Such
was the era of fear that ended on November 17, 2012 that a leading newspaper
did not dare to name Bal Thackeray and death in its headline. The mainstream
paper perhaps believed that he had defeated yamraj or the god/angel of death.
It only headlined: The man who called the shots in Mumbai is gone. (TOI
November 18)Gone with him is also the confrontational approach to terror. It
was the old wine in a new bottle of Hindutva. Himani Savarkar alternatively
called ii bomb for bomb retaliation. He
did not mince words to name Muslims or Bangladeshis as terrorist and called for
a Hindu backlash every time a bomb blew in the cosmopolitan city or elsewhere.
It is worth
recalling history when you read Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s tribute to
his friend at his
departure. “Bal Thackeray was a friend and a magnanimous leader who was ready
to pay any political price for his stand Fierce pride about Maharashtra,
willingness to pay prince for the interest of Marathi language and
Maharashtrians., but at the same time the readiness to contribute on
Maharashtra’s behalf for the sake of the country…these were the hallmarks of
balasaheb.” (TOI) This eulogy is not
matched by tradition and criticism, in the words of TS Eliot. The Chief Minister
of Maharshtra Sudhakar Naik and others wanted people to have restraint and not
kill Muslims after what happened on January 8, 1993 in Bombay. That date marks the
onset of massacre of Muslims by Shiv Sainik of Bal Thackeray. He had ominously
threatened that god Shiva’s third eye had opened and destruction would follow. He
exhorted his musclemen to teach the Muslims a lesson they would never forget. On
February 18, 1993 Marathi paper Lokmat quoted a Shiv Sena leader blaming the
Defence Minister Sharad Pawar for his involvement in the riots and the
massacre. Pawar had allegedly released hoodlums from jails. Most of the six
hundred killed subsequently were Muslims. The Shiv Saink and the hoodlums had
done them to death.
On February 20, 1993 Chief Minister of
Mahrashtra Sudhakar Naik blamed Pawar for his involvement. He called for the expulsion of the
Defense Minister from the party if it wanted to remain in power. The Home
Minister during that troubled times was SB Chavan who knew more than anyone.
Years later he revealed that Pawar was indeed behind the riots as was Shiv Sena
of Bal Thackeray. He repeated the accusation during election after he resigned
from the home ministry. Another notable figure was the deputy Commissioner of Municipal Corporation GR
Khairnar. He directly blamed Dawood Ibrahim for the riots in 1992 and Pawar for
1993. What is more he also revealed that the Thackeray and Pawar were special
friends of Dawood Ibrahim. (Kesri, July 21, 1994)
Since then Bombay (now, Mumbai) has not
lived in peace. Who was
the architect of the trouble?
Most of the people who eulogize
Thackeray do not care for a tuppence for being imbalanced and not realistic.
Thackeray was so blinkered as not to know that the Muslims were truly very
backward. They are more so than even the so called untoutouchables, the so
called downtrodden who suffered the stigma of caste discrimination down the ages. If anyone he could have produced a civil war
fortuitously. He had sent his son and de facto in charge of the party Udhay
Thackeray to serve a written ultimatum to the PM Manmohan Singh. What for? It
was because the central government wanted to act on the recommendations of
Sachar committee for reserving jobs for the Muslims?
However, what Shakespeare says has begun
to illustrate its veracity by the turn of events so soon after the cremation.
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is often entered with their
bones.” The two girls arrested for pasting an innocuous remark that the people
have gone bonkers shutting a huge city over the death of an individual is an
early straw in the wind. On its heel comes the tension in Chopda in Khandesh over
the poster of Bal Thackeray being torn. It was from a neighborhood where
Muslims would not dare to enter for such venture. The fear has gripped the
small town and an undeclared curfew is clamped down till this late evening of
November 25, 2012. Shoma Chaudhar calls this a darkly mixed political legacy, public legacy of fear,
bigotry and fiefdom. The police and the violent mobs pelting stones have been
infected by and stimulated by the kind of ideology which should have ceased
with the death of Thackeray. But it refuses to die down. Even the Chief
Minister of Maharashtra refuses to see the fascist in his fearful circumspection
of judging Thackeray only as a cartoonist. Referring to the arrest of the two
girls Prithviraj Chavan says: “the incident is an aberration and not a norm,
and should be looked at in isolation. There could be a section of the police,
especially at the local level, which looks up to the Shiv Sena; you can’t
pre-empt a constable’s or officer’s ideology.” Whose ideology has the police and
the stone pelters inherited?
And the invocation has not come late
either. There is a hoarding adjoining the equestrian statue of Shivaji in
Malegaon. The tribute to Thackray reads: “Saheb tumhi punha janmat ya.
(respected sir may you be born again).
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