Is This Why We Wanted Freedom?

Woke up this morning to hear the news that Raj Thackeray has been arrested in the middle of the night from Ratnagiri (why couldn’t they do it in broad daylight, one wonders) and is being brought to Mumbai to be produced in court. This is an event that shouldn’t really affect my life in any significant way, for, other than being the leader of just another political party with a handful of seats in the state assembly, he has absolutely no locus standi and clearly isn’t the guardian of ‘Marathi asmita’ as he’d have us believe. I don’t support his politics, nor endorse his divisive, myopic and wholly opportunistic modus operandi – a mere photocopy of his uncle’s ‘sons of the soil’ propaganda of four decades ago! He’s just another hypocritical Thackeray (funny these followers of Shivaji spell their family name after a famous British novelist of the Victorian era called William Makepeace Thackeray!), who proclaims his righteousness by bullying people while moving around in fancy imported cars, going hunting with the filmi brat pack when not extorting and grabbing property in the city by all means possible and sending his children to a fancy, upper-crust English medium school (no Marathi schools for sons of this Marathi manoos).

Sadly, anything Raj Thackeray does, or anything that’s done to him, tends to disrupt my life. For, this self-styled ‘inheritor’ of Shivaji’s guerrilla warfare tactics has an army of goons who hunt in packs and evidently, carry out their business of sabotage with the blessings of the state government and the police machinery. For the Congress-NCP alliance, Raj is a weapon against the increasingly toothless Shiv Sena. For the Sena, his violent agenda is a provocation that must be met by an equal show of strength. For the media, he’s a constant source of entertainment – hence his every move is chronicled in meticulous detail, which further feeds his purpose. For the common Marathi man, he’s perhaps the guy who will get them the jobs they may or may not deserve and by dint of force if necessary; and for the non-Marathi population, he’s a nuisance and terror that just can't be wished away. So Mumbai has come to a standstill again today. Some hapless taxi drivers will get beaten up and their vehicles smashed about, a few shops will be stoned and damaged (naturally, nobody except the owners themselves are going to pick up the tab), many schools in the city are closed as a matter of precaution (and in some, like my daughter's school, exams were abandoned midway and children despatched home in panic), while the public will exercise caution in sensitive areas like Dadar and prefer to defer their Diwali shopping. The media will blare sensational headlines all day, panel discussions will speculate on the implications of Raj’s arrest, journalists and members of other parties will spout sagely wisdom on the matter, his own spokesperson will rant about the injustice being meted out to this great Marathi leader and so on. In a matter of hours, Raj Thackeray will be out on bail, and, emboldened by the attention being showered on him, go on to bigger challenges and cause greater damage. 

I am not an authority on politics. Yet, the atmosphere of our vastly polluted democracy is increasingly incensing me. It’s not just the malaise of Raj Thackeray and his ilk that worries me as a citizen of this country. It is the shallow political environment which allows thugs and goons to bully their way around (virtually in every state), where no institution, party or individual is incorruptible. Where development, like secularism, is a dirty word tossed around casually. Where people are mere statistics of castes, communities, religious groups and vote banks, all cleverly pitted against each other. Where neither the judiciary, nor police, nor state can administer justice to those that need it most. Where the large mass called the middle class (of which, I shamefully admit, I too am a member) are too dazzled by their life of comfort and brain-numbing reality television to protest about anything. Where the poor have no choice but to get trampled. Where the rich have no concern for anything except the next cocktail party. Where sacrifice is foolish, principles are redundant and money is god. Is this really the India we so desperately wanted, an ideal for which scores sacrificed their lives, and many more underwent tremendous untold hardships? If this be freedom, did we really need to oust the British? As Sahir Ludhianvi aptly put it half a century ago: “Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hai? Kahaan hai? Kahaan hai? Kahaan hai?” Deepa Deosthalee