Dear Uddhavji,
At the very outset, my compliments for the manner in which
you’ve literally ‘stolen’ the headlines from your cousin Raj in the last
fortnight. After the assembly election defeat last October, there were
many who had written you off as a weak, namby-pamby politician who would
be better off doing photography. But now it seems that the ‘fire’ which
burns inside Bal Thackeray is alive in the son too. After years of
struggling to establish yourself, you have finally discovered the mantra
for success as a Shiv Sena leader: find an ‘enemy’, threaten and
intimidate them, commit the odd violent act and eureka! you are anointed
the true heir to the original ‘T’-Company supremo.
Your cousin has chosen to bash faceless taxi-drivers and
students from North India, soft targets who are totally unprotected.
You’ve been much braver. You’ve actually chosen to target national icons:
Sachin Tendulkar, Mukesh Ambani, Shah Rukh Khan, powerful figures who most
Indians venerate. Shah Rukh is no surprise, since the Sena has always been
uncomfortable with the Indian Muslim identity. Forty years ago your father
had questioned Dilip Kumar’s patriotism for accepting an award from the
Pakistani government. You’ve called Shah Rukh a traitor for wishing to
choose Pakistani cricketers in the Indian Premier League. That your father
invited Javed Miandad, the former Pakistani captain and a close relation
of Dawood Ibrahim, to your house is a matter of record that we shall not
go into today.
I am a little surprised that you chose to question Ambani
and Tendulkar, though. The Sena has always enjoyed an excellent
relationship with corporate India. Why then criticise India’s biggest
businessman for suggesting that Mumbai belongs to all? After all, no one
can deny that Mumbai’s entrepreneurial energy has been driven by
communities from across India. The diatribe against Sachin is even more
strange. He is, along with Lata Mangeshkar, Maharashtra’s most admired and
recognised face. Surely you will agree that Sachin symbolises
Maharashtrian pride in a manner that renaming shops and streets in Marathi
never can.
Of course, in between, some of your local thugs also
attacked the IBN Lokmat office. I must confess that initially the attack
did leave me outraged. Why would a political outfit that claims to protect
Maharashtrian culture attack a leading Marathi news channel? But on
reflection, I realised that we hadn’t been singled out: over the last four
decades the Shiv Sena has targeted some of Maharashtra’s finest literary
figures and journalistic institutions. That you continue to live in a
colony of artists while attacking artistic freedom remains one of the many
tragic ironies in the evolution of the Sena.
Just before the assembly elections, you had told me in an
interview that you were determined to shake off the Shiv Sena’s legacy of
violence. You spoke of the need for welfarist politics, of how you were
saddened that rural Maharashtra was being left behind. I was impressed by
the farmer rallies you had organised, by the fact that you had documented
farmer suicides in the state. I thought that Uddhav Thackeray was serious
about effecting a change in Maharashtra’s political landscape.
I was obviously mistaken. Farmer suicides still continue,
the after-effects of drought are still being faced in several districts,
but the focus is now squarely on finding high-profile hate figures. You
claim to have a vision for Mumbai. Yet on the day the Sena-controlled
city’s municipal corporation’s annual budget revealed an alarming
financial crisis your party mouthpiece, Saamna, was running banner
headlines seeking an apology from Shah Rukh Khan. You asked your Shiv
Sainiks to agitate against Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Mumbai but why have you
not asked them to wage a war against the water cuts that have made life so
difficult for millions in the city?
At one level I can understand the reasons for your
frustration. The Congress-NCP government in the state has been thoroughly
incompetent: the last decade has seen Maharashtra decline on most social
and economic parameters. Yet the Shiv Sena has been unable to capture
power in the state. Your war with cousin Raj has proved to be
self-destructive. The assembly election results showed that a united Sena
may have offered a real challenge to the ruling alliance. In fact, the
Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena together garnered around 43 per
cent of the popular vote in Mumbai-Thane, almost seven per cent more than
what was obtained by the Congress-NCP combine. Yet because your vote was
split, you won just nine of the 60 seats in the region, a result which
proved decisive in the overall state tally.
Your defeat seems to have convinced you that the only way
forward is to outdo your cousin in parochial politics. It is a strategy
which has undoubtedly made you a headline-grabber once again.
Unfortunately, television rating points don’t get you votes or goodwill.
There is space in Maharashtra’s politics for a regional force but it needs
to be based on a constructive, inclusive identity.
Tragically, the Shiv Sena has never offered a serious
social or economic agenda for the future. Setting up the odd vada pav
stall in Mumbai is hardly a recipe for addressing the job crisis. Why
hasn’t the Sena, for example, started training projects to make
Maharashtrian youth face up to the challenges of a competitive job market?
Why doesn’t the Sena give regional culture a boost by supporting Marathi
theatre, literature or cinema? The wonderful Marathi film,
Harishchandrachi Factory, nominated for the Oscars, has been
co-produced by Ronnie Screwvala, a Parsi, who like millions of other
‘outsiders’ has made Mumbai his home. Maybe I ask for too much. Tigers,
used to bullying others for years, will never change their stripes.
Postscript: Your charming son, Aditya, who is studying
English literature in St Xavier’s College, had sent me a collection of his
poems. I was most impressed with his writing skills. Let’s hope the next
generation of the T-Company will finally realise that there is more to
life than rabble-rousing!
Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra!