The anger of Raj Thackeray: Isn’t it politics ?

After my last post on Raj Thackeray where I wrote about the highhanded behaviour of his cadre towards North Indians, I got some very mixed responses from readers. Some were very angry with Raj and condemned him severely; some were sympathetic towards him and supported his pro-Marathi stance in Mumbai.

Yesterday he was arrested and, after some hours of intense drama and suspense, released on bail. This entire episode has helped him grabbed the headlines in almost all leading national news channels. Some analyst have been contemplating that, after this episode, Raj has become a hero of a large section of Maharashtrian society. .

In my opinion, these incidents have not made him a hero. It has only helped him to grab the attention of traditional Shiv Sena supporters and helped him hijack the pro-Marathi agenda from Shiv Sena and made it his own.

Well, why Raj Thackeray has been targeting the North Indians living Mumbai so aggressively for the last few weeks? What has happened that has aroused in him a love for Maharashtra and a sense of anger for the outsiders? What has prompted him to take such an aggressive stand against the people of UP & Bihar ?

It’s politics stupid. A politics of ego, a politics to prove that he is the best leader Maharashtra can ever have and a politics to ensure his own political survival in the next year elections in the state.

If you have watched the 2006 blockbuster ‘Omkara’ (the bollywood adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello) , you must have remembered the character of ‘Langda Tyagi’ (brilliantly played by Saif Ali Khan). The story in short is that Langda Tyagi is the main henchman of gang leader Omkar (Ajay Devgan) and executes all the plans/attacks for him. He expects himself to be the successor of Omkar. However, when Omkar decides to enter into local politics, he completely ignore the claims of Langda Tyagi and appoints an educated (but less active) member of his gang Kesu (Viveik Oberoi) as his successor. This incident gives a jolt to Langda’s pride and raging with envy & disappointment he hatches a secret plot to spoil Omkar’s life. The rest of the film is all about various tactics Langda uses to weaken Omkar’s personal and public life. The film is a poignant tale of envy, ambitions and emotional weakness of humans.

Now let’s come to the real world and try to see some glimpses of Omkara in this true story.

A guy joins the political party of his uncle in his teenage and starts strengthening its cadre. Soon he becomes an influential part of this party and a very close associate of his uncle. His influence starts growing along with his ambition to head the party after his uncle. Then after almost 10 years, the son of his uncle too joins the party and starts working in the cadre, The guy slowly realizes that his uncle is giving more importance to his own son than him. The culmination point comes when his uncle ignores him and chooses his son as the next successor of his party. The disappointed guy decides to take his own course and starts a new party of his own. He still respects his uncle but do not like his uncle’s son who just came and become the successor of his father’s party. And the story of their ego clash begins…

The guy in the story is Raj Thackeray. You can guess the name of his uncle and his son.

In its ninth straight year in power in Maharashtra, the ruling combine of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party faces an uncertain election year in 2009, with both the Lok Sabha and the state Assembly up for grabs. The anti-incumbency factor is high in the state. The main opposition alliance of BJP and Shiv Sena, which has only once ruled Maharashtra from 1995 to 1999, has sensed their chance of winning power once again.

The immediate cause of provocation for Raj Thackeray was the last month’s moves by the Shiv Sena to reach out to north Indian voters in and around Mumbai, orchestrated by Bal Thackeray’s son and successor at the Shiv Sena, Uddhav. During January-end this year, Uddhav and the Shiv Sena vigorously courted the north Indians by organizing several public functions across Mumbai, called ostensibly to celebrate “UP Divas” or foundation day.

The glaring fact is that the Maharashtrians have now become a minority in each of the 36 Assembly constituencies of Mumbai. The Shiv Sena, which till now was targeting only Marathis in the state, knows very well that the north Indian votes are crucial if it has to return to power. In 2004 the party courted mostly the Maharashtrians and lost badly. Uddhav Thackeray does not want to repeat the mistakes of 2004 again. This is more so when the congress Government is facing an anti-incumbency factor and has been quite unpopular these days.

However, the biggest obstacle in Uddhav’s victory is his own cousin Raj who just a few years ago was his close buddy. Shiv Sena leader Prem Shukla, who also edits the party newspaper Dopahar ka Samna recently told a news magazine that Raj is desperate that Uddhav doesn’t come to power. He reckons that a conflict between the north Indians and the Maharashtrians will polarise voters and hurt the Shiv Sena.”

Indeed, the potential of Raj Thackeray to play the spoiler in the state’s politics is known to all parties. The lax attitude of congress Govt in taking action against him and somewhat silence stand of Shiv Sena and BJP are testimony to this fact that every party wants to tread cautiously on this issue and everybody is trying to gain maximum mileage from this controversy. The very fact that a growing influence of Northern Party like SP & BSP in Maharashtra can result into a division of North Indian voters, which will ultimately help Shiv Sena, has prompted Congress -NCP Govt to take a very lenient view of the situation and let the Raj do what he wants to do in Mumbai. As of now, it appears that no political party is serious in tackling this problem and everybody is adopting a wait & watch policy while gaining whatever political mileage it can gain from this issue.

Coming to the concern of decreasing influence of Marathi people in Mumbai, I think that people of Maharashtra has every right to preserve their cultural identity and nobody should be allowed to malign it. However, violence can never be the right answer for this task. As rightly pointed out by many commentors in my previous post, the problem lies in bad administration and poor policies of the Government of Northern States which failed to create enough jobs & opportunities for their people resulting in their migration to other affluent and promising cities like Mumbai .

Influx of people to Mumbai has indeed become a problem there. Migration from north India, especially UP and Bihar, to Mumbai has increased substantially over the last decade. A census study conducted four years ago estimated that 40 new families enter Mumbai every day as fresh migrants. As a result, the city’s 5.5 million Maharashtrians have turned into a minority. Ironically, the Shiv Sena could well be blamed for the sharp increase in the migration. Around the 1995 Assembly elections, as an Opposition party it promised free housing for those living in the slums, prompting a mad rush to find residence in the quintessential shantytowns that span Mumbai’s landscape. Once in power, the Shiv Sena quickly forgot that promise – among the reasons it lost power in 1999 – but the tide of migration once unleashed continued unabated.

Next year Maharahtra will face election for both Central as well as State legislature. In 2007, Raj’s party MNS suffered a big jolt as it was washed out almost everywhere and could win only 6 seats in the 221-seats BMC (Mumbai municipality ). The next year election will be the test of his political survival in Maharashtra and Raj Thackeray will leave no stone unturned to establish himself in the state. He is playing the anti-North Indian cards to become popular among Marathis thus making a dent in the ShivSena’s base of popular votes.
Only the future will decided whether this politics will pay the dividend for him or not. However, it is certain that he will spoil the game for Shiv Sena and indirectly benefit the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra. As of now, the State Government appears to be in collusion with him and it will prefer to delay taking any strict action against him as long as it can. So in the coming days get ready for more criticism of North Indians and more attacks on innocent civilians in Maharashtra.

Isn’t it an irony that Vageesh Saraswat, the MNS vice-president, is a migrant from Aligarh in UP who speaks only broken Marathi. Prem Shukla, the Shiv Sena leader and newspaper editor, is also a migrant. Sanjay Nirupam, the 43-year-old former Shiv Sena MP also migrated to Mumbai from Bihar two decades ago.

Sometimes, the small egos of men become more important than their duty for their country. May God give them the wisdom to see that ultimately we all are Indians first. Our regional identities come after that.