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insaf Bulletin [31] November, 2004 International South Asia Forum http://www.insaf.net MAHARASHTRA ELECTION VERDICT: ANOTHER SHOWDOWN FOR HINDUTVA Vinod Mubayi The results of the elections in Maharashtra confirm that the BJP, the Shiv Sena, and other assorted hangers-on and followers of Hindutva are on a downward trajectory in public esteem and credibility. There was every expectation prior to the election that the lackluster performance of the Congress-Nationalist Congress coalition government over the last 5 years would result in their losing power. Economic growth in India's bellwether industrial state was tepid, the state debt had ballooned, and farmers unable to meet their debt obligations were reported to be committing suicide, just like in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh, a phenomenon that sank the Telugu Desam regime of Chandrababu Naidu earlier this year. The perception of misgovernance was enhanced by the mid-term ouster of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and the resignation of the Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal in the Telgi stamp paper scandal. It was widely felt that anti-incumbency sentiment alone would dislodge the Congress-NCP coalition and reinstall the BJP-Shiv Sena combine in power. The BJP's election chief, Pramod Mahajan, had devised another strategy, of encouraging Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party to split the Dalit-neo Buddhist vote that would ordinarily have gone to Congress or Congress allies in the hope that BSP would support the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition to come to power in the Assembly. BJP's icon of yesteryear, former Prime Minister Vajpayee, and the rabble-rousing Uma Bharati, were brought into the campaign. But, in the end, the average voter had a different idea. Although the margins were close in several districts, the verdict was unmistakable; the people deemed the communal, Hindutva coalition a worse option than continuing with the secular Congress-NCP incumbent regime. This is a very hopeful sign that voters can now see through the largely media created hype of the "party of natural governance" as the BJP styled itself. The impact of the loss of the BJP-led NDA government at the Center is now beginning to be felt over the country. It portends further trouble for the BJP whose leaders are now rushing to Nagpur to get further instructions from their gurus in the RSS. In contrast, the Congress-led UPA at the Center has made a decent start generally, despite occasional hiccups and differences among the allies. Another hopeful sign is the steep decline, hopefully a signal of its eventual demise, of the thuggish Shiv Sena. Its leader, Bal Thackeray, in his latest rant after the election results were declared sounded more like Charlie Chaplin's "Great Dictator" than the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, a figure Thackeray has frequently admired in press interviews. The Sena rose to prominence on a one-point political program, sons-of-the-soil chauvinism of the Hindu Maharashtrian middle and lower middle class in cosmopolitan Bombay where the higher levels of industry and trade were dominated by the Parsis, Gujaratis, and Marwaris, white collar employment by Tamilian Brahmins and service sectors such as transport by Sikhs and Muslims. The Sena's cadres were largely drawn from Bombay's extensive underworld involved in smuggling, gambling, liquor and other rackets. Emotive rabble-rousing against migrants and "outsiders", plus a rent-a-thug policy allowed the Sena to acquire both resources and political power. In the late 1960s and 70s, industrial capitalists used the Sena's cadres to destroy the Communist trade unions through violent attacks on and murders of individual trade union leaders like Krishna Desai. Earlier Congress governments in the state also cynically used the Sena's muscle power when it suited them at election time. Violent campaigns in the 1970s against "South Indians", called "Madrasis" in Bombay, including Malayali workers, Tamil white-collar workers in many public sector enterprises, riots on Maharashtra-Karnataka boundary issues, were followed by sustained violence against Muslims in the 1980s when Thackeray realized that while being anti-South Indian could gain him a following in Maharashtra, being anti-Muslim could make him an all-India leader. Lately, the Sena also launched a violent campaign against North Indians, assaulting many young men from U.P. and Bihar who were coming to Bombay for recruitment into the Indian Railways, while continuing a high-decibel rant against Bangladeshi "infiltrators" and "Muslim terrorists" in general. Their defeat, even in their strongholds in Mumbai and in the Konkan areas, could either be a sign of organizational weakness, particularly after the succession struggle between Thackeray's son and nephew, or a sign of public weariness or both. Hopefully, a new and younger generation of Maharashtrian youth has sensed the emptiness and thuggishness behind the Sena's emotive appeals. But the Congress has to be on guard and realize the significant amount of cleansing it has to do within its own house before the specters of the Shiv Sena and their clones and the votaries of Hindutva can be laid to rest. Pandering to outright Maharashtrian sub-nationalism by striking ultra-chauvinist postures and being complicit in historical falsification can extract a heavy toll. One example is the complete inability to permit even scholarly writing and debate on a Maharashtrian historical figure like Shivaji as witnessed by the shameful attack on the famous Bhandarkar Institute library in Pune where Congress cadres were also involved. The other is the tailing behind BJP and Shiv Sena on the issue of Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva, the father of the two-nation theory long before Jinnah, and a key plotter in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi who escaped being charged solely on a legal technicality, whose portrait now hangs in Parliament, courtesy of the former BJP regime, opposite that of Gandhi. Only Mani Shankar Aiyar, now a Minister in the Central Government, had the courage and good sense to call a spade a spade on the issue of Savarkar. But the leaders of the Maharashtra Congress ran away from the truth and tried to outdo the BJP-Sena chauvinists in their fealty to Savarkar. This approach will not pay dividends in the long run. Courtesy:Harsh Kapoor/SACW www.sacw.net |
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| << November10, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Condemnation of steep rise in fuel prices |
November10, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]CFJ approaches the Supreme Court >> |
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