speeches. This is not the first
time that he has engaged in Muslim-bashing. He is known
for his anti-Muslim diatribes and for inciting violence
against various minorities, with Muslims being his
latest target.
It was Thackeray who incited the
December 1992-January 1993 Hindu-Muslim riots that
rocked Mumbai. He wrote a series of inflammatory
editorials in the Saamna (Confrontation), the Shiv Sena
mouthpiece, urging Shiv Sainiks to declare war against
India's Muslim minority in defense of Hinduism.
While riots exploded across the country, it was
in Mumbai that they were the worst. Over 800 were killed
in that city alone. In its final report, the Justice
Srikrishna Commission that probed the riots found ample
evidence of the direct involvement of Thackeray and the
Sena. However, the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government in
Maharashtra at that time dismissed the report as
"anti-Hindu" and refused to place it before the State
Assembly.
In 2000, a Congress-led government in
Maharashtra issued permission to the police to arrest
Thackeray for inciting the riots. The Sena struck
swiftly. Within hours of their leader’s arrest, Shiv
Sainiks vandalized the State Assembly and spread terror
across Mumbai, damaging buses and trains, and burning
shops and houses.
The Bombay Court, without
holding any hearings, released Thackeray on technical
grounds. His release was an outcome really of the
pressure applied by the Sena and the BJP on the judicial
system.
Thackeray’s inflammatory remarks on
Dussehra have been sharply criticized by the Congress
Party, the Left and the English media, who have all
called for his prosecution. Some are calling for his
arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
Manoj Mitta points out in the Indian Express that,
unlike its predecessor, the Terrorism and Disruptive
Activities (Prevention) Act, under which a person, even
if he had not committed a terrorist act, could be
arrested if he wrote an inflammatory article or
delivered an incendiary speech, POTA does not include
prosecution for disruptive activity.
But, asks
Mitta, would a Muslim or a Christian leader have gotten
away with a speech "even half as incendiary as
Thackeray’s? The very same POTA, which is so helpless
against Thackeray, can very well be invoked by a state
government against any minority leader accused of
stoking communal passions. This gross inequity is a
direct fallout of the manner in which the center has
over the last year exercised a sweeping power it assumed
under POTA: the power to ban an organization without a
judicial review and detain all those who are suspected
to be either its members or supporters."
The
30-odd organizations that have been banned under POTA
are all related to either minorities or are leftist.
Thus, a Muslim leader runs the risk of being arrested
under POTA for being a supporter of a banned
organization. None of the Hindu organizations, whether
casteist or communal, have been included in the list of
"terrorist organizations".
"So, a Ranvir Sena
may massacre Dalits in Bihar, a Bajrang Dal may employ
Ayodhya to terrorize Muslims, a Vishva Hindu Parishad
may organize a retaliation to Godhra and a Shiv Sena may
instigate Hindus to take to terrorism. All these
organizations seem to be immune to POTA because of the
way the law is drafted and enforced. POTA is not against
terrorism per se. The hue of terrorism - saffron
[representing Hinduism] or green [representing Islam] -
will determine whether a certain activity comes under
the ambit of POTA or not," writes Mitta. As part of the
saffron brigade, Thackeray’s terrorism would escape
prosecution under POTA.
Moreover, there is the
government’s fear of his capacity to bring Mumbai to its
knees. When the police lodged a case against Thackeray
last week, he and his supplicants reacted in the
customary manner. Warning the government of "serious
consequences" if Thackeray were arrested, Narayan Rane,
a senior Sena leader and former chief minister of
Maharashtra, said, "Let’s see what they can do. The last
time they tried to arrest Balasaheb, the whole city was
quaking." And Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam said the party
would fight the case legally and "if necessary ... come
out on the streets".
Law-enforcing agencies and
the judicial system have repeatedly held back from
cracking down on Thackeray fearing the constant threat
held out by Sena activists that "Mumbai will burn if
Thackeray is jailed". Whether the Maharashtra government
will summon the political will to arrest him now remains
to be seen.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
