Nikhil's View of the world

In the early 1980s, Indira Gandhi propped up a charismatic extremist regional leader in India’s richest state to break the back of a regional party that had emerged as the main competitor to the Congress in that state. The hope was that the “regional” vote would be divided and that the “nationalist” vote would have no where to go but the Congress – and that this would help perpetuate Congress rule in that state. The state was Punjab, the extremist leader was Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and the regional party that the Congress hoped to break was of course the Akali Dal. Bhindranwale took real and imaginary issues that the Akalis had, out flanked them from the right, and forced the Akalis into a cycle of competitive extremism. The Punjab agitation spun out of control, and became a secessionist movement which threatened to divide India.

Inevitably, Indira was forced to act to tame the Frankenstein monster that she had created, and the army (ironically led by a brave Maharashtrian General, A.S. Vaidya) was forced to proceed against Bhindranwale’s men hiding in the Golden Temple. The deaths of Bhindranwale and also several other ordinary pilgrims in the Golden Temple, as well as the destruction of its Sanctum Santorum led to alienation among the Sikhs, Indira’s assassination shortly thereafter, followed by the Delhi riots, and a decade of violence that was finally tamed by P.V. Narasimha Rao. The cost of this lost decade in Punjab was immense, in terms of deaths, the division between a community that had always been seen as amongst the most patriotic in India and the rest of the country, and also in economic terms, with India’ s richest state being unable to contribute to the growth of the nation.

On would have thought that this episode would leave an indelible mark in the minds of the Congress party, and that they would have realized the dangers that arise from trying to outflank extremists. But alas, that is not the case. Sonia Gandhi (or atleast her minions in Maharashtra led by Respected Shri Vilasrao Deshmukh) seems to have decided that the only hope of her party retaining power in Maharashtra after a decade of misrule is to divide the “Marathi” vote in the urban areas of the state.

Some basic facts here – while Bombay has always contributed the bulk of the revenue of the Government of Maharashtra, it has historically been a political backwater. Bombay and urban areas of Thane have only 47 assembly constituencies out of 289 in Maharashtra. The key to the Maharashtra assembly has been in the sugar belt – with its 75 seats. But the Bombay metro region’s representation will increase to 60 in the next elections, while the sugar belt will fall to 63 seats – making winning Bombay much more important to be able to form the Maharashtra state government. The Congress, with its litany of sugar baron politicians, who have been pillaging Bombay to subsidise their rural vote banks is clearly at a disadvantage here.

Hence the efforts by the Congress to split the Shiv Sena (aided by discontent within its ranks about the more moderate approach that Uddhav has taken relative to his father). Initially, this seemed to be working very well. Narayan Rane (who epitomized the lowest kind of Sena scum) was drafted into the Congress, and his supporters managed to swing a large number of seats to the Congress column. But the Rane effect soon ran out of steam, with the Sena BJP managing to gain a majority in the Bombay Municipal Corporation elections. Hence, the Congress seems to have decided to move to Plan B, viz prop up Raj Thackeray and his MNS (a bunch of losers who won just 7 seats in the BMC) and turn them into a force that would outflank the Shiv Sena BJP from the right for the “Marathi” vote. This Machiavellian strategy clearly has a high potential to pay dividends. The Sena BJP combine traditional draws its support from a combination of the Sena’s core audience of working class Marathi speakers in Bombay and the BJP’s middle and upper middle class dominated (and much more cosmopolitan even if Hindu) support base.

Using the MNS to divide the Marathi vote hits the Sena BJP in two ways – the Sena would lose Marathi voters, and further any attempts by the Sena to compete for Marathi votes would alienate the BJP supporters driving them into the Congress’ arms. This strategy seems to be working based on a dipstick survey of opinions in “Chai stalls” across the city. But the longer term implications of this are dire.

Raj Thackeray clearly seems to have touched a chord at least among the lumpen, incompetent, unemployed, Marathi speaking youth in and around Bombay. His supporters have been indulging in wanton acts of violence, with kid glove treatment from the Maharashtra government only serving to embolden them further. Each incident is worse than the previous one. What started as random attacks against poor taxi drivers, has now turned into organized violence such as the attacks on the candidates for the railway recruitment board exams, and has led to at least 2 murders so far. Thackeray’s rhetoric also gets worse by the day – the worst example being a comparison of India with Europe and talking of the need to learn Marathi to live in Bombay on the same basis as the need for other Europeans to learn French to live in France! If this is not secessionist talk, I don’t know what is!!

In response to outrage across the country, the Maharashtra Government staged a farcical “arrest” of Raj Thackeray, freeing him in less than 24 hours – its amazing how the Maharashtra police was unable to find sections to hold him in jail after Thackeray has provoked massive violence and murders, when they could hold an innocent techie like K Lakshmana for 55 days on the specious charge of publishing an image that defames Shivaji! What is even more disconcerting is that some middle class and affluent Marathi speakers (including ministers in Maharashtra’s Congress government) seem to be adopting a stance a “soft” support to Raj Thackeray, saying that his “cause” is right but his methods are not. This is the same problem that we faced in Punjab in the 1980s – even “moderate” Sikhs felt rightly (in my view, in the case of alleged murderers like HKL Bhagat and Jagdish Tytler becoming ministers) or wrongly (on issues like the division of water from Punjab’s rivers) that they were being discriminated against, and that the militancy was a genuine if somewhat extreme expression of their sentiments. This clearly bodes ill for the status of India as a united country.

So how will things pan out going forward? One clearly does not know. The one positive is that the Shiv Sena under Uddhav has so far refrained from trying to out Marathi the MNS. Will this strategy continue? I certainly hope so. One early test will be in the forthcoming general and state assembly elections. Perhaps the people of Bombay and Maharashtra will respond to these events effectively through the ballot box – and display their displeasure with both the MNS and the Congress for launching such a divisive movement by ignoring the one, and voting out the other (more so for the gross incompetence of its state government for the last 10 years). But the danger is that the MNS may get sufficient votes to act as a spoiler for the Sena BJP or perhaps even a king maker in the assembly. This can then degenerate into cycles of competitive populism – complicated further by the fact that Marathi speakers account for only 35% of Bombay’s population, triggering the risk of a violent response from the majority non Marathi population of the city. One can easily imagine a scenario in which Raj Thackeray turns into a Marathi Bhindranwale, launching a movement for the secession of Maharashtra from India – perhaps ending in a violent standoff at Shivaji Park, with all the associated problems that will bring.At a time when India faces considerable challenges on every front, problems in Bombay, the city that epitomizes Indian-ness more than any other, is certainly something we can do without. And by encouraging a rabble rousing goon like Raj Thackeray, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sonia’s other cohorts in Maharashtra are doing a grave disservice to the nation.

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