DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI analyses the diatribe of Mr. Raj Thackeray against Bihar, its residents, newspapers and government.
Had the forefathers of Mr. Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena, migrated to what today is Mumbai, from Bihar? The uncomfortable question comes under sharper focus following a statement to that effect, on September 5, by the Congress senior leader, Mr. Digvijay Singh.
This revelation, based upon a book done by a responsible member of the celebrated family, may undo the Shiv Sena itself as its entire philosophy is based upon Maratha sub-nationalism.
Was this fact unknown to Mr. Bal Thackeray? It appears to be next to impossible. Whatever be the case, Mr. Thackeray’s all calculations went awry because that was the only plank upon which he had decided to hitch his bandwagon. When age started telling upon his health, Mr. Thackeray’s progeny stepped in and started kowtowing the patriarch’s fiery line. That deserves notice rather note.
Mr. Udhav Thackeray, who is a little sober than his cousin, called for a permit system to check the influx of migrants from Bihar to Mumbai. The senior Thackeray had made this demand in the 1980s for all “outsiders”. To quote Udhav: “If the Bihar government does not allow the Mumbai police to track down a criminal in that state, then there should also be a permit system for migrants who come to Mumbai from Bihar to make a living.”
Obviously, for the sake of ‘effects’, the Shiv Sena leader is not making a difference between the job-seekers and the alleged terrorists. In his lexicon, small lies are permissible for the sake of ‘Marathi manoos’.
He even declared that his party would not accept Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar as the NDA Prime Ministerial candidate if he continued to stick to his stand on supporting ‘traitors’.
Does one become a ‘traitor’ simply because one was born in Bihar? If he means a criminal by ‘traitor’, is he not punishing a person without his conviction by a court of law? The nation wants to hear a cogent reply from the accusing finger.
Earlier, on September 2, Maratha Navnirman Sena chief, Mr. Raj Thackeray hurled choicest barbs on Bihar newspapers and threatened to brand immigrants from Bihar as infiltrators and send them packing from Maharashtra if the Bihar administration attempted to impede police probe into the Azad Maidan rioting. He also warned that he would shut down Hindi channels in Maharashtra if his statements were not reported correctly.
Mr. Nitish Kumar, the otherwise suave and soft-spoken Chief Minister of Bihar, broke his silence and accused the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of Maharashtra of conspiracy of silence, which is constantly hurting the residents of Bihar both physically and psychologically. Why don’t they prosecute them for disseminating hatred, he asked in a straightforward manner? Those who create hatred and provoke the people deserve proper punishment. “I would write to the Prime Minister in this regard,” he said. The view of the Congress and the NCP is that they can defeat the Shiv Sena by allowing the latter to do what it can, remarked Mr. Kumar.
To us it is the ‘poorest of the poor’ politics. It is not statesmanship expected genuinely of the Prime Minister. It is morbid thinking and paralysis of will to act against the mischief-makers.
Two cases have been filed against the MNS chief, Mr. Raj Thackeray by a social activist and a lecturer in Patna University. The cases are likely to be heard on September 18.
It is really surprising that no personage has spoken from the ranks of the UPA and the Opposition. The only whisper that one has heard is from the BJP, which says that “we had opposed permit system in Jammu & Kashmir. And we are against it now.” The Congress has not shown even that courtesy to the people of Bihar. Is Dr. Manmohan Singh just a callous under-achiever or a stone-hearted person? We saw this trend in him during the Srikrishna Commission Report. Dr. Manmohan Singh had vegetated so much so after Mr. Narendra Modi’s masterpiece in Gujarat that he did not dismiss him or called for an explanation for the genocide. His lackadaisical approach to matters Muslim is almost proverbial. The only exception is Justice Rajinder Sachar Report. But the point is that mere reports suggesting remedial measures do not alter the situation. Where is the action? It would be mean on our part to recall that balm has been applied on the wounds of Sikhs killed and dislocated in the 1984 disturbances. Can’t the Muslim sufferers of Gujarat expect the same? And what about the sufferers of Kosi Kalan of UP, Pratapgarh of Rajasthan, and above all the victims of Assam riots?
And what is the justification of the continued incarceration of Muslim young men in the case in which Swami Aseemanand has confessed to his crime? Is it legally and morally justified?
In the light of their periodic spouting, one feels the Thackeray family has no pretensions of education or has education failed to make any dent in their illiteracy.
Do they not know, or have ever heard, that Bharat is a multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural nation-state? Do they know it has an egalitarian Constitution and believes in the rule of law as it is secular, plural and socialist as far as the Constitution goes? Many entities live here and they have equal rights and privileges, enumerated clearly in the form of Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. At the top of it all is the Supreme Court whose verdicts are binding upon the legislature, lower judiciary and executive. Would the respected family mind just going through the Constitution and its various provisions?
Being foul-mouth is not and shall never be laudatory. It lengthens shadows between the various individuals and communities. For a longer period of time, the senior Thackeray described the Muslim minority as ‘green snakes’. The latest is the description of the residents of Bihar as ‘infiltrators’. It is simply disgusting, discourteous and lamentable. Any educated, or even non-educated, person shall not appreciate this lowness. And we too are one of them.